Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
It's uncanny how the language used by Netanyahu and his ministers to describe the Palestinians "human animals", resembles that used by Nazis to describe the Jews in the 1930s and how the ghettoisation of the Gaza strip resembles the ghettos of WWII
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Killing children anywhere is wrong. Killing civilians is wrong. Taking civilians hostage is wrong. Attacking music festivals is wrong. Shutting off food and water to millions of people is wrong. Apartheid is wrong
Apparently according to right-wingers this statement makes me (Ukrainian Jewish ancestry) an antisemite.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Yes public transport in rural France is pretty dire!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: “It is in both Netanyahu and Hamas’ interests for you to take extreme positions. The path to Palestinian freedom, and to peace and safety for everyone, requires seeing everyone’s humanity and rooting for everyone’s liberation. That’s the way out. That’s the only way through.”
https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/a-lot-of-things-are-true
Unfortunately Britain made the appalling mistake of adopting the metre.millimetre when it metricated. Whereas all throughout the already metricated Common Market, centimetres were the units used for common measurements in the building and engineering industries.
So when British manufacturers started producing steel tapes with metric markings, they used metre.millimetre markings and anyone who has ever used the infernal things will tell you right away that it introduces and massive cause of errors. Finally, the British manufacturers realized what useless shit they were producing and moved to centimetrically marked steel tapes. I along with most people using them professionally literally threw away all their metre.millimetre marked tapes and replaced them with centimetrically marked ones!
If you don't work daily with steel tapes, you may wonder what the problem with the markings on them could be! If you worked with them - you'd know!
Based on what happened in Britain - it will take at least 3 generations maybe more and there will need to be a firm educational policy forbidding the teaching of customary units in schools. There will also need to strict labeling regulations - old habits die hard.
I have spent much of my life living in countries where no one has the first idea what british imperial or US customary measures even look like, so I neither use nor think in 'old' measures - in fact I don't even use them in figures of speech in English these days.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
London police defy ban on badges linked to far right and white supremacy - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/14/london-police-defy-ban-on-badges-linked-to-far-right-and-white-supremacy @metpoliceuk full of proud racists, gosh what a surprise...
The conclusion from that must surely be that we collectively elect extremely stupid idiots as politicians!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/budget-2015-watch-smug-iain-6027521 You may remember this. It was the beginning of the war on disabled and impoverished people in the U.K. Changing the name of the minimum wage to mask the true intent of the Tory government. A prime minister who went on to benefit greatly from fast tracked ppe contracts. The Torys, self serving for 300 years.
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
"Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.
I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.
I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.
I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.
I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.
I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.
I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.
I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.
Whatever this is, I want none of it."
Isaac Saul
Trump and everyone in his family and in his organization have spent their entire careers lying. It has become so habitual that now they simply cannot stop; no matter the price they may pay for continuing!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
Let's just clarify one thing because I'm seeing this take a lot: the Israel/Palestine conflict is not about religion, it's colonialism. Palestinian land is being stolen piece by piece, and if we allow it to continue, Gaza is going to disappear from the map.
I find it difficult to imagine anyone more stupid that he!
If he were to get his way, I wonder what the medical profession would do? Even the extremely backward Americans use the metric system for medical measurements, tests and the dosing of medication. When was the last time you heard someone referring to a 15 grain tablet of Paracetamol (or Acetaminophen if from the USA)
@ThatMermaid_J@mstdn.party
We are all dying - it's a question of when, not whether!
No country or group can take the moral high ground if they are knowing slaughtering women and children and in this particular case that would be both Israel and Hamas in pretty equal measure!
Paul Brownjohn
boosted
I'm old enough to remember when the original 9/11 caused the west to lose its collective mind and kill one million people who had nothing to do with 9/11. Looks like this time we've decided to make it two million.
@Psychonaut
When I was 15 (in 1965) my physics teacher told us that we would the last generation to have to learn Imperial units alongside metric ones - he said he had been informed by the examining boards that no further questions that referred to Imperial units would be included in GCEs.
Then fückin prigs like Rees-Moron intervened!!!
Retired software engineer & woodworker.
Anglo-francophone.
Detest tories. Subscribe to green, leftish radical politics but not to any particular political party!.
Love the EU and all it stands for, moreover, I spent the last 10 years of my career working at an EU agency.
Enthusiastic photographer, especially wildlife and most especially butterflies.
Slightly knowledgeable gardener.
Atheist; loathe almost all religions and pity the people deluded enough to follow them. I make exceptions for Buddhism as it isn't really a religion in the strictest sense of the word as it doesn't postulate the existence of any god, and Jainism which is the epitome of peace.
For anyone who is interested, my header photo is of the most stupendous sunset I have ever seen. On the right is the waterfront of Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on the left is Thailand and in the middle, acting as the border between the two countries is the mighty Mekong river.
Joined Nov 2022
