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Ofcom's media relations people know how to email me. I have ten press releases from them this year. They emailed me when they launched investigations of or took actions on X/Grok, Telegram, Pornhub, and Sanctioned Suicide. But when they recently published their required report on how the Online Safety Act is going… suddenly they've lost my email?

Now, it's no secret that I've mostly been a critic of the Online Safety Act, but I'm open to being proven wrong. Unfortunately, Ofcom's latest report seems to support many of my criticisms of the law, and perhaps that's why they didn't feel it was worth letting me know about it. Even the opening lines of the announcement make it clear they're only releasing this report because they have to.

Ofcom is required by the Online Safety Act 2023 to review and report on content harmful to children online.

This is our first report under section 63 of the Act, which places a duty on Ofcom to produce and publish a statutory report on content that is harmful to children at least every three years following the passage of the Act.

Yeah, that's the bureaucratic equivalent of "mom made me do this, but I don't want to."

The press release includes four bullet points, which play down how bad the report actually is. Everything about the report is basically "none of this is actually working" and Ofcom's response and recommendations are basically "double down harder, declare more information harmful to kids, and allow us to take more enforcement actions."

• In our advice, we recommend that it is appropriate to add body stigma content and depression content, currently identified by Ofcom as kinds of non-designated content, to the category of priority content that is harmful to children. If the Secretary of State takes our recommendation forward, this will ensure that protections for children against these kinds of content are enshrined in the Act.
• At this time, we do not recommend any other changes to the categories of primary priority or priority content that is harmful to children in the Act. We are not recommending changes where we found that the available evidence supports the current categorisation or where proposed legislation is likely to address concerns.
• Most children in the UK say they have encountered at least one piece of harmful content online in a four-week period. According to our evidence, at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children's safety duties came into force in July 2025. This finding is concerning and shows that further progress is needed to protect children online.
• Exposure to harmful content can have serious impacts on children's mental and physical wellbeing. Children continue to report that encountering harmful content negatively impacts their wellbeing. There is no new evidence indicating a change to the severity of harm experienced by children as a result of encountering harmful content.

But the actual numbers in the report (not included in the press release) are pretty bleak for those who believe that widespread identity and age verification, combined with potential liability for "harmful" content will do anything to protect children at all. The numbers suggest basically zero improvement in kids' exposure to content deemed "harmful."

The report looks at the access that kids have to various categories of supposedly "harmful" content before and after the OSA's "child safety duties" went into effect. This is the UK's version of the infamous "duty of care" concept that has become popular around the globe (including the US). As we've warned in the past, the "duty of care" sounds reasonable, but it really serves no useful purpose other than as a hammer to batter companies after kids inevitably find their way to content adults deem harmful.

We've also mentioned that this is effectively engaging in a global experiment on children without any actual evidence that it works. For all the talk of social media companies "experimenting on children," the duty of care legislation does the same.

And the details from this report suggest the duty of care… has had a statistically meaningless impact on kids encountering harmful content online. In short if you looked at the data from before and after and asked if the government had put in place a massive new law to "protect the children online" you would not be able to place when (or if) it happened, because the data shows effectively no impact.

But it is limiting adult access to information.

The story is the same on basically every category of "harmful" content. Kids still see it.

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to suicide content and self-harm content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to eating disorder content on user-touser services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to abuse and hate content on user-touser services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to bullying content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to violent content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to harmful substances content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to dangerous stunts and challenges content on user-to-user services did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to depression content on user-to-user services did not change significantly between December 2025 and April 2026, with around a quarter of children reporting being exposed to depression content….

Ofcom data shows that children's reported exposure to body stigma content on user-touser services did not change significantly between December 2025 and April 2026….

And so forth…

The one area they claim has seen some success is that "highly effective age assurance" on adult content sites has been successful in stopping kids from accessing those sites:

Highly effective age assurance is helping to prevent children from accessing pornography services. As of July 2026, the majority of the most popular pornography services in the UK had age checks in place.

That said, the data shows no meaningful drop in kids' overall exposure to porn, since most of it appears to come via social media and forum sites, so just like all the other areas of content, we're talking about "did not change significantly."

Children are still encountering pornographic content on social media, messaging and gaming services. The proportion of children reporting exposure to this content did not change significantly over the first nine months after the children's safety duties in the Act came into force in July 2025.

Bizarrely, the report doesn't show any data, charts, or tables about the (lack of) changes in exposure to this content. The report doesn't have any footnotes (as far as I can tell) with links to the data. Nor does the page announcing the report. They do, however, say that it's from the Children's Online Safety Tracker tool, and after searching through their website, I finally found some links to the raw data.

Having spent some time going through the data, I think about the only thing you can conclusively say is that… the Online Safety Act duty of care has had basically zero impact so far. In some cases the access to the content went up a tiny bit. In some cases it went down a tiny bit. There are three data sets: Wave 1, a baseline taken before the duty of care went into effect in July 2025. Then there's Wave 2, at the end of 2025, looking at the impact about six months in. And now we have Wave 3 from earlier this spring, representing about nine months in.

And what we see is… basically nothing. There's no noticeable change outside of statistical noise as of yet:

• By way of disclosure, I'll note that I used Claude to help me make this chart based on the spreadsheets from Ofcom. I independently verified the numbers against Ofcom's spreadsheets.

As you'll see, the only category with a statistically significant change at any point was… bullying. Which went up (not down) significantly between Wave 1 (pre-duty) and Wave 2. But by Wave 3 it had fallen back down to within the insignificant zone, but still above the pre-duty number.

So the scorecard looks like this: The duty of care went into effect, companies put in place all sorts of intrusive age verification tools… and nothing happened. Kids still come across the same amount of questionable content.

Now, perhaps you can argue that nine months of data is not enough. But you would think that if this law was so important and a duty of care was so important, we should see some indication of a change in kids' exposure to harmful content? Somewhere? Somehow?

But that doesn't mean the law did nothing at all. Adults did have to deal with some of the fallout of the law, including smaller forums and sites deciding that they needed to shut down, rather than deal with compliance costs and risks of the law. Also, many more people have needed to put their private data at risk by needing to upload identification or other personal data to get access to sites.

All this to "protect the children" when the current data suggests… no real change to kids' access to this content.

Perhaps someone should be asking why governments like the UK are running these experiments without any willingness to admit that maybe it does more harm than good?

Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame 19th Reunion and Induction Ceremony

Canadian Road Race Stars Francis Martin and Robert Genereux Join Canadian Hall

The 19th annual Canadian Motorcycle Hall of Fame Induction Banquet and Reunion took place in Trois Rivieres, Quebec, Saturday, October 24, primarily sponsored by Honda Canada. Two-time Canadian National Superbike Champion Francis Martin was inducted, as well as Robert Genereux, the first star at the just opened Nelson International Raceway (now Shannonville Motorsport Park) in the late 1970s.

Martin was joined on stage for his interview by Michel Mercier (Hall of Fame, Class of 2008), the former owner of the Shannonville-based FAST Riding School, the institution that launched Martin into road racing in the mid 1990s. Also on hand were former Martin tuners Scott Miller, Patrice Goyette and David Oakley.

Martin's big break came when two-time CSBK National Superbike Champ Don Munroe (class of 2008) made a surprise decision to retire from his lead role in the factory Canadian Kawasaki Motors squad, and Martin was poached from a development role at Honda, Martin immediately winning his first number one plate on the dominant ZX-7R Ninja in 1999.

(Don Munroe's father, former racer and Atlantic Motorsport Park venue co-founder David Munroe, was also inducted in Trois Rivieres. The Senior Munroe was unable to attend the Gala event, held across from the famous fairground that hosts a half mile oval used for ice racing and flat track as well as the first street auto road race course built in Canada.)

Fan favorite Martin was injured during a Mosport test and lost the Kawasaki ride, joining the revamped Fast Company Suzuki squad run by Miller in 2011. That combination won the Open Sport Bike title in 2002, Martin partnered by winningest-ever Canadian Superbike racer Jordan Szoke (Hall of Fame, class of 2023). After a one-year return to Kawasaki, Martin joined the new Diablo Suzuki program in 2005 as teammate to Steve Crevier (Class of 2019), earning his second number one plate in the premier Superbike division.

Martin would later race for the Blackfoot-Pascal Picotte Suzuki program, and the Couturier BMW equipe, before retiring from regular National action in 2013. Martin next started a shop, MPG, with Goyette, and now works at Importations Thibault, one of the sponsors of the Bridgestone CSBK National series. Martin still occasionally competes, including an appearance at Shannonville a month ago on a historic GSX-R1000 entered by Miller.

