Hugh Barnard
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hughbarnard.bsky.social
Hugh Barnard
@hughbarnard.bsky.social
930 followers 690 following 1.1K posts
Ecology, local democracy, FOSS, AI, ethics, radical financial reform/alternative currencies, music:http://tinyurl.com/4btpysvm, miscellaneous mischief.

Pic is Umi&me at the Grand Soleil in Gruissan
@[email protected] and https://hughbarnard.org
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hughbarnard.bsky.social
From: www.motherjones.com/environment/...

I managed to get a couple of fruit trees into Springfield Park about 20 years ago, But so much more is possible. Go Winstanley and Everard.
In a study published last month in the journal Earth’s Future, Galli modeled what this change could look like on a wide scale in São Paulo, Brazil. In a theoretical scenario in which the city turned its feasible free space—around 14 square miles—into gardens and farms, every couple of acres of food production could provide healthy sustenance to more than 600 people. Though the scenario isn’t particularly realistic, given the scale of change required, “it’s interesting to think about that, if we use more or less all the areas that we have, we could provide the missing fruits and vegetables for 13 to 21 percent of the population of the city,” Galli said. “Every square meter that you do can have a function, can be useful to increase the access to healthy food for someone.”
November 25, 2025 at 3:31 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
2/2

Me, in about 2018:
Next, the social thread. As a concept that requires a complete essay (a booki, in fact) but needs a more compact discussion here, I advance the idea of antisocial and social space. Antisocial, the architectural conveyor belt spaces for 'commercial browsing' without social connection. Fast food chains now have touch screens, customers order quickly without talking to the counter staff who can, of course, then be reduced in number. Obviously, cars isolate too, though as city folk we talk less than we should, even in shared public transport, for we are entranced by the contents of our electronic devices. Our neighbourhood cafés close, replaced by expensive (and therefore exclusive) coffee chains and hipster watering holes where digital nomads sit silently peering into screens. Much of the apparent public realm is also now private and enclosedii, so no-one may sit, talk, sing or protest. Finally, we close or convert our libraries or community centres, after all, there is austerity and these items do not self-finance and the numbers do not add up. We close social space containing social activity and replace it by anti-social space supporting colonised (se
November 13, 2025 at 1:58 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Haha. That's nothing, I'm waiting to experiment with a small child in my own back garden.
My back garden a dense assortment trees and bushes. Some fruit picking with a step ladder.
October 29, 2025 at 6:24 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Via @tedgioia.bsky.social Good news in many ways, even the consumer population are waking up. Next thing is to leave, but 'convenience' will kill us all.
October 12, 2025 at 8:08 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
It's madness I tell you, madness. Very destructive madness too. #AI
Map of AI data centres (some proposed) in the USA
October 6, 2025 at 8:04 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Just bought myself a s/h copy of this. Will scan a few pages in a week or two. #history #politics
September 4, 2025 at 10:15 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Lincolnshire solution. Need quite a few though.
A web server powered by potatoes.
August 25, 2025 at 5:25 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Yep.
August 16, 2025 at 8:02 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
So I suppose they won't want the mega-compute requiremrnt for the 'turbocharged #AI' (Starmer's words) then? See also, from an essay in my book:
A footnote, a lot of the waste is corporate, PCs powered up, lights left on1, illuminated adverts. In spite of this, the government plays at (with the deep bad faith of the existential Sartreian sense) energy savings by nannying the citizen. The government can't turn on the corporates on behalf of the citizens (an act of good faith, probably) because they are part of the (in the Situationist sense) Spectacle. In the case of the right wing, they are the ‘donors’ too. They give money, we give better quality of life, go figure.
August 13, 2025 at 5:59 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Melina's exhibition until tomorrow evening,
74 Beulah Road, Walthamstow.
Melina's exhibition until tomorrow, address and times
