charlie baker

Sustainable cities, architecture, systems. making change now Occasional photographer. Would like to save the world. born at 320ppm CO2.

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Crikey!

[Restoring their Dignity @RestoringDign]

🔻Witold Pilecki is known as the only person who voluntarily entered the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Inside, he organized a resistance group, managed to escape, and reported the crimes committed there to the outside world.

Here's his story.

Thread:

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

@thenitinsawhney Yup

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Very cool

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Using fire to visualise sound waves

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

This is quite a stark diagram of the UK’s absurd isolation

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

@ChrisGPackham And me

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Israel has killed over 11,500 Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7th, when 36 Israeli children were killed.

It’s impossible to imagine that number. This is what it looks like. A line 5km long.

(Location: Bournemouth Beach)

[Dr Jenny Thatcher @JennyAThatcher]

The secret social housing scandal: when your parent dies – and you are evicted in days

Before Tiana had the chance to arrange her mum's funeral, she received an eviction notice giving her only a few days to move out. Her mum had lived there for 20 years
https://t.co/OtB77CdSw4

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Oh lordy! How do i unsee this?

[ALASTAIR CAMPBELL @campbellclaret]

Oh lord I have absolutely no memory of this at all! Did we really ????

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Congratulations on getting this out there

[Lee Mordechai @LeeMordechai]

1/ I’m an Israeli historian. My community is still too silent about the horrible war in Gaza. Over 8 months I’ve closely followed the war, reading >1000 articles and viewing >1000 videos/images of the war from all sides. My summary conclusions & full report are in the 🧵:

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

This is an astounding testimonial. Even if it’s not a real piece of footage it’s a great summary

[𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine]

Grand Rapids GOP party chair introduces Donald Trump.

[Nitin Sawhney @thenitinsawhney]

I grew up watching flag-waving little Englanders parading their nationality around Rochester like Dickensian caricatures, puffing their chests out in pride over an imperial history carefully reimagined to paint over barbaric cruelty with Constable landscapes and Churchillian swagger… As if the accident of where they were born had been an achievement…

These folk were everywhere… with their arrogant smiles and entitled condescension. They were the National Front-supporting parents of school friends, avoiding eye contact if I dared visit their house via their sons, asking me transparent questions about my ethnicity and explaining how mixed race marriages never work, in case I propositioned one of their vulnerable teenage daughters…

I was taught to consider myself both lucky to be here and self-evidently inferior by virtue of my heritage.

So when I see those same superior, colluding, patronising smiles on the over-rehearsed faces of attention-seeking rabble-rousers like Farage and Tice, I have to remember…

We can’t change the past but we can make damn sure those who belong in the past don’t destroy our future…

Farage is a disease, a malicious vessel of hate… A gleeful provocateur. Everything he touches becomes a toxic wasteland of hopeless misery. He is a cancer waiting to destroy the same host over and over again.

I said this about him in a Channel 4 News interview back in 2014.

I’m saying it again now.

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Good rant

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Nate White, a British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

I am taking the flight free challenge! Could you join me? #FlightFree2024 @FlightFreeUK https://t.co/2CzWwEjM45

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

We can always hope….

[Stuzi 🐝🐝 @stuzi_pants]

All being well, this is my last New Year’s Eve in the U.K. after returning 5 years ago when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. That rolled into mum’s diagnosis and 5 very difficult years all said.
As an Irishman who was brought up in the U.K. I’m hugely fond of the British. There’s nobody funnier anywhere, and I think deep down it’s a compassionate and caring nation. That said, returning here after many years abroad, I found I’d come back to a totally different country. I was fortunate enough to miss the entire Brexit debate but let me tell you it’s created a huge chasm between people who ordinarily rub along just fine, and having stepped away and then come back, it’s crept into everything and now millions of people are suddenly outraged on demand over something that was designed to do exactly that. Divide and rule, and at any cost.
The people who designed Brexit, and forced it through won’t be at all affected by the economic plummet, rising inflation, intolerable mortgage rates etc, and yet oddly I observe people cheering them on with an empty wallet and an empty bank account.
If I had one wish it’d be that when I next return to the U.K. that people would finally have gathered themselves to the extent that at least an honest debate can be had, and one without tropes, slogans, and the likes of Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings quite literally ruining the country with ostentatious falsehoods and jingoistic tripe. It’s actually heartbreaking to see a nation tearing itself apart clinging to this new footballification of politics where facts no longer matter a jot. I do fear for you guys and hope a path of repair can be found. You’re a really good bunch and you shouldn’t be at each other when you need to be united….
Anyway enough meanderings from me. Just to wish every single one of you regardless of your politics, views, colour, sexual preference, or pronouns a very happy and healthy New Year 2024. From me and Alfie. Love to all ☘️🐝 🥰

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

@Zapaman @paul_bower @RedCooperative @ChrispLOL @lowwintersun @CarbonCoop @PeopleRetrofit @OctopusEnergy @headstretcher @MShiltonGodwin @AnnIgbon Daikin monobloc

[Climate Science Breakthrough @ClimateSciBreak]

Climate scientists are tearing their hair out, so why are millions not in the streets demanding #ClimateActionNow?

Watch and share @MrNishKumar helping @FrediOtto rouse the masses in the latest punchy "Climate Science Translated" video! 🔥🌎

#NoNewOil #ClimateCrisis #Language

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

This is a sad day for @UKLabour in Manchester and a frankly bewildering statement that has precipitated the resignation of @Amna4A.
I can only hope that the leadership urgently clarifies that it is not condoning war crimes as an appropriate response to last weekend’s atrocities

[Cllr Amna Abdullatif @Amna4A]

Statement of resignation from the Labour Party, Cllr Amna Abdullatif, Manchester City Council.

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Yup

[Dr. Farbod MBBCh FRCEM @EmergencyBod]

Nadine Dorries was the epitome of the disgraced former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson's government.

Laughably incompetent, entitled without merit, bewilderingly narcissistic, promoted far beyond their aptitude & most of all, unscrupulously nasty.

#GoNads

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

Went to see this hilarious creation from a bunch of teenagers. About as #meta as you can get #edfringe2023 https://t.co/uexu4heAkO

[charlie baker @chazzoh]

@ChrispLOL @DrSimEvans @RantyHighwayman Yup. Have had them bookmarked a couple of years now. Not encountered anyone installing them here yet