Former American National road racer for Kawasaki, Suzuki, Harley-Davidson, and Ducati, Picotte (Hall of Fame, Class of 2014) was on hand to interview Inductee Dominic Beaulac, a racer Picotte's Yamaha and KTM shop have supported for years, including when Beaulac won the Lima AMA National in 2006. Beaulac's son Jordan is now a front runner in flat track.

One largely unknown Canadian from "back in the day" got some attention at Trois Rivieres, with Robert Genereux inducted after success as a youngster in motocross and an impressive but short career road racing. Genereux's family owned a Yamaha and Honda dealership, St-Cesaire Motorsports, his father purchased a MT125 Grand Prix bike (on display at the awards in unrestored, perfect condition) for a switch to pavement competition at nearby Sanair International Raceway in 1977.

Soon Genereux was dominating and moved up to Expert, competing in an era of rival sanction groups beyond the FIM-recognized CMA. At the end of 1978, he was awarded the National number one plate, even though no Nationals had been staged - a controversy at the time. Genereux received support from promoters the Eastveld brothers and their Warlie Racing sanction group and was the racer to beat in two-Stroke G.P. class competition at the newly opened Shannonville Motorsport Park, not far west in Ontario.

In the winter of 1978-1979 he raced the 125 in Cuba, then headed to Daytona with a FIM entry in the International 250cc G.P. race, only to be black-flagged from the track for the fact that he was underage by AMA rules! Some benefit did come from the Florida trip, since he purchased an ex-Randy Mamola C&J framed Yamaha 250 at D.I.S. for $5,000, replacing his production TZ. He dominated in Canada on the new bike; at the AMA National at Loudon in June of 1979, Genereux ran up front with Freddie Spencer (Kanemoto-Yamaha) and Mike Baldwin (Kawasaki) in 250 G.P., only to crash out. Shortly after that Genereux, still a teen-ager and also a Pro level hockey player, opted to quit racing to work at the shop and help on the family farm.

Genereux's daughter Joanie eventually married former Honda factory racer Kevin Lacombe, a protégé of Picotte's, with Lacombe (now a M/X Tech) likely to join the Hall of Fame the next time the event occurs in the Province of Quebec.

Also receiving honors during the event was Daniel "Chico" Chicoine who earned the Ambassador Award. "Chico," a childhood friend of Duhamel manager Alan Labrosse (Hall of Fame, Class of 2012) is a former racer and industry insider in Quebec, and was a Director of Sales at Honda, also serving with various aftermarket distributors, as well as working as an announcer at circuit events.

The Bar and Hedy Hodgson Award, named after the Hall's co-founders, went to Costa Mouzouris, a Montreal-based builder, racer, journalist, instructor, race staffer, and frequent competitor, especially on Twins class machines. Mouzouris' exploits on a Buell XB9R were a feature on the now-defunct CMG online web site, and Costa was a good friend of CMG founder, the late Rob Harris.

Mouzouris was also a great supporter of the gone-but-not-forgotten "Mad Bastards" small displacement Scooter Rally. He talked many people into competing, and often raced with his own, small displacement mopeds!

The post Martin and Genereux Inducted Into Canadian Hall Of Fame appeared first on Roadracing World Magazine | Motorcycle Riding, Racing & Tech News.

Full-size trucks are brilliant at the big jobs and surprisingly annoying at the small ones. The climb into the cab gets old when you're in work boots, dress shoes, or carrying a toddler. The carpet takes a beating from mud, beach sand, and the iced coffee that always tips over ... [continued]

The post Three Upgrades That Fix the Everyday Headaches of Owning a Chevy Silverado or GMC Sierra appeared first on CleanTechnica.

A pastiche of examples of art by women that I really admire, and some thoughts about why I now find most art by women to be more interesting than most art produced by men.

This is #58 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk and hike in my local community. 

"horses", acrylic on 3D papier maché (though it looks exactly like real stone), by Anne Shabason, Caledon, Ontario, from my own collection

"Women artists are still treated differently from men." — Yoko Ono

The other day in my favourite local café I found myself sitting at an adjacent table to one where a woman was doing something with one of those stylus 'pens' on her tablet computer.

Trying not to be obvious, but unable to resist glancing over because of the incredible speed at which she was moving, lifting, and repositioning the pen, I saw that she was drawing manga panels. I could not see the detail, but it was clear she was creating a graphic novel. Most of the panels were black and white, but some of them she 'inked' into full, striking colour. And each panel had an enormous amount of detail, including shading. She went back and forth working mostly from the centre of the panel, but from what I could see she didn't erase anything. She just somehow 'knew' what the finished picture would look like before she drew it.

There was no copying and pasting I could see, though it was clear that she had part of her screen showing recently-drawn panels, perhaps as a reference, as she drew each new one.

She was drawing so quickly — detailed, intricate, action-packed sketches — that every time I glanced over she was working on a new and different panel. So I timed her, and despite her precision she was spending no more than 3 minutes on a panel (4 minutes for the colour ones). Given that 'average' manga 'novels' are about 150 pages x 4 panels per page, that would mean that at that rate she'd draw the entire novel in thirty hours!

I suspect she'd story-boarded the novel in advance, and that the words were somewhere in the reference materials she glanced back at for a few seconds before moving to the next panel.

But that pace of creating very attractive art just blew me away. I did not of course interrupt her, even when I left, to ask her about it, but I was so envious! And so I have no idea who she was, though her work looked a bit like that of Mizuho Kusanagi, as in her celebrated 48-volume manga novel about a warrior princess, Akatsuki No Yona :

the cover of volume 47 of the 48-volume series Akatsuki No Yona by Japan's Mizuho Kusanagi

This got me thinking about the relationship women have with art in all its many forms.

"Nobody says 'Picasso, the Male Artist' " — Patti Smith

In recent years, my taste in all forms of art (including literature, painting and music) has slued, and skewed, strongly towards works by women. Perhaps this is because the patriarchal 'publishing' industries are now, finally, 'publishing' and promoting more works by women than by men (since research shows women produce significantly more art in almost all media, and it's arguably more competently crafted). Perhaps it's also because more women are finding a public voice through independent 'publishing', where the internet has made it accessible, so now at least I know their work exists. But perhaps it's just because, often, women just seem to have more to say through art than men do.

What's more, I'm sensing that the works by women that I most admire are mostly works that could never have been produced by a male artist.

Why is that? My guess: Different sensibilities, different experiences, different worldviews, different styles of self-expression. Greater emotional intelligence. 'Seeing' differently (the notorious 'male gaze' is absent). More humility. The 'unacceptability' of expressing ideas and opinions in spoken and written rhetoric unless it's simplified, dumbed-down and 'masculinized' (think Margaret Thatcher etc) — driving many women to use different, subtler means to communicate what they care about. All of this forged by our differently-conditioned lives.

Art has often been described as "the expression of our culture" (our shared beliefs and behaviours), and most modern cultures are, sad to say, repressive and patriarchal. Much women's art is therefore, I would argue, subversive. It challenges prevailing (male-constructed) ideologies and prevailing ways of thinking, seeing and doing things. For women artists to be seen and heard, as for other 'demographics' lacking a lot of wealth and power, it's probably not surprising that women often have to find 'workarounds' to reach their audiences, and sometimes have to use subtle means to prevent patriarchal repression and suppression of their work.

Buddha mask painting on wood by Diana Izdebski  (Art By Di), Bowen Island, from my own collection

"I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback." — Elaine de Kooning

"It is helpful for a woman artist not to have a husband." — Jeanette Winterson

I could write plenty about what art exactly is (I co-authored a community cultural plan that talked about this). But maybe what's more important is why we produce it. Here are some of the reasons, I think, with the first being perhaps paramount:

1. to communicate and connect — in every sense of that word, including 'talking out loud' to ourselves
2. to interpret and make sense — to make meaning of, and understand, what we perceive
3. to reproduce and represent — the very primal urge to copy and mimic, that we do from early childhood
4. to learn and develop competency — to acquire the capacity to do things well, things that are important to ourselves and the world
5. to self-express — to convert what is inside our heads and bodies into something kinetic: 'I did that!'
6. to represent what we imagine and to rehearse possibilities — what things might look like or how things might turn out (thanks to reader Brutus for the reminder)
7. to take agency and control — to master something that we weren't sure we were capable of, be it a skill or a situation
8. to say what cannot (effectively or safely) otherwise be conveyed — some overlap with the above, but the imperative to convey through art sometimes has this as its driver
9. to distract — often maliciously ('oh look at that!', don't pay attention to this) or exploitatively just for profit; the business of the 'entertainment industry'
10. to cope — as an outlet, a means of dealing with stress, fear, a sense of hopelessness, and even trauma
11. for the simple joyful pleasure of it — art can be a form of play

Biologically, and as a consequence of our culture, chemicals course through our bodies from a very early age, compelling us to produce art. It has often been said that 'we' don't produce art; art expresses itself through us. It is more than what we do; it is part of who we are. And it is larger than us.

painting by Jeanette Wrenshall, Bowen Island, from my own collection

'Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?' — Francine du Plessix Gray

Looking at the eleven reasons above why we are compelled to produce art, it is pretty easy to see why much of the art produced by women might be dramatically different from that produced by most men. Men and women generally connect and communicate differently. They have different things to say, and different reasons for having to say it. They see the world differently. They have different ideas about what is important. They have different ways of playing, of coping, of making sense of the world. There are different rules about what they are encouraged, and even permitted, to say out loud or through their art.

