T is turning out to be a hyper-productive day with lots of stuff done (offline stuff) and some good news online. Tomorrow we plan to go out, seeing that the ‘hired guns’ have not (yet) decided to bother us during this vacation.

This coming weekend I plan to mend many old shoes using superglue. It’s a long tedious task, but it does in fact repair or extend the life of shoes we’ve long had and still like.

Shoemaking is a lost art because of sweatshops and the local shoe repair shops seem to have (almost entirely) gone out of business. The equipment they have is irreplaceable and one common worry is that today’s shoes are made of shoddy material that is difficult to repair properly.

Stats pertaining to excess deaths spoke for themselves; wellness is harmed by economic hardships (worse diets), stress, and competition for medical attention among other factors.

think it is fair to say that after 2019 an already-embattled NHS became less available than before. To book an appointment with a GP became hard. It had already been hard for years, but not this hard.

To be clear, I don’t need a GP or specialist or anything, I merely speak for a friend here.

It increasingly seems like people need “connections” or an emergency (or faking an emergency) to secure appointments due to burden on the system and financial stress (privatisation contributes to waste of NHS budget, I covered this before).

As if stands at the moment, the best way to keep healthy is to avoid getting ill (or becoming unwell), in other words prevention, not cures.

For senior people this advice is largely meaningless, even somewhat offensive and potentially a case a of victim-blaming.

‘m just glad we’re having rain again.

The Cyber Show has just mentioned climate change.

Assuming we can somehow make up for those long dry spells (or droughts) – though it doesn’t work that way, you cannot “catch up” – we need to learn our lessons and reject waste of energy, pollution etc.

T finally rains. Quite a bit, too.

When will we have as much climate change news coverage as we used to?

Rather than the news demanding that we accept the cause of climate change, things like useless data centres (for slop), or otherwise be “cranks”?

“The News used to be Crime,” The Cyber Show writes today. “Pollution. Death. War. Disaster. Crime. Pollution. Death. War. Disaster… And now here’s Kate with the weather… and we’d all stop worrying and smile. Now it’s the other way round.”

New rules against time-wasting, a tactic of Brett Wilson LLP (they doubled the duration of the recent hearing where we had an experienced legal team that included two barristers)

can recall the hearing we had last month very well. How can I forget? Unlike the applicant, we attended it. He did not! He was in London at the time, but he chose to not even show up.

My barrister told me that his barrister was intentionally “time-wasting”. It was not hard to see this, he was very repetitive and clearly he tried to deny our side (two barristers) enough time to get across points. It was an exceptionally hot week, so those in the Court were already tired by the time our barristers had a say.

If “time-wasting” is a legal tactic (like stalling), then the Court needs to curtail it, even penalise for it.

Our barristers aren’t cheap and my barrister is vastly more experienced that the time waster’s.

Tomorrow I’ll write about these tactics in Techrights. The headline will be: “Decades of Debt, Weaponing Borrowed Money to Try to Put Critics in Debt”.

Prior parts below:

O almost 3 years ago Google hijacked the term “Gemini” (in relation to Web/Net stuff), which makes it hard to find information online about Gemini Protocol, pretending Google’s slop brand by 4 years!

Despite the attack on the “brand”, i.e. on Gemini Protocol, Geminispace continued to grow.

What next can GAFAM do to derail alternatives?

Society must look up to people like him, not greedy people who hoard money and power, not “pay it forward” to those in dire need (of a voice, not necessarily money)

‘ve long respected Paul Robeson (for decades already) not just for his excellent, strong voice and learning of new languages, which he then used to communicate internationally (this reminded me of RMS). In the face of controversy and risk (the US tried to ostracise and sanction him) he persisted in his activism, using his good name and reputation to do something risky without monetary gain/rewards.

A recently-deceased French model did the same for animals. She died as controversial because she opposed the same “Establishment” that had helped her rise to fame.

Don’t rise to power. Fight unjust power.