The Improvpocalpyse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much On Improv Comedy Groups

Fun fact, the Conservatives did try their best to max out the North Sea over their 14 years in government. They issued hundreds of licences & oversaw an incredibly generous tax regime to prop up what is widely regarded as an uncompetitive basin. The result? *36 days worth of gas* to date.

When men have feelings people make charts about them, when women have feelings they get patronised. What if we are living through the reverse of "hysteria" in which lots of things get nodded through/turned into charts because some men have too many emotional responses to things?

They've got hundreds of these already - they're called local councils

I especially love this diagram.

I just updated my piece on Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s regressive ideas of abundance, and their ‘theory of no change’, with a nod to @yonahfreemark.com’s excellent recent paper on the direction of 21stC US housing growth medium.com/dark-matter-...

Happy #PrideMonth! Enjoy a Tesla getting smashed by a light rail train with a pride flag.

This piece from 2016 by @shannonmattern.bsky.social is excellent. Read it! Related to it, I need HELP! I want to assign as a primary source Altman & Cheung's blog post on "New Cities"...but it's gone and Wayback Machine was no help. Did anyone save a copy? placesjournal.org/article/a-ci...

Today, we launch a series @drilledmedia.bsky.social has been working on w/ @propublica.org for almost two years, looking at how Big Oil used universities to turn the plan to solve climate change into a plan to save itself. The first two stories are out now: projects.propublica.org/carbon-captu...

I work with some excellent community energy organisations across the country who offer home energy advice - it really is worth speaking to them. You can see some of them at www.retrofit.coop - and find others at: communityenergyengland.org/our-members

THIS!! THIS!!!! Every time I hear "British homes are designed to keep the heat in, that's why they're so hot" I swear I get closer to a breakdown. Look at the sine nature of the curve versus the flat line for the internal temperature. Properly insulated and ventilated (without AC) does this. 1/

Shout out to the European Data Centre Association for saying out loud what they're working towards

🏡⚡ More than £100K in funding is now available to support community energy projects across Cumbria. This round of SP Electricity North West's Fund will help community groups, charities and public sector organisations deliver local projects that support the transition to a cleaner energy system. 🌱

Thread 🧵 🔥 It's Friday, early morning and it's 23C outside. We’re right at the end of another record breaking heatwave. Until the next one that is. #passivhaus #summer #comfort

So I’ve started Pride and Prejudice, and already I feel bad for Mrs Bennet.

Not all Unite members work for airports, oil companies or car manufacturers, and may be more interested in a survivable future for their kids than protecting the corporate interests of major polluters. If that’s you, someone has started a petition for you to sign here: www.change.org/p/stop-unite...

I am BEGGING people - think tanks, governments, random organisations - to DATE YOUR REPORTS WHEN YOU DO THE PDFS. It should not be THIS HARD to find a BLOODY PUBLICATION DATE. You might think everyone will remember the magical day you published it years later. But you are delusional.

This is flat wrong from Unite. It’s just not true there’s been ‘almost no thought for jobs, skills and national security’. There’s been a huge amount of thought on all these issues and a decision has been made that jobs, skills, and security all benefit from a faster clean energy transition.

I never would have been able to predict that tracking every detail of every employee's activities could lead to mistakes that create enormous legal exposure.

Today is the birthday of African American science fiction author #OctaviaEButler. The winner of numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards, she was the first science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. #💙📚 #Booksky Have you read her work? www.librarything.com/author/butle...

It seems to have become commonplace to blame net zero for Britain’s high energy bills and/or weak job market… … and I guess I’ll have to explain again why there is very little evidence of this. Britain has plenty of economic problems; net zero is not high on that list (though climate change is) 🧵

This is true in a lot of resi retrofit work too - lots of focus on 'installations', but without good QA infrastructure or serious market/demand building, and often a failure to recognise that joined up strategy and design are necessary! Feels like trying to run with your shoelaces tied together.

It's not just the likes of me talking about the benefit of certainty and long term funding streams, removed from political cycles - people who do the actual work say so too.

I've had 2 journalists today asking if Miliband as Chancellor would be a "Liz Truss moment" and find it difficult not to just respond "are you on crack?".

This is a useful resource for the coming week. On a related point - does anyone know of any studies that measure the impact of shading on roofs from rail-mounted PV systems?

The new buses are really good. Hope in the new regime everywhere in the country gets yellow electric buses. (Of course I'm sat above the driver on the front of the top deck, like a child).