My friend and (when I lived on Bowen) neighbour Shari Ulrich wrote a song a few years ago about living with someone with Alzheimer's, called The Sweater, that brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it. I can't envisage a song with its sensibilities ever being written by a man. It is just too vulnerable. Writing something like this, I think, takes a different type of courage from what most men mean by that word:

If I remember you were wearing that sweater
The first time we met — Oh, how could I forget?
I thought in that moment I could love you forever
That shy crooked smile — Or was it something you said?

And I knew I was yours, for the worst and the best
The sweater is worn now, and there's nothing much left
Like all of your memories, losing their threads

The kids will be coming to see you on Friday
Yes dear, they've grown; they have kids of their own
They'll stay in that motel, the one by the highway
Remember the one, where you hoped I would come to you

And knew I was yours, for the worst and the best
The sweater's unravelling, there's nothing much left
Like all of your memories, losing their threads

Now every day that you're farther away from me
I'm merely waiting for moments
When out of thin air, you're suddenly there
And I missed you, Oh how I miss you!

Oh, I was yours, for the worst and the best
Your sweater, I sleep with it, close to my chest
Like all of our memories
I pull at the threads

"Meanwhile, in my sleep, the freed-up me's went wild. They spray-painted the doors and windows of the banks, urinated daintily on the little mirror-cameras on the cash machines. They emptied the machines, threw the money onto the pavements. They stole the fattened horses out of the abattoir fields and galloped them down the high streets of all the small towns. They ignored traffic lights. They waved to surveillance. They broke into all the call centres. They sneaked up and down the lift-shafts, slipped into the systems. They randomly wiped people's debts for fun. They replaced the automaton machines with birdsong. They whispered dissent, comfort, hilarity, love, sparking fresh unscripted human responses into the ears of the people working for a pittance answering phones for businesses whose CEOs earned thousands of times more than their workforce. They flew inside aircraft fuselages and caused turbulence on every flight taken by everyone who ever ripped anyone else off. They replaced every music track on every fraudster's phone, iPad or iPod with Sheena Easton singing Modern Girl. They marauded into porn shoots and made the girls and women laugh. They were tough and delicate. They were winged like the seeds of sycamores. There were hundreds of them. Soon there would be thousands. They spread like mushrooms. They spread like spores. There would be no stopping them."   — Ali Smith, The Human Claim

I know three women who are avid believers in and practitioners of unschooling — espousing that what happens in schoolrooms is mostly not learning, and that self-directed learning is generally a more effective way. One of these women is the poet PS Pirro, whose work I have often included in my Thoughts of the Month posts, including this piece from last year:

SHY GOD

She'll find you out walking, this shy god
who left her golden girdle on the chair
by the door, went out barefoot and unadorned,
you will not know her, it does not matter.
She speaks no language you recognize
as language, the song of the rhizosphere
in a meter out of time, the key of decay,
verse and refrain fragrant like rainwash,
she will pass you unnoticed and leave you
to walk in her lingering wake, your hum
just a bit out of tune, that's okay, she knows
you're a little shy, too, and sing your best
songs when you think no one is listening.

Another unschooler I know is Emily van Lidth de Jeude, a multi-faceted artist who lives on Bowen Island. (She tells me there is a term for self-directed learning: heutagogy: "it makes way for our minds to grow more naturally and thus more healthfully than they would on somebody else's imagined ideal trajectory".) One of her means of expression is through performance art, bringing the art she produces to life through kinetic means like film and dance. Among many other things, notably works on the protection and appreciation of the natural world, Emily has produced several works on the theme of motherhood, nurturing, and gender role models, including this remarkable dress, which I saw shortly after she produced it:

On her website she describes the dress as follows:

Used wedding gown, altered, painted and embellished to explore the choice mothers make to be the comforter/soother/carrier/carer/wearer of our babies. This reclaimed wedding gown includes a gang of painted toddlers climbing up the train, a built-in satin baby-carrier on the back, a plethora of hanging pacifiers, and a torn-open bodice from which protrudes a pregnant belly painted with the hands and face of an escaping, screaming mother.

Ursula Le Guin:

I am a man. Now you may think I've made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I'm trying to fool you, because my first name ends in a , and I own three bras, and I've been pregnant five times, and other things like that that you might have noticed, little details. But details don't matter. If we have anything to learn from politicians it's that details don't matter. I am a man, and I want you to believe and accept this as a fact, just as I did for many years.

You see, when I was growing up at the time of the Wars of the Medes and Persians and when I went to college just after the Hundred Years War and when I was bringing up my children during the Korean, Cold, and Vietnam Wars, there were no women. Women are a very recent invention. I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn't know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn't get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn't make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Brontë were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.

So when I was born, there actually were only men. People were men. They all had one pronoun, his pronoun; so that's who I am. I am the generic he, as in, "If anybody needs an abortion he will have to go to another state," or "A writer knows which side his bread is buttered on." That's me, the writer, him. I am a man.

How could I have lived my life, for most of my 75 years, almost completely oblivious to the staggering privilege I received simply by virtue of being born male? The 'subversive' work of women artists has played an important role in making me aware of this.

Now, I am in awe. I don't pretend to even begin to understand or appreciate what it's like to be a woman in this relentlessly patriarchal, misogynistic culture. Though I suspect I could never be 'man enough' to put up with it. Had that been the fortune of my birth, I would simply have folded, I think. Given up.

I am beginning to sense that women to some extent inhabit a different world from the one men occupy. Do men and women to some extent live in utterly different cultures, alien to each other?

(Emily points out, correctly, that I'm taking a binary perspective on gender and its impact in this article; it is of course more complex than that, though there isn't space in this article to properly explore it.)

"Art that claims to be 'apolitical' is often the most revealing; it reflects what a culture considers safe, acceptable, and worth preserving… 'Political' ranges from explicit agitprop to the quiet politics of what gets preserved, what gets censored, and who gets a platform." — Maria Brito

Much has been written about whether art is 'political'. Caitlin Johnstone recently wrote:

Western artists who ignore the abuses of the western empire are taking a political position and sharing a political message. They might be singing about romance, or dancing, or the Sandman, but their actual message is, "Here are those circuses you ordered, you vapid NPCs, you mindless empire automatons, you shambling zombies consuming the flesh of the third world. Distract yourselves from the burning ecosystem, from the screams of Gaza, from the suffering of the poor and the marginalized, from the AI-assisted surveillance system they are constructing all around you right this very moment. Pretend everything's fine and capitalism is working out great for everyone. Here you go, you empty-headed human livestock, sedate yourself with some catchy rhythms while our rulers turn our world into a desert planet so a few billionaires can become trillionaires."

Real art tells the truth, and facilitates a deeper connection with reality. It pulls us into intimacy with parts of ourselves we'd been neglecting, draws attention to aspects of the human experience we'd avoided, directs us, rebukes us, inspires us, encourages us, emboldens us and reassures us as we crawl forth on our adventure across this mysterious blue planet during our short few decades between birth and death.

In a separate article, she writes:

It is a simple fact that the near entirety of human civilization has been designed by men. All around the world for thousands of years, wherever a civilization sprang up, the larger, stronger gender was naturally in a position to assert dominance over the way that civilization was run. Leadership systems were invented by men, social hierarchies were invented by men, marriage was invented by men, family structural norms were designed by men, money was invented by men, war was invented by men, and men invented religions which just so happened to have patriarchal gods who all agreed that the way men had set things up was indeed right and just.

