Sarah Brown / is on Nostr

I'm Sarah. I'm a Brit who fled to Portugal on account of Brexit, increasing intolerance and the British weather. I like climbing (although I can't do much any more for health reasons) and sailing. This is a Friendica account. Friendica is kinda like Facebook as Mastodon is kinda like Twitter, except they can talk to each other.

Last Notes

2024-09-11 07:30:48

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@[url=https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet]Chris Trottier[/url] C. Japonica makes pretty passable green tea too, but the leaves are too waxy for it to work well as a crop.

2024-09-11 07:29:05

Nothing quite illustrates the desperate need for proper civics education than a man with a policy platform of “stopping imaginary transgender immigrants eating your cats” being neck and neck to be US president.

2024-08-27 21:01:54

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@[url=https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet]Chris Trottier[/url] you mention Beethoven. Maybe not the first pop star, but I think he was definitely the first [i]rock[/i] star, down to smashing up hotel rooms and everything!

2024-08-12 11:18:14

Saw someone elsewhere assert that Britain is “one of the least corrupt countries in the world”, and couldn’t let that go unchallenged, so here’s what I said:
Only because of this one weird loophole, which I will explain below:
For the last decade, the previous government has been awarding public contracts for infrastructure, etc, to what are essentially shell companies run by their mates. These companies then do the bare minimum for as long as possible, which if you drive round the UK, is why you see all those road “improvement” works which do nothing and take forever and never seem to have anyone working. It took two years to replace a roundabout with a set of traffic lights near my apartment, for example. Other examples: large amounts of “PPE equipment” during Covid which turned out to be useless junk.
Obviously they aren’t actually spending anything but a trivial amount going through the motions, so what happens to the rest of the money, which let’s remember, was raised by taxes.
Well, it gets donated back to the ruling party as “political donations”, and then if the pretend contractor does a good enough job of this, they get an knighthood, or even a seat in the House of Lords for “services rendered”.
Now you might think that this sounds corrupt, and you would be right. It sounds deeply corrupt, but apparently it’s not because a lot of the global agencies which work out corruption indices are based in, checks notes, London, and are probably in on the scam, and get to define what “corruption” means, and define it to mean, “not this”.
Et voila! You have a country with one of the biggest wealth gaps in Europe funnelling vast amounts of public money to populist spaffers in government, all legal, laundered and sanitised.
The whole of UK society is like this. It’s how it works, and once you see it you either join in, or walk away in disgust.

2024-08-11 12:53:39

Remember when we thought that the internet was going to be a wonderful thing for the advancement of human knowledge instead of the Library of Babel, with Hitler as the librarian?

2024-08-08 17:52:52

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@[url=https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet]Chris Trottier[/url] Lemmy mods are the worst for this IME. Think they’re the Reddit HOA or something.

2024-08-06 16:15:52

Room with a view.
[url=https://thegoatery.dyndns.org/photos/goatsarah/image/203868566166b24bdc5827e638837122][img=https://thegoatery.dyndns.org/photo/203868566166b24bdc5827e638837122-1.jpeg]A Ryanair 738-800 on the apron at Stansted below a dramatic and menacing cloudy sky. The image is framed through the porthole of a second plane.[/img][/url]
https://thegoatery.dyndns.org/photo/203868566166b24bdc5827e638837122-0.jpeg

2024-08-05 08:13:20

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@[url=https://mastodon.green/users/christineburns]Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖[/url] one day it will be our turn. Bloody scary.

2024-08-04 22:38:19

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@[url=https://mastodon.green/users/christineburns]Christine Burns MBE 🏳️‍⚧️📚⧖[/url] golden age stuff. Very cool!

2024-07-31 18:29:19

Cass deserves to go down alongside Wakefield in my opinion. This is a wholly biased piece of work, produced to order, and to suit an agenda, and that agenda is profoundly hostile to trans people. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/british-medical-association-calls
[attachment type='link' url='https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/british-medical-association-calls' title='British Medical Association Calls Cass Review "Unsubstantiated," Passes Resolution Against Implementation' publisher_name='Erin In The Morning' publisher_url='https://www.erininthemorning.com' publisher_img='https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F86667743-b8b4-4e30-9389-5ade28e1a964_399x399.png' author_name='Erin Reed' author_url='https://substack.com/@erininthemorn' image='https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d7b48b5-32c9-414e-b3d9-e7a90c8a9802_800x595.jpeg']The British Medical Association, the professional organization representing doctors in the United Kingdom, has called for a public critique of the review and to bar its implementation.[/attachment]

2024-07-06 08:44:46

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Got this in Portugal, Spain and France with Miio as well, and anyone can get and use the Miio app.

2024-06-26 21:57:16

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lol, no.
Tomorrow we are sitting out an extended stay here and then working out how we get ourselves, minus boat, back to Portsmouth to pick the car up.

2024-06-24 03:17:00

Good morning from a pre-dawn Gosport Marina where we are about to commence “Operation Oui Oui Baguette”: taking our boat, Scarlet, across the English Channel as the first part of our trip to Portugal. This is the second longest leg of the entire journey, and the first time I will have ever personally sailed out of the sight of land.
If you want to follow our progress, you can see us on Marine Traffic: [marinetraffic.com/en/ais/detai…](https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:3886856 )
Note, that relies on AIS signals being relayed to the internet. Commercial AIS is powerful enough to be picked up by satellite, but ours isn’t, so there will likely be a dead-zone in the middle where we don’t seem to update.
It’s going to take about 14 hours to make the crossing. There is no wind, so we will be using our engine.

2024-06-23 00:44:36

Some points, and a question for uk politicians;<li> There are around half a million trans people in the uk, including eggs.</li><li> There are a few thousand TERFs.</li><li> Trans people will vote for you if you treat us like human beings.</li><li> Nothing you do will ever satisfy TERFs. </li>
And so to the question: why are you so bad at basic arithmetic?

2024-05-19 13:32:11

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nice day, is it?

2024-05-17 13:05:41

People always point to ghouls like Musk when they say that money can’t buy happiness.
Counterpoint: Enya. She made a load of money. She bought an actual castle. She retired to said castle to become a reclusive cat lady.
Inspirational!