slowe

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026 ( awful.systems )

Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid. ...

slowe , 2 hours ago

Soyweiser BlueMonday1984 I like* how the structure of the boat changes from moment to moment. I like* how the radio dishes just beam from some random place between the transmitter and the dish. I like* that the original person who was waiting for a live stream doesn't get it (because it goes to a different group of people) and is just eating popcorn watching the mess unfold. I like* how the "audience" have their backs to the "live stream" screen and are excited to be looking away from it.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

One man, probably in his 50s, and who works for a "large international tech company" told me he wouldn't sign because he was "a capitalist". I really don't mind people not signing because having the conversations is at a big part of the point of this whole exercise for me. I did get him to explore his thoughts on the topic (and some other topics). He thought "AI" was a much bigger problem facing the world in the coming decades. Reassuringly he was bothered about it getting rid of jobs.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

I asked him what was "enough money" for one person to have. He started by defending people with a few million or even a few tens of millions. I pointed out that my petition would only just start to have a little impact on those people and was a very low figure compared to the 40% rates he was asserting. So I tried to find an upper bound and started with a trillion. He was very aware of Elon being offered a trillion dollars and basically agreed that that was ridiculous.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

He was very happy to say that a trillion was way too much. So I tried to get him to narrow down to an order of magnitude. His "too much" figure ended up being a few hundred million. I think he could see that there was a vast gap between even the hundreds-of-million-naires and the almost-trillionaires. He didn't sign the petition but we had a lot of agreement and perhaps he thought a little bit more about drawing lines than he has before. I enjoyed chatting with him.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

The other house that didn't sign was an older retired couple.

The wife answered the door and was listening with interest until her husband joined her. He listened a little but said he wasn't interested and that put his wife off too. His reason basically came down to a lack of enthusiasm that anything would be done combined with perhaps a little bit of "politics isn't for people like us" attitude. I still had a nice conversation with his wife about family coming over at Christmas.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

Although neither of those two houses wanted to sign, we didn't really have fundamental differences of opinion. And we agreed on a lot.

At the rest of the houses (with someone in) everyone else either listened politely and agreed with the petition (perhaps having not really thought about it much before) or were already very clued up on the topic and were just waiting for me to finish explaining myself to be able to get the pen from me to sign it. A lot of positivity and people thanking me(!).

slowe OP , 2 months ago

One lady (late 80s or older) wouldn't even let me fully finish explaining the petition and insisting that I hand it over immediately so she could sign it. She told me she has lots of conversations about this topic with her son. Apparently her son (who lives down south) had shown her "a nice man on the telly" who was a millionaire that "wanted to pay more tax but the Government wouldn't take it". I'm going to guess that it might have been Gary Stevenson that she'd heard but don't know for sure.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

She told me she was a born-again-Christian and that she thought the richest people should be doing their bit. She also thought they should donate more to charity too. She thanked and blessed me - for doing the petition - several times as I was leaving her garden.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

I met a lovely guy who was fixing his camper van. His day job is fitting extremely expensive kitchens. Again, he proactively brought up reasons we should be taxing the richest. He gave me a quote (from the CEO of Vodafone?) that it is "better to have a thousand millionaires than one billionaire". I agreed and added that it is better to have a million millionaires than one trillionaire. How many kitchens is one trillionaire going to buy compared to a million millionaires?

slowe OP , 2 months ago

As the light was starting to fade a little, I got to a lovely retired lady (70s?). She heard what my petition was for and she said she'd get her husband. Not for his approval but because she knew he'd like to sign too. She had stuff to do but left her lovely husband chatting with me for ages. He was a member of the Labour party but was frustrated with the national party. That's a common theme I've picked up on amongst Labour supporters. They were both so lovely to chat with.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

Quite understandably he checked what I was going to do with the petition. I reassured him that I wasn't being actively "against Labour" but that I was being actively against Reform. I said that I was trying to have the difficult conversations with certain people if they brought it up. He seemed bouyed by that.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

So we talked about "immigration". "Uh oh" you might be tempted to think. But that'd be wrong. He totally and enthusiastically agreed that "immigration" was a way the powerful pitted us against each other and that we shouldn't be against anyone. He brought up his daughter who'd emigrated to Australia to highlight she was an immigrant. He proactively pointed out that none of that awful rhetoric in Australia against immigrants was directed at her because she was white.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

A few years ago he'd delivered leaflets for the Labour party. So we also had a nice chat about the process of me doing this petition and knocking doors. He was interested in what response I was getting in different places. I definitely asked him for advice from all his experience.

He said that if our local MP wouldn't accept the petition I should tell him and he'd take it up with her.

They were a really lovely couple and I told them they were welcome to knock on my door anytime.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

Another door was answered by a man in his 50s/60s. After listening to me explain about the petition he went to get his wife. She was in her socks but very enthusiastic about signing the petition. She said she'd never really been political but she had recently decided that it was passed time that something was done and so she'd joined the Greens. It turned out she works at a local business and recognised me as a customer. I could have chatted all day but let her get in out the cold.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

These are just a selection of people. So many people have been so positive about me (a random person not in a political party) trying to do even this little thing of a petition for our local MP. People keep thanking me. And that's despite us all knowing that the chance the MP will actually do anything is slim.

I think there's a big appetite out there for positive change. For a fairer society. For things not just to get worse and worse with time. We all need to be having these conversations.

slowe OP , 2 months ago

I've had quite a few conversations on doorsteps where I've explained why I think we should be talking in-person to our neighbours about all this stuff. Being "political" but not necessarily "Political". Trying to get people to see that they are part of democracy too.

In the street you are beyond the control of the massively rich owners of various traditional/social media. You can have genuine, lovely, conversations that can get to difficult and/or complex topics on an inter-personal level.

slowe , 3 months ago

@stux Yes. After covering the Industrial Revolution 3 times (!) I finally got to GCSE Modern World History. We covered WWI, WWII, the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in depth. We also covered the transatlantic slave trade, a little bit of the US civil rights movement, and the end of Empire in India.

Lots stuck with me but especially the realisation that it was everyday people in a democracy. I've been wary ever since.

slowe OP , 5 months ago

@marjolica Sure. I also don't think perfect should be the enemy of good. To address "rough ground"... StreetComplete gets people to tag type of surface... so there's some (yes, limited) info. Steep slopes aren't as easy but OrganicMaps/CoMaps have access to contours (sure, within limits) so can work out steepness. But can't we at least have an option based on "walking" that avoids routes that involve steps? The "metro" routing for most of the world defaults to walking routes.

slowe , 5 months ago

@randahl "I didn't think the leopards would eat my wife's face."

slowe , 5 months ago

@briankrebs Yep. I've spent years suggesting this for the UK's unelected House of Lords. Sort of like Jury Duty; you are randomly picked to be a Lord for a limited term. It immediately makes it more representative of the demographics of the country. As you say, it brings in a lot of people who weren't trying to get power. It undermines certain types of (in advance) lobbying. Counter arguments all say "you won't get the best people" but the current system definitely doesn't give us the "best".

slowe , 5 months ago

@aral Exactly. And his "all websites" particularly grates because I could point him at a bunch of websites I've been involved with that don't have any cookie notice for the reasons you say.

slowe , 6 months ago

@molly0xfff Great newsletter. 👍 I also find it handy to get the feeds for YouTube channels so that I can follow them from my feed reader e.g. Not Just Bikes's feed: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A (just change the channel ID in the URL).