Women were essentially property throughout most of this, and thus had very little input into how any of it was set up. Generation after generation after generation of women were born into this male-engineered society, over thousands and thousands of years, into a system so deeply and extensively normalized that it's almost impossible to imagine what our society might look like had it not been dominated entirely by men throughout its history.

The third woman unschooling champion I know is Lilia Efimova, a Russian woman now bringing up her three teenaged kids in Nederland, where the government of the day is trying to ban "home schooling" and mandate that all children attend classes. Lilia started blogging when I did, 20+ years ago. On her Facebook page, these days, she writes about her kids, their camping trips, and about her continuing grief at the loss of her partner in February 2025, young, of a brain tumour.

I've found some of her Facebook writing, in its cadence, its brutal honesty and its astonishing self-awareness, to be some of the most powerful writing I've read in a long time. With her permission, I've taken four excerpts from her recent months' postings and converted them into 'poetry', using translation software to translate some of her writing from Russian:

Learning Not To Be Strong

May 2026

Of course, I knew April and May would be like this -
out of the frying pan and into the fire.
But it's still difficult.
Perhaps I need to learn to meditate on an overgrown, neglected garden
just as I do on the mountains.
Amid deadlines postponed while I travel
and attempts to pull myself together,
the voices of the girls
rehearsing for today's concert sound meditative.
I'm rereading a post from three years ago
about the MRI results
and "the abyss whose edges I have to walk,"
and I'm a little surprised
that it was only three years ago.

It's very interesting to watch another self emerge,
periodically checking in with myself:
"Is this still me?"

June 2026

It's all business as usual:
You climb one mountain
and see a mountain range
spreading out at your feet.
You can be afraid,
you can prepare for the next difficult trek,

or you can grow wings.

July 2026

I think about the symbolism of resonances,
interweavings, events, places.
About customs at the border.
About stepping into the scary and the new.
About the ethnographic nature of experience.
About music yesterday, familiar to strangers.
About unfamiliar music today
with loved ones in an unfamiliar city.
About steps through the city and the signs it gives.
About a hedgehog
running along the cemetery fence.

About how steps, a road, a path
collide what is inside with what is outside,
unfolding experience in new ways.

August 2026

Rain starts slowly.
We were setting up the tarp almost in the dark,
just as everyone took out theirs.
We'll see in the morning if it was a smart choice or not.
It's that time of the year again.
Blossoming heather and sailing camp.
The second year without Robert.
I am kind of used to being in all of it alone.

But in those last days of August it's tough again,
seeing in the group chats
references to partners who share the load.
Sorting out schedules and train tickets,
ordering books, loading and unloading camping gear.

I am learning not to be strong.
To fall apart, to let the feelings in,
to cry it out.
To breathe out and wait
until I am ready to take the step.

The second year is different.
Quieter, gentler, lonelier.

More from Ursula:

We [women are] already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that's their country; let's explore our own. I'm not talking about sex; that's a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I'm talking about society, the so-called man's world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn't made by us or for us; we can't even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you'll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that's their game. Not against men, either — that's still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that's our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms?

Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers' tales about it, we haven't got there yet. We're never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.

I'm back in the local café, after a walk along the river, trying to digest all of this. On the walk I saw a woman pushing a baby carriage along the rough trail, stopping to point out the birds and the trees to her wide-eyed little girl, all dressed in pink. I saw a young woman sitting on a bench by the river reading Siddhartha. I saw three separate women jogging intently, looking wary. I saw two teenage girls walking with boys the same age. One of the girls was wearing a very short skirt, and constantly smoothing and pulling down its hem as they walked.

I do not know the secret language of women, although some of them have tried to teach me. So I don't know whether learning "not to be strong" is a means for women not to become desensitized, as so many men seem to be, or whether it's a means for them to be who they really are, instead of who others want or expect them to be. I only know I think I would like to learn not to be strong, but don't think I ever could. I don't dare.

I hope it gets easier for women artists to not (have to) be strong, to find ways to 'work around' the arrogant domains of men instead of always having to struggle to confront them. And to be artists in the way 'big strong men' can never be.

My sense of "the abyss whose edges we have to walk" is that it applies on many levels: At the macro level, it applies as we, all of us, circle an entire civilization collapsing in on itself. And at the personal level, we face it dealing with all the dangers of this beautiful, terrible, treacherous world.

And I sense that women, outrageously, must walk much closer to those edges, and face greater perils and challenges and inequities than most of us clueless and insensate males could ever imagine. I want to believe that men, with the help of women who know how to be strong and how not to be strong, can learn to appreciate what they can and must do to reduce the perils and challenges and inequities women must face.

And I hope that through art and other means, women, and all of us, can find connection, companionship, and understanding, easing our struggle a little, and finding our way, alone together, through the night.

Thanks to all of these astonishing artists, and specifically thanks to Lilia, to Emily, to PS, and to Djö, for helping me think through this rambling and incoherent post. Its many remaining faults and misunderstandings are strictly my own.

OakStump Farms Mosquito Trap

When I saw this cheap trap at Logan's Trading Post three years ago, I figured what-the-heck, but we've been amazed at how effective they are. About three fourths of the way up from the bottom of the jug a tube runs through a hole in each side. Fill the jug with water up to the bottom of the transverse tube, add a pheromone pack, let it sit for a week with the top off (to make sure it gets the right attention), then close it after topping the water off. The mosquitoes fly into the tube and lay their eggs. When they hatch, the little mosquitoes can't figure out how to get out. With luck, in about three weeks the trap will literally be swarming with skeeters.

We empty ours once a year and add new water once a month or so; as long as you break the breeding cycle early enough in the spring it's not a big deal if you forget to water them later in the season. On our quarter-acre lot, I've found that three traps is plenty. So far this season, I haven't seen a single mosquito (except for the two or three I let out when I opened up one of the traps to top it off w/water). Only one of the three traps have looked really busy this year (last year, it was two of three).

We don't get many bugs inside. We live in an 1872 farmhouse, so we do get the occasional palmetto bug, but never up so high as to need the Bugzooka. However, living as we do, in the North Carolina piedmont, we're plagued by mosquitoes; particularly the new "Asian Tiger" mosquitoes, which leave me and my sweetheart itching and inflamed for days after working in the garden or yard. We tried the "propane to human breath" machine (the Mosquito Magnet) for a year or so, and it simply didn't catch any mosquitoes. The fan was not powerful enough to suck in the little buggers, so the mesh bag they said would be full of bugs was full of dust and pollen. We tried the doughnuts you're supposed to dunk in places (like gutters) where water stands from time to time, and they didn't help. We drilled holes in all of our trashcans and recycling bins, but they still bred mosquitoes. We heard about services that will spray some sort of natural insecticide all summer long, but they were too expensive.

With these traps, we can now work in the yard or garden or sit on our porch — one of the small joys that defines Southern living — without fear. — Steven Champeon

Bug Blaster

The Bug Blaster is a great insect control tool for the garden. It is completely organic-it only uses the force of water. I have used the tool for three years and love it. You just attach it to your hose and turn it on. The water is forced out a tiny hole and guided in such a way that it comes out in a fine spray that is a flat circle. Stick the nozzle in your plants and it knocks all the insects and eggs off, those below the leaves and those above.

Every gardener knows you can remove aphids by hosing the plant, but it is difficult to get the ones under the leaves. On delicate new growth, the hosing can injure the plants. But the Bug Blaster has such a fine, controllable spray that it cleans the plants of all the pests and doesn't harm the plants. The good insects are usually hard shelled and aren't injured. Since I bought this tool I haven't used any other pest control method. — Terry Powell

Plants for a Future

In the 1970s British bus driver Ken Fern went back to the land. Twenty-five years later he published the first edition of this now-revised compendium, a catalog and guide to a staggering number of mostly-perennial plants that can be harvested for food and other uses. Literally, thousands of seed, root, fruit, flower and leaf crops from a range of bulbs, trees, shrubs, climbers, bamboos, water plants and more. Beyond climatic needs and appearance, plants are described in terms of their taste and, often, highly-specific use (e.g. Asarum canadense. SNAKE ROOT: "a ginger substitute in flavouring cooked foods."). The index is conveniently broken up into edible uses, like condiments and egg and salt substitutes, and non-edible uses, like basketry, disinfectant, and tooth care; For more, check out 100 Other Uses. And actually, the Plants for a Future web site offers a searchable database of 7,000 plants. While much of the info from the book is available online, the printed format can be easier to parse and digest. There are sections on "green manures" and how to mulch with cardboard boxes or newspaper and straw, as well as how to make a pond. Despite all the ideas and potential outlined in the book, the final chapter, "Future Possibilities," truly emphasizes the magical allure of cultivation and experimentation. — Steven Leckart