Government have tried to bury some bad news - for Rachel Reeves anyway - today as *their own* cost-benefit assessment of Heathrow expansion plan finds it would LOSE between £21 to £121 billion! A climate catastrophic boondoggle clutched for by a chancellor with no real ideas for ‘delivering growth’

I see we’re getting the “Starmer’s only fault was that the press hated him” and “Starmer’s a decent man” takes. No, Starmer’s failing is that he has pushed racist, authoritarian policies especially on immigration while completely failing to tackle the far right. Also decency is a verb not a noun

It is extremely important that Labour understands that the movement of voters between Lab and Ref was not the crucial factor, it was consolidation of the anti-Ref vote and Lab voters turning out in droves. Otherwise Burnham will make the same mistakes as Starmer in targeting only one set of voters.

This is not the flex Huang thinks it is. Cars are still one of the leading causes of death for children.

He should be kicked out of the party. Disgraceful that he thinks Northern Irish Catholics are second class citizens who the armed forces and security services should be able to murder with impunity

Al Carns, buddy, the entire point of the GFA is to ensure there is a political, nonviolent path to what the IRA were trying to achieve. what do you think happens if you take that away?

The Unite union is cheering on this news as a victory of theirs. I expect that will be looked back on in future as a huge mistake.

As govt is going to ban social media for kids, then they should also: - invest in youth clubs and social spaces where young people are welcome - put some actual money into libraries - mandate that secondary schools supply offline learning resources - implement effective regulation

Again, the post 2000 history of North Sea oil and gas is one of declining production and volatile, but still declining tax receipts to the point where some years it has cost the exchequer money.

The May Morris exhibition at the Lady Lever gallery is good: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/whatson/lady...

It's a sunny day in early June, I'm on the way to see some art with a friend, and another friend is messaging about people in Boston being fascinated by men in kilts. So the chorus from this is playing on a loop in my head: m.soundcloud.com/arab-strap/t...

When the new Reform leadership of a Merseyside council tried to withdraw all funding for Refugee week plans, it left those running one main events in the town heartbroken But through fighting back and overwhelming public support - they are going ahead with their plans and bringing people together

This study shows an association between low emission zones and cardiovascular & all cause hospital admissions. If this is a causal effect the mechanism may not only be through air pollution but could be active travel behaviour through less noise, feeling safer etc www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The reluctance among media outlets to specify that these pogroms are the work of far-right loyalist thugs is particularly weird, given that they sign their work! The LVF spray tags on the houses of the people they burn out, whether Catholics, migrants or refugees. They've done this for decades!

If you don’t have time to read what I wrote today about the Far Right — and particularly Loyalist — exploitation of the Belfast knife attack, just keep this section in mind when you consume media coverage… brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/radio-elon...

The head of NASA responding to ppl upset that no women are part of the Artemis III crew with "those raising this concern may not be aware of the pipeline of crews“ is hilarious to me. Ppl are mad about systemic issues in NASA and he’s all, “maybe you haven't considered systemic issues.” Checkmate!

I mean my family are pissed off enough about the postage situation after Brexit - it really messes with sending birthday gifts to cousins and nieces. Getting rid of the CTA would be next level and they really can just sod off even mentioning it as a thing.

This is what it looks like when a union tries and fails to drag members to a far right ideological position. Trans motions 2-7. Number 2 was the one NEC & unelected staff pushed for and listed so all others could fall But members destroyed motion 2 and supported 3,4,5,6 &7 instead. [1/2]

Miatta the only person talking sense in this article. Also - I wish the idea of the 'Red Wall' would die. It's embarrassing and not useful - except maybe to public school boys who like playacting as sons of toil and using people in places like my home town as an excuse for daft opinions.

this excellent essay on structured data and relationships of care is extremely my shit and probably some of yours too

Agree with this. Lots of people getting over-excited when for example retrofit advice services would be better served by well written, technically correct and properly edited standard text in a lookup - instead of regurgitated random verbiage from an LLM.

Important reporting on the growing links between UK politicians and US anti-abortion organisations. The aggressive rollback of reproductive rights in parts of the US has shown how quickly hard-won rights can be undermined. Read the iPaper article via the link in our bio.

I've had a few conversations lately about projects where public or non-profit money is being spent on LLM solutions to problems that could be solved by making a good list and creating effective metadata - v much not rocket science, more like knowledge management 101. But everyone wants a chatbot

Your periodic reminder that Jeremy Hunt’s utterly cynical, completely unaffordable, salt the earth for the incoming government tax cuts cost £20bn a year. www.thetimes.com/article/cc86...