Paul Harding

Socialism & localism. Engineering as a job, woodworking for fun. Generally on a bike. Everything in moderation (including moderation). Follows≠agreement.

[Alf Dubs @AlfDubs]

I understand exactly what's happening - I've seen it before

[Dexys Midnight Runners @DexysOfficial]

I, Kevin Rowland (the son of Irish immigrants) and the main songwriter of ‘Come On Eileen,’ am disgusted to learn that Nigel Farage has used our song to make his entrance for his party conference. Myself, and all of Dexys are passionately against Farage’s politics.

@ByDonkeys .

[Trades Union Congress @The_TUC]

Boss making you resign to save himself?

Join a union.

[Dr Juliet Turner @juliet_turner6]

There is something incredibly wonderful about viewing moss through the lens of a dragonfly wing.

Moss first evolved maybe 450 million years ago. Dragonflies have flown through the Earth’s skies for over 300 million years.

That means that all air-living, eyed things that lived and died over the last several hundred million years had the possibility of seeing this same sight. Few other combinations of things have existed for so long.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Wow. All the chickens are coming home to roost. To everyone who believes the current story about Farage’s £ is magically different from the one I was destroyed over - & a large chunk of UK press remained completely silent about - please take a long hard look at yourself

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@policylaila https://t.co/hvvuX07LTM

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@StuartHumphryes I like your comment about the green cabinet!

[National Energy System Operator @neso_energy]

Britain’s electricity system recorded its lowest ever transmission demand today: 12.62GW between 13:00–13:30.

Sunny weather, high solar generation and the bank holiday weekend all contributed to the lower level seen on the network. ☀️

The system operated securely throughout.

[Figure @Figure_robot]

Watch a team of humanoid robots running a full 8-hr shift at human performance levels. This is fully autonomous running Helix-02 https://t.co/bIgpYuaYCj

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@paulpowlesland I want all my politicians to be open and honest about their affairs. So I was certainly interested to see Dan's analysis of the subject as he's done good work in the past. But the additional context here - it rather puts things into perspective doesn't it.

[Zoe Gardner @ZoeJardiniere]

The long-overdue change from First Past the Post to a Proportional Representation voting system simply has to be top of the agenda now.

[David Yelland @davidyelland]

@montie @reformparty_uk Well I had a good night's sleep and my usual breakfast... is Reform planning to run the country on a beer buzz?

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@floboflo I agree with most of this

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@SalfordMe2023 I get that - but I honestly don't know how else to send a message to current govt that there are many left-wing voices not being heard. Listening to David Lammy refusing to engage with measured points from John McDonnell this morning on R4 is a case in point.

[Daniel Franke @dfranke]

You buy a German anvil. It contains 83 moving parts and requires winding twice a day. It's forged from excellent steel, holds tolerances across all three striking faces to within three microns, includes a beautifully indexed horn-adjustment mechanism nobody asked for, and requires a proprietary 11-point spanner should you need to replace the rebound calibration bushing. It runs flawlessly for years, but one day it starts up in limp mode because the onboard anvil-management system detects that it's overdue for its 50,000-strike inspection.

You search AliExpress for a Chinese anvil, and are presented with a multitude of offerings from such household-name brands as DUKXJYIBF, HDBTGMXI, AND UEJQIP. They're all priced to within a few pennies of each other, appear completely identical except for the nameplate, and obviously all came out of the same factory. You text your blacksmith friend to ask if they're legit. He tells you he got one like that from KIXJBU a few years ago, and that it's been great and a terrific deal. You thank him, but KIXJBU seems to have folded so you buy the one from UEJQIP. When it arrives, it feels suspiciously light. You scratch it and realize it's iron-plated aluminum.

You buy an American anvil. It's five times the price of the competition, but it comes from a brand that your great-grandfather used to love. It comes boxed with a warranty registration postcard, twenty pages of safety instructions, assay certificate, and a regulatory slip which lists its FCC certification and ITAR registration. It looks just like your friend's KIXJBU. There's a "Made In China" sticker on the bottom.

You buy a Russian anvil. It arrives coated in cosmoline, wrapped in newspaper from 1974, and weighing 40% more than advertised. The finish looks like it was machined with a shovel. The face is not flat, but somehow this does not matter. You drop it off a truck, accidentally leave it outside for six winters, and use it to straighten a bulldozer blade. It's fine.

You buy a Swedish anvil. It comes flat-packed in a long cardboard box with cheerful Neo-Grotesk lettering and a line drawing of a smiling man assembling it with an Allen key. The instructions contain no words, only pictograms showing the anvil face, horn, waist, feet, and 112 identical-looking fasteners. Halfway through assembly, you discover that the pritchel hole was installed upside down, but only because you used peg B17 where you should have used peg B71. Once assembled, it is clean, stable, and works better than it has any right to. You immediately wonder whether you should have bought two.

You buy a Japanese anvil. It arrives wrapped in rice paper inside a paulownia box, accompanied by a certificate bearing three generations of signatures and a photograph of the first production example being presented to the Emperor. The face has been hand-polished by a seventy-eight-year-old master whose family has made striking surfaces since the Muromachi period. You are given detailed instructions for oiling it with a cloth folded in a specific way. It is the most beautiful object you own. You never quite work up the nerve to strike it.

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@electrician_247 It might happen yet though! https://t.co/C6fKlvEUTR

[Mark Z. Jacobson @mzjacobson]

The use of primary energy on the vertical axis is an old trick by the fossil fuel industry to mislead people into thinking that one unit of fossils = one unit of renewables. In fact, one unit of primary energy for wind or solar electricity is the equivalent of three units of fossil fuels for electricity.

Another trick is to pretend we need all those fossils if we switched to renewables. In fact, if we switch to renewables, 12% of the fossil fuel energy disappears because that is how much energy is used to mine-transport-refine fossil fuels+uranium for energy, and we wouldn't need to do that anymore

A third trick is to pretend we need so much energy if we go to all electricity powered by renewables. In that case, because EVs use 75% less energy than gasoline/diesel vehicles, heat pumps use 75% less energy than combustion heating, etc., energy demand goes down another 42%.

In sum, this plot illustrates the real story of where we are and where we need to go. The proper metric is end-use energy, not primary energy.
https://t.co/MUCW2YS7dF

and here's the paper

https://t.co/w4nO2LlL2F

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

Israel flunkies who worked themselves into a hysterical frenzy when @BobbyVylan chanted "Death, death to the IDF", and insisted he be burned at the stake for incitement to genocide, now perform verbal acrobatics to conclude that "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" is a polite invitation to peacefully resolve a maritime dispute over tea and crumpets.

[Paul Harding @metafish]

@SamaHoole This is a great advert for socialism and contributes nothing to the cause that the author stands for.

[The Green Party @TheGreenParty]

It's time to see past our differences and remember what connects us.

When we realise where our strength lies - in each other - that's when change happens.

Join us - https://t.co/N7IGRtbLK6