• Most organic gardeners, when confronted by a heavily weed-infested site, will reach immediately for the fork or spade and spend many hours laboriously digging out as many weeds as they can. Not only is this exceedingly hard work, but it is often far less than successful. Many of the weeds, such as couch grass or thistles, will soon regrow with renewed vigour if even small parts of the roots are left in the ground. There will also usually be an explosion of germination from literally millions of seeds that have been given ideal germination conditions. The newly-dug ground will very soon be covered in weeds again.
  The alternative, once more, is to mulch. But this time there must be some organic barrier placed below the mulch to prevent all the weeds from growing through. We have found that cardboard boxes are an ideal barrier to use. They are usually freely available in quantity from local shops, etc., will form an excellent barrier for a year or so, in which time most of the persistent weeds will have died, and then will rot down nicely to add their own organic matter to the fertility of the soil. Other materials that can also be used include newspapers (but try to avoid to many with colour printing and do not use colour supplements on land where you intend to grow food) and carpets (but only those made of natural materials such as hessian — avoid foam-backed carpets).
  It is very important to ensure that you apply a sufficient thickness of barrier mulch, otherwise the more vigorous weeds such as thistles and docks will push their way through it. A carpet that is not too worn is usually sufficient, carboard boxes folded flat but not opened out are generally enough, and newspapers about 15 sheets thick are also adequate. make sure that the edges of the boxes or whatever overlap by at least 8 cm, otherwise the weeds will soon find their way to the surface. Autumn and early winter is the ideal time to mulch weed-infested beds, though it can be done at any time of the year so long as as the soil is not dry.

HortIdeas

Do plants have ideas? Yes.

I use this monthly to troll for the best in the art and science of gardening. Each month editors Greg and Pat Williams extract the meatiest, handiest, most practical innovations in vegetable, fruit and flower horticulture. They tirelessly glean material from obscure ag-extension bulletins, garden club newsletters, seed catalogs and dusty journals, reading it all so you don't have to, and translating it into clear English so you can use it. They run no pictures, no ads; only concepts, tools, and techniques. It's sort of like a Cook's Illustrated for your garden — the advice is based on scientific testing, and the tools born out of genuine need.

The newsletter is emailed as a PDF file. Because HortIdeas reports "news that stays new", I recommend the nifty CD of all their back issues. This humble yet intelligent newsletter is an amazing service which should appeal to anyone with a love of perfecting what is possible. — KK

• Ohio State University horticulturists have been evaluating underutilized low-growing willows (Salix species) for their ornamental potential and hardiness. They gathered around 200 willows from a variety of international sources…. Several of the low-growing willows have interesting ornamental features and appear to be excellent candidates for use in small-scale gardens in the Midwest. Some are well-suited to container-growing. We hope that commercial nurseries become interested in propagating and marketing some of these trees! According to the OSU horticulturists, because of extreme variability among seed-propagated willows, it is imperative that individuals with unique qualities be propagated vegetatively
• Several years ago, there was considerable interest in adding hydrogen peroxide to irrigation water to enhance oxygen in the root zones of plants. At the time, some investigators reported increased crop yields with hydrogen peroxide, but, as far as we know, no commercial apparatus was developed. Perhaps the results of recent experiments conducted in Australia will rekindle interest in oxygenated irrigation systems. The Australian researchers injected 0.6 pints per 1,000 square feet of 50% hydrogen peroxide solution via subsurface drip irrigation tape into heavy clay plots following flooding of the soil. Zucchini plants grown in the plots produced 29% more fruits weighing 25% more than the fruits produced without hydrogen peroxide treatment. The researchers also tried injecting hydrogen peroxide at a rate of 0.1% by volume with the irrigation water provided to container-grown vegetable soybean plants in "heavy cracking" clay soil that was kept water-saturated. Yields of soybean pods (fresh weight) went up by 82-96% relative to the yields with no hydrogen peroxide.
  Clearly, oxygenated irrigation is a highly promising way to boost production of crops growing in waterlogged heavy clay. We believe there could be a substantial market for a mechanismthat automatically injects hydrogen peroxide into drip irrigation systems.
• Moss loves buttermilk and beer. Where did this "old school" formula of mixing moss fragments with buttermilk and/or beer in the family blender come from, and does it work? Moss craves acidic conditions which buttermilk and stale beer provide. While the "moss think tank" at Moss Acres prefers some less odorous methods of preparing a moss shake/slurry, this oft-prescribed method has about a 60% success rate when the moss fragments are kept consistently wet. Al Benner, president of Moss Acres, says: "Our customers tell us the applications for moss are expanding. Moss has always been … popular … in Asian gardens, rock gardens, water gardens, and shade gardens. But every day we are helping clients use moss for creative projects such as interior landscaping, stone walls, and moss roofs."
• The researchers conclude that the results of the storage trial show that high storage temperatures—apparently achievable simply by having a fairly large pile, without periodic turning— can speed destruction of pathogenic bacteria in solid manures. They also warn of the potential dangers of consuming produce harvested soon after applying fresh manure.

Once a week we'll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

I just saw the new stop-motion animated movie from Laika Studios, and it is absolutely stunning. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and the fact that it's achieved through stop motion puppets and physical sets is a wonder. And that's all in service to an emotional and thrilling story. — Read the rest

The post Wildwood is a magnificent achievement in moviemaking appeared first on Boing Boing.

This month, the Conservative Party in British Columbia won its first major victory in nearly a century. Reuters reports that the result "marks an end to nine years of power for the left-of-center New ​Democrats, who voiced opposition to new oil pipelines ​and supported a ban on tankers along the ... [continued]

The post Big Oil Wins Big In BC Election appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Germany's GICON has completed one of the more remarkable wind-turbine construction projects in recent years. Its Schipkau prototype reached a hub height of 300 meters in September, putting the upper blade tip at a reported 365 meters. The lattice structure and telescoping inner tower allow the turbine assembly to be ... [continued]

The post Germany's 300-Meter Wind Tower Faces a 199-Meter Competitor appeared first on CleanTechnica.

XPENG has recently been named 2026 Forbes China Most Popular Employer amongst employees. This isn't the first time XPENG has won an employer award. Having visited their campuses and seen how the company treats its employees, I can understand why. From the approachability and openness of the executives to the ... [continued]

The post XPENG's Human Approach To Technology Awarded Most Popular Employer appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Ten years after its original release, we revisit a defining album for both artist and label.

Originally released on October 26th, 2016, as the fourth artist album on ASIP, Dennis Huddleston, aka 36's The Infinity Room would go on to become a landmark release, amassing over 12 million streams and earning a devoted following, with many calling for a repress soon after its original release.  

Written during a period of ill health that left Dennis housebound, the album became an exercise in escaping physical limitations through music. Working with a deliberately restricted sound palette, each track opened the door to another, establishing an approach to the album format that Dennis would continue to explore in the decade that followed. As he recalls, "My body was stuck in one room, but my mind journeyed to the infinite rooms beyond it."

For this tenth anniversary edition, Dennis has returned to the original project files, revisiting the mixes and correcting technical limitations while preserving the character of the original recordings. Newly mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, who also mastered the 2016 edition, the album is presented alongside The Further Rooms — a collection of recordings originally hidden behind a secret URL and password etched into the runout of the first pressing, now appearing together on vinyl for the first time.

The new artwork comes courtesy of Davy Evans, whose visual work first caught the label and Dennis' attention in a custom 36 video in 2021. Combining hands-on techniques with digital experimentation, Davy's intricate process culminated in a new interpretation of the original orb motif and a fitting evolution of an album that has become an important part of ASIP and 36's history.

A decade on, some things are worth rediscovering, and some, were never meant to end.

Available to preorder now on Bandcamp, with new UK/EU shopping option.

Global stores and distribution to follow soon…

To address a vulnerability in Google's Brotli compression technology that could allow attackers to corrupt process memory, Microsoft is urging .NET users to update "as soon as possible" after releasing an out-of-band (OOB) security update.

It released new versions for .NET 8, 9, 10, and .NET 11 to patch against the Brotli bug, following similar updates from Node.js, Python, and other projects.

Senior program manager Rahul Bhandari said in the October 25 release that the buffer overflow vulnerability in Brotli, tracked as CVE-2026-111497 and rated 8.1 under CVSS v3.1 in Microsoft's advisory, could allow an unauthenticated attacker to read or corrupt process memory, potentially resulting in information disclosure, denial of service, or elevation of privilege.

Microsoft's own advisory for the vulnerability, which some are referring to as Broccoli2Shell or Node2Shell, confirms that while experts have cobbled working exploits together, there is nothing to suggest that criminals are using them in successful attacks.

However, its exploitability assessment reads: "Exploitation More Likely."

Broccoli2Shell was first disclosed on October 21 by the Node.js team, which released fixes for ten vulnerabilities, the most serious of which was CVE-2026-111497.

Node.js credited Khai Tran and Sylvie Mayer of OpenAI's Codex Security with the discovery, but failed to mention why it was only recognized as a security flaw and disclosed properly in October, despite the underlying bug having been fixed in Brotli's source code in February.

OpenAI filled in the gap with a Xeet: "This root cause issue was actually fixed in the Brotli source code in February, but it wasn't known at the time that it gave rise to a security vulnerability, and there was no more recent release of Brotli.

"Since Brotli is built into other software, any software which includes this library needs to take the update too, followed by the users of that software."

Attackers can exploit vulnerable systems by providing them with malicious Brotli-compressed data via a specially crafted request.

The vulnerability went slightly under the radar due to the disclosure timing closely aligning with that of PHP2Shell, although fixing the critical flaw should be a priority due to the range of technologies that are affected.

In addition to .NET, Node.js, and Python, Bun, Envoy, and Istio have all released patches, and JFrog has worked up an exploit affecting FFmpeg using a specially crafted JPEG XL image, extending the exploit path beyond HTTP.

It said that FFmpeg reaches Brotli through libjxl, which it uses to decompress metadata stored in brob boxes within the image format.

The same researchers said the vulnerability affects Apache Arrow too, with attackers able to cause a denial of service.

Merav Bar, threat researcher at Wiz, added that cloud users are exposed extensively, noting that 91 percent of cloud environments rely on components vulnerable to the Brotli flaw and that 82 percent of cloud environments have publicly exposed Node.js instances.

She said: "Cloud environments are particularly exposed due to the widespread use of Brotli-enabled components across containerized applications, Kubernetes clusters, API gateways, reverse proxies, serverless workloads, and cloud-hosted web services."

"Successful exploitation could enable attackers to compromise application workloads, access sensitive information, disrupt service availability, or execute malicious code within affected containers or runtime environments," Bar added.

In an advisory published through its Patch the Planet initiative, OpenAI recommended blocking untrusted Brotli-compressed data where practical until patches can be applied. It also advised maintainers to rebuild affected deployments and restart services to ensure the fixes take effect. ®

cc: London Assembly Transport Committee Members; #LondonBusWatch; London Bus Forums

26 October 2026

Dear Caroline Russell,

RE:  Bus Driver Bill of Rights: Please Investigate TfL's Unsafe Bus Contracting Model 

Following up on (a) your 13 February 2025 presentation of our Bill of Rights Petition to the London Assembly (b) your support of Keith Prince AM's unanimously-approved 2 July 2026 Bill of Rights Motion and (c) the horrific facts being unearthed by the investigations of unsafe London bus driver working conditions by ITV News and MyLondon since March, I would like to formally request that the London Assembly Transport Committee investigate why the Mayor is refusing to compel TfL to inscribe the Bill of Rights into TfL's Framework Bus Services Agreement.

The Bill of Rights and TfL's Framework Bus Services Agreement

As you know, since 5 November 2024, independent Bus Drivers have been demanding that, as TfL Chair, the Mayor of London should instruct TfL to write the Bill of Rights into TfL's Framework Bus Services Agreement  which constitutes the non-negotiable terms contained in every bus contract.

Because the safety regulation framework for buses in the United Kingdom does not provide a robust, detailed safety code specifically for public bus operations, TfL's Framework Bus Services Agreement itself must serve as the safety regulator. Even though TfL has served as the sole contractor of public bus services in London since it was created in 2000, it has manifestly refused to fill the gap between the non-existent national bus safety framework and high public expectations that buses must be reliable.  As both the 2017 and 2024 London Assembly Transport Committee Bus Safety Investigations made crystal clear, instead of putting safety first, TfL and the Mayor of London have wittingly presided over a public bus operation that risks lives and livelihoods by agreeing contracts with Bus Operators containing financial incentives to ensure timely bus performance. Accordingly, the systemic problems associated with these defective contract performance metrics go unmeasured, so safety is effectively unregulated. This conclusion has been well evidenced by decades of Driver's reporting the systemic safety problems identified by the Bill of Rights.  

As you also know, TfL's Framework Bus Services has not been modified since 1 January 2016, and thus reflects none of the commitments TfL and the Mayor have made since that time, including, but not limited to the:

• 'World Leading Bus' Safety Programme - February 2016 
• Vision Zero Programme and Vision Zero Action Plan - July 2018
• 'World Leading' Bus Safety Standard - October 2018 
• Bold New Bus Safety Strategy - September 2023
• Vision Zero 2 Action Plan - March 2026
• Bus Safety Standard 2 - June 2026

Accordingly, since it is entirely within the Mayor's remit to unilaterally change the Framework Agreement at any time, we independent Bus Drivers see insertion of the Bill of Rights into that Agreement as an elegant and efficient way for TfL inform its contractors that (a) not only do Bus Drivers have these rights, but, (b) as part of TfL's role as a prudent and competent government contractor of public services which is obligated by law to consider worker and public safety as its first priority, TfL intends to monitor Bus Operators for their observance of these rights, ie., 

1. The Right to a safe work schedule without any forced overtime or loss of pay.

2. The Right to a decent and proper rest break in the working day.

3. The Right to drive a safe and well-maintained vehicle.

4. The Right to clean, serviced toilet and rest facilities on all bus routes.

5. The Right to report safety concerns without fear of retribution from TfL or employers.

6. The Right, when seriously ill and covered by a doctor's note, to not be harassed into coming into work until fit to do so.

7. The Right to relevant and timely safety training.

8. The Right to drive without being forced to answer radio messages and texts from Controllers whilst in motion.

9. The Right to have all company rules in writing and clearly displayed.

10. The Right to be treated with dignity and respect by our employers, TfL and the public.

11. The Right to Working Air Cooling in our cabs in the summer heat.

12. The Right to Working Heaters in our cabs in the cold of winter.

As you no doubt agree, TfL's recent announcements about Bus Cab A/C on 9 September and Toilets on  21 September " represent firm evidence that (a) not only has the Mayor accepted Rights 4, 11 and 12 from the Bill of Rights, but also (b) that TfL knew that these manifestly unsafe working conditions existed for years but refused to act to compel its Bus Operators to mitigate them.

Furthermore, these recent Mayoral announcements confirm that his consistent responses over the years to the London Assembly that "all bus driver cabs are fitted with air conditioning" (cf. Question 2023/3649 from Neil Garratt AM, October 2023) and "Drivers on all of London's bus routes have access to a toilet" (cf. Question 2024/3443 from Keith Prince AM, October 2024) were—as Neil Garratt so recently pointed out—clear evidence of the Mayor lying to the London Assembly about same unsafe Bus Driver Working Conditions that anonymous Bus Drivers first officially reported to the Transport Committee in February 2017.  

Since we now know — 

• that the Mayor is already 'rowing back' on TfL's May 2027 for all Bus Cabs to be fitted with Air Conditioning, and 
• the grim reality of Bus Driver toilet provision (cf. Question 2026/3225 from Keith Prince AM and FOI-0710-2627 from TfL), i.e,
• Only 38% of London Bus Routes (257 of 675) have dedicated 24-7 Bus Drivers Toilets at both ends, of which 7 have restricted hours of operation and access;
• 25% of London's Bus Routes (175 of 675) still lack a toilet at one end for Bus Drivers;
• Only 69% all Bus Drivers Toilets (834 of 1215) on All Routes have 24-7 Access while 31% (381 of 1215) have restricted Hours and/or Days of Operation;
• 14% of London Bus Routes (165 of 675) have Shared Toilets, all of which have restricted hours and days of operation;
• 9% of London Bus Routes (64 of 675) only have Temporary Toilets 

— I frankly find it difficult to see the Mayor's promise of A/C being fitted in all Bus Drivers' Cabs 'by May 2027' and 53 more Bus Drivers' toilets installed across the Bus Network 'over the next three years' as a win, when history shows it's much more likely to be blatant gaslighting.

And those are the three demands in the Bill of Rights to which the Mayor of London has agreed!

Turning your attention to demands where the Mayor has made no announcement, I'd like to alert you to the Mayor's recent response to Question 2026/3105 from Neil Garratt AM where he has admitted that Driver Fatigue was "a causal or contributing factor" in 11 percent (42 of 377) of the major bus crashes occurring between 2019-2025 where someone was killed or seriously injured.

If the Mayor has admitted that over 1 in 10 TfL Bus Crashes where someone was killed or seriously injured over the period 2019-2025 involved fatigue for the small number of incidents where TfL had the Bus Operator ask the question, what about—

• the 4702 Bus Collision incidents recorded by TfL over the same period, of which 1430 sent the victim to hospital and 56 in which someone was killed;
• the 183,153 Bus Collision incidents recorded by TfL; 

Given the years of the Mayor's obvious dishonesty about the reality of the unsafe Bus Driver Working Conditions we bus drivers have endured with little public interest, I formally request that the Transport Committee investigate the safety failures of TfL's Bus Contracting Model. As part of the investigation, I recommend that the Committee invite the Mayor, the Commissioner, Unite the Union and the independent Bus Drivers behind the Bill of Rights Campaign to sit on the same panel and answer questions about the Bill of Rights. 

Finally, I invite to watch this compilation of videos of TfL, Unite the Union and the Mayor of London responding to the London Assembly's Bill of Rights Motion. 

Yours sincerely,

The world is full of different keyboard layouts, but if you want one that's completely customized, down to the individual key, there's a new open source project that uses magnets to hold interchangeable pieces together.

Keybytes is an open source project that allows any ambitious builder to create a fully modular keyboard - and we're talking FULLY modular here. Each key contains its own RISC-V microcontroller and pogo pins on all four sides, providing power and I2C connections between adjacent modules so users can rearrange the keys into different layouts. The only extra component needed is a controller module, which coordinates the individual keys and handles communication with the host computer. And good news: Despite consisting of two stacked circuit boards, it has the same footprint as the single-key modules that attach to it.

The entire thing was designed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology freshman named Nathan Alspaugh, who is studying aerospace engineering. Alspaugh has always wanted to design his own keyboard, and who better than an MIT student to go over the top in building the most intricate, overengineered version imaginable?

"I had always wanted to make a keyboard but I didn't want to be locked into just one design so I wanna make it so that I can rearrange it at any time," Alspaugh said in the first entry of his project journal, which he's been keeping since March of this year. "I searched online and couldn't find it anywhere so I decided to make it myself."

The main readme in the GitHub project isn't super detailed, instead mostly describing what the project entails for anyone willing to give it a shot (custom printed circuit boards, Cherry MX switches, 3D-printed cases, and a whole lot of tiny soldered components). It's Alspaugh's journal where the depth of the work he did is laid bare for all to see, and boy did he do a lot of work.

Designing a single-key modular keyboard from scratch is no easy task, and the journal details a number of setbacks that Alspaugh faced, like magnets that wouldn't stay put, design compromises, and - of course - plenty of board errors that he luckily was able to catch in the design phase before spending a bunch of cash ordering custom components. Alspaugh also had to learn to use a resin 3D printer for the project, and of course multiple iterations and a bunch of manual modifications had to be made to get everything to properly fit together.

Alspaugh told The Register he's spent around 100 hours on the project so far. And then there's the cost: All those tiny custom boards don't come cheap.

According to a shopping cart for the board designs included in his journal, the Keybits (the individual key control boards) cost only a couple of bucks apiece, but the Keywords (controller boards) cost $30 a pop. Alspaugh opted to have the manufacturer fully assemble the boards, which is where a good deal of the cost came from: Keybit assembly cost him $69, while Keyword assembly cost him $203.

Alspaugh said that a full-sized keyboard would end up costing around $900, making it pretty cost prohibitive.

"If I ever make a full one I'll buy them separately and solder them myself," he noted in his journal. Alspaugh did tell us that there's no reason to stop at a full-sized keyboard, explaining that anyone with the desire to build a monsterboard could do so if they had the resources.

Alspaugh encourages anyone who wants to build their own to go for it, telling us that anyone who has the components could probably build their own in a few days, not counting delivery for the PCBs. You could wait, though.

"I am thinking about selling them in the future once the designs are improved and finalized," Alspaugh told us, adding that he wants to make a bunch of changes and hardware updates first, plus add some new functionalities. "I'd probably make more key varieties, like ones that have a fingerprint sensor."

Interested makers seeking a Halloween frankenboard project can find all the necessary files on GitHub. ®

Walter Koenig, famed for his role as the villainous telepath Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 and as Star Trek's Pavel Chekov, is dead at 90. A representative confirmed his death this morning.

Koenig was born in Chicago in 1936; the child of Russian Jewish immigrants, he did not pursue acting until after college.

— Read the rest

The post Star Trek star Walter Koenig dead at 90 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Reddit's r/opensource community has declared war on AI-generated software by introducing a sweeping set of new rules that also manage to shut out solo developers, newcomers, and anyone who doesn't speak English.

The crackdown, announced over the weekend, bans projects that use AI, that were created with AI, or that are intended for AI applications.

"The long story short, if your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource," moderator Wolvereness wrote. "AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community."

To get a project featured on the subreddit, developers now need to show it has been actively maintained for at least a year, has an established community, and has at least three contributors, give or take. Student projects such as note-taking apps and PDF viewers aren't welcome either, and developers can no longer use the subreddit to find people willing to help maintain their software.

That creates a chicken-and-egg problem for independent developers, who apparently need an established community before they can use an open source forum to find one. Even projects with no AI involvement could fall foul of the rules. One Reddit user pointed out that their nine-year-old project, which has more than 300 GitHub stars and dozens of resolved issues, would no longer qualify because they're its sole contributor.

The moderator also imposed a minimum Reddit account age of one year and requires significant prior contributions. Anyone who attempts to post and then contacts the moderators seeking an exception risks being permanently banned and muted.

Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising restriction concerns language. "If you don't speak English, you need to find a different community," the announcement states. Moderators say they cannot distinguish AI-written content from AI-translated text, and that non-English speakers cannot verify whether a translation is accurate.

That particular rule has gone down about as well as you might expect. Fellow moderator ssddanbrown publicly objected, saying they hadn't been consulted about the changes and only learned of them through moderation notifications.

"I don't agree with that rule. Especially so with how it was said," they wrote.

The rules also raise awkward questions about projects like Linux, whose developers have taken a different approach to AI-assisted contributions. The kernel allows developers to use the technology while holding them responsible for the resulting code. Earlier this month, maintainers even decided to drop the requirement to disclose AI assistance.

Asked whether that meant Linux would be banned from r/opensource, Wolvereness suggested it would probably still be allowed, arguing that enforcement would depend on whether a project was obviously the product of AI-generated code.

"There's no 'objective' way to implement this policy," the moderator acknowledged. Apparently, AI is forbidden unless the moderators decide otherwise.

The row comes as open source developers increasingly find themselves at odds over how to handle AI-generated contributions. System76 recently banned AI-generated code and other content from its COSMIC desktop project, while parts of GNOME have introduced similar restrictions. Other GNOME developers, however, have questioned the wisdom of rejecting AI-discovered security vulnerabilities simply because a machine found them.

The debate has also caused rifts within KDE, while NetBSD has emerged as something of an AI-free alternative for developers who would rather keep generated code out of their projects altogether.

Not everyone is convinced that blanket bans are the answer. Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently argued that competent developers should be free to use AI tools, while warning against low-effort patches submitted by people who don't understand the code they're contributing.

Reddit moderators have opted for a broader approach, and one that has already prompted the creation of alternative communities, including r/TrueOpenSource and r/OpenSourceAIAllowed. The original announcement has since been updated to point disgruntled users towards these alternatives.

Of course, r/opensource is a Reddit community, not an authority on what qualifies as open source software. Its moderators are free to decide what gets posted there, just as developers are free to take their projects elsewhere. ®

Welcome to your first Best of Bylines of the week, featuring an article from one of our 10 UK national and regional publications, hand-picked by our editors-in-chief and delivered directly to your inbox.

This time Rebecca Kotey of West England Bylines talks to Villy Søvndal about a letter calling for the Danish shipyard Fayard to "refuse all further repair and maintenance of Arc7 tankers."

Earlier this year, Søvndal, a Danish Member of the European Parliament, led a cross-party coalition of parliamentarians from over 17 countries to sign the open letter. The tankers are vital to the Kremlin's Russian Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) trade, and servicing them could help Putin generate more revenue for his war economy, even after the EU prohibits imports of Russian LNG in January 2027.

This open letter was signed by 105 parliamentarians including signatories from four vice-presidents of the EU Parliament and six representatives of the EU Parliament political groups. Speaking on the phone, MEP Søvndal said the letter "is a moral appeal. [Fayard] aren't breaking any sanctions, or doing anything illegal, but they are not acting morally".

The private shipyard Fayard is a Danish shipping company that specialises in servicing tankers, including Arc7 vessels, for major operations like LNG transport. In its response to the parliamentarians, Fayard claim that it "is fully in compliance with the rules, and all services by Fayard have at all times been fully compliant with the regulations". The letter continues: "For the gas to reach Europe, the vessels transporting it must be serviced to ensure maritime safety and environmental protection in European waters and ports." Fayard made clear that, as a private company, it "does not determine foreign or energy policies". The company says it merely follows the decisions the politicians make, and as a result of the open letter, Fayard claims that it will end servicing the Arc7 vessels this year.

But for MEP Søvndal, morality comes before legality, and he wishes for countries and organisations to act morally in urgent crises such as the Ukraine war. "Damen (a French shipping company) stopped servicing [Arc7 tankers] because they wanted to be aligned with the French government. I want Fayard to do the same. The Danish government is a high-profile country serving Ukraine, giving the biggest help directly to Ukraine, and this is in direct opposition to that," said Søvndal.

Climate and human rights NGO Urgewald has been tracking the movement of these ships at Fayard, and since the open letter, they have reported a total of four Arc7 vessels arriving at the Danish shipyard for servicing. Their recent service took place in September 2026, two months after Fayard's response saying it would stop servicing the vessels that year, and just days after the US signed into law the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which puts statutory sanctions, tariffs, and prohibitions on Russia. This law also increases the likelihood of Russia's LNG trade with Europe being disrupted; yet according to Urgewald, Fayard continues to service these Arc7 tankers.

This is important because, once these vessels are serviced, they can continue operating for years, meaning that Russia can continue its Russian LNG operations even after the EU ban in January 2027. MEP Søvndal and many other parliamentarians fear that this could weaken the impact of the embargo.

"After having been serviced, these tankers are going to sail for three, four, five years before they will need another service," said Søvndal. "Fayard will follow these sanctions and will stop servicing [after the ban] but [these tankers] will remain even after they have stopped servicing. If we should really tighten the grip on the Russian economy, we should not play this game anymore."

Many followers of this conflict have often asked whether the EU will put pressure on Fayard to prevent it from servicing these tankers. I put this question to MEP Søvndal, who replied, "No, we are not allowed to do that. Instead, I will put this question to the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, and ask what she thinks about all of this, and if she thinks that Fayard should follow the example of French shipyard, Damen. It's even more immoral after Damen," he continued. "[Fayard] can now make an even bigger profit. They are the only player servicing these ships. These ships come from EU countries. Why do EU countries allow these ships to hold Russian LNG gas? How can they allow these ships? Why not stop it?"

The urgency for Fayard to stop servicing these tankers may now be heightened following the Danish intelligence service's recent announcement that Russia is actively preparing "acts of sabotage" against Denmark's defence industry for its increasing support of Ukraine. In September, it was reported that a Russian frigate fired two flares towards a Danish military helicopter, sparking suspicions about whether this is part of Russia's strategy. For Søvndal, he had no worry that Fayard's continual service of Russian Arc7 tankers, despite this incident, could potentially damage the shipyard's reputation. "I have no reason to believe that they are cooperating with Russia in servicing these ships. It's a shame for a country like Denmark, which is a high profile [supporter] of Ukraine for its own company to not see what's wrong in this question."

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Included among the 105 parliamentarians who signed the letter were 25 UK MPs. Despite their signatures, many feel that they are too quiet about the UK company Seapeak, which is an active participant in moving Russia's LNG exports to Europe. I questioned MEP Søvndal on his thoughts on this, and he responded: "I am happy for their support, because we were not counting that many will support it. Everyone should follow up from the immoral question. Do they think it is okay? They should be asking 'how can I help countries stop helping Russia's economy?'"

The open letter stated that, "Ice-class Arc7 vessels are no ordinary LNG tankers. They are the lifeline of Russia's Arctic LNG export business. European countries must do everything possible to increase pressure on Russia and reduce the revenues that sustain its war of aggression against Ukraine. Danish maritime infrastructure should not be used to prolong the operational life of vessels that keep Russian fossil fuel revenues flowing. We therefore urge Fayard to refuse all further repair and maintenance work on Arc7 LNG tankers and other vessels serving Russian Arctic LNG exports, and to publicly confirm that no such vessels will be accepted in 2026."

Criticisms of the Danish shipyard's actions have been raised for some time, and even at the highest level. Søvndal's criticisms joins Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who called it "inconceivable" that a Danish shipyard would service vessels carrying Russian LNG. Even more significant is the critique by Vladislav Vlasiuk, the sanctions adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who described the maintenance as being a critical link in Russia's logistics chain, and has called for an end to servicing at European ports. More importantly, European Parliament Vice-President Robert Zile stated that: "We must remain vigilant and close loopholes to ensure sanctions remain effective. By continually adapting our sanctions, we demonstrate that Russia will face lasting consequences for its war of aggression against Ukraine."

The latest EU sanctions package was introduced in July 2026. It was the 21st sanctions package that the EU has targeted at Russia and its economy. This is the bloc's attempt to weaken Putin sideways. The aim of the package is to further cripple Russia's economy, and to prevent it from being able to take further military actions against Ukraine and its civilian infrastructure. But after 21 sanctions packages, have they all proven useful in weakening Putin and his war on Ukraine?

"For sure," said MEP Villy Søvndal. "It is obvious for everyone that Russia is in big, big trouble. [The sanctions packages have] weakened Russia's economy. They are starting to sell their gold reserves, and Russian citizens are taking money out of their banks. And with the deep strikes that Ukraine is making into Russia, all of these possibilities mean that Russia could lose this war." Søvndal is confident that the sanctions packages are enough to put pressure on Russia to negotiate.

"They can see that the war is not moving," he continued. "1.3 million young men killed or displaced, means that in each Russian family, we know about someone who is either killed or has disappeared, and who can neither work nor go back to society. […] It costs [a person] 13.5 years [in prison] to critique the war. For sure it is a situation which is difficult for Putin."

In the 21st sanctions package, the EU lays out that the automatic adjustment of the oil price cap will be paused until 15 July 2027. But even with this pause, Russia will still be making a profit from its LNG trade, only not as much as it could make had the pause not been implemented. Over the phone, I asked MEP Søvndal whether completely ending all revenue from the Kremlin's LNG trade was possible to achieve immediately. He responded, "We are hoping for that. But the problem is that there are some countries that are still reliant on Russian gas. There are some countries that have found a green alternative, but the countries that did nothing to change their energy supply are still relying on this. Sanctions demand unanimity in the count. They put the border on how quickly we can move."

"I think you can say that Denmark has really helped Ukraine: both in economic terms, trying to stop the shadow fleets […], but there are other EU countries not doing their part. We are now at a point in this war where the Russian economy has weakened. If every country did what they could to stop as many businesses [as possible] from giving Russia a better economy, we would stop this war soon. If Russia wins this war, we will be in a worser economic situation. You can win a war in two ways: the military, which is less likely to happen, and the economy. [The latter] is the better approach to stopping Russia. It's all in our best interest to stop Russia."

Rebecca is a freelance journalist and a writer. She withdrew from the Bar Practice Course at the Inns of Court College of Advocacy, to embark on a career in journalism. Currently, she writes for businesses and publications, and is host of 'The Thinking Archive' publication on Substack where she is writing a children story, and analysing deep topics of the humanities subjects to inform and to get you thinking. Topics include literature, philosophy, history, theology, and more.

Read more from Rebecca on Substack here:

Read more of Rebecca's journalism for West England Bylines here.

For the second consecutive year, Maria Herrera has been crowned WorldWCR Champion ahead of compatriot Beatriz Neila. The Spaniard concluded the FIM Women's Circuit Racing World Championship's third season with a 28-point advantage over her closest rival. Certainly no great surprise to those who have followed the championship throughout 2026, although the final weekend at Jerez suggested that the series' established hierarchy may not be quite as secure as the standings imply.

Herrera arrived at the Circuito de Jerez-Ángel Nieto with a commanding 44-point lead. Her second World Championship was all but assured, provided she finished in the points across the final two races. She ultimately ended the races fifth and fourth respectively, hardly the most emphatic conclusion to a title-winning campaign, but enough to bring her season total to 250 points against Neila's 222.

• Read more about WorldWCR's Third Season Ends with Familiar Results and New Questions
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