August 2, 2025 at 12:20 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Consultations I've nearly given up replying to local and national government consultations, since they are immediately ignored. Sometime there's some extra fun and an opportunity for the 'they' to patronise the 'us' in focus groups and workshops. If they are sandwiches, I go, it's a small free meal, if there are only biscuits, I avoid. However, they sometimes offer an opportunity for fun. I prefer humour to opposition as a clearer way of showing my feelings. Strong negative emotions are continued engagement with the status quo and an additional reason for them to ignore you. The objective is to ignore it, let it die and create something else. I call some of the worst of these things insultations. We invite you, we pretend to listen and then we do something else entirely.
August 1, 2025 at 8:37 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Forcing independents out of business is a feature not a bug:
Kulaks1 were were smallholders, autonomous and producing a saleable surplus in Russia. They were criticised by Lenin and decimated by Stalin2. This is used by the right to show the dangers of communism, as (wrongly) defined by the right. In fact, it shows the dangers of dictatorship, any forced collectivisation, and the false belief that scale and uniformity lead to efficiency (and that efficiency is always desirable). From the right, we have corporations who, via abuse of dominant position, squash or suborn (Amazon 'marketplace', Facebook, eBay etc.) most small businesses, our own Kulaks. Also from the UK government, presumably irritated by agitations of freely negotiated contracts for labour, we have IR353. From the corporations, instead, we have the gig economy, a form of near slavery.
July 28, 2025 at 2:59 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
See also, from: hughbarnard.org/the-algorith...
Mobile Phone Zombies It could be you, couldn’t it? Walking around with your phone looking intensely into it, so that you bump into other, then apologise insincerely, since your phone is so important. Other people really need to watch where they’re going don’t they? Or sitting on the train, playing some mindless game or watching a tiny, tiny soap opera with your eyes and eyebrow all scrunched up. This is a lost opportunity to read a book too. Or last, (anti)social media which is supplying you with a fine assortment of sleazo-inputs1, since it’s trying its best to do controversy for clicks. But look around, they’re everywhere now. Don’t be one.
July 25, 2025 at 5:20 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Haha, 'thought leaders' in 'institutes' are beginning to catch up too.
The Social Next, the social thread. As a concept that requires a complete essay (a booki, in fact) but needs a more compact discussion here, I advance the idea of antisocial and social space. Antisocial, the architectural conveyor belt spaces for 'commercial browsing' without social connection. Fast food chains now have touch screens, customers order quickly without talking to the counter staff who can, of course, then be reduced in number. Obviously, cars isolate too, though as city folk we talk less than we should, even in shared public transport, for we are entranced by the contents of our electronic devices.
July 24, 2025 at 8:54 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Here's my TLDR from the Felixstowe project, v. similar to the (currently thwarted!) ambition in the Newham project.
Without a large plot of land for the reserve, the only way it would work was by using a network of gardens, allotments and private land. It was important to make participation in this initiative as simple as possible, defining a nature reserve as being three square yards turned over to wildlife. We aimed for 1,666 people to take part. That combination would give us a total area of 5,000 square yards – the area of a football pitch – an image that everyone could imagine.
May 20, 2025 at 7:45 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Thanks, this looks very like what I have in mind. Network of gardens. Urban gardens are pretty small, but there are lots of them. I'm also in touch with someone (via: newham-citizen-science-fair.uk) from UCL doing urban heat sensing.

Here's my garden!
May 20, 2025 at 7:29 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Here's a little path I found at the edge of Tsukishima amongst the office blocks. Care and a little cash.
Path in Tsukishima with little sculptures, paving stones, trees, and shrubs.
April 7, 2025 at 6:37 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Another reason to put actual 'books' (as opposed to chick lit, YA pap etc.) into #Newham libraries.

Later: nifis.uk (and nifis-like) will ride to the rescue.
March 15, 2025 at 7:36 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Yeah, Tesla. Let's do Amazon too.
Tesla share price is dropping!
March 11, 2025 at 12:02 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Here's a pretty picture, though some chancers appear to be buying into the cannons.
Share price of Tesla, year to date, down and down.
March 5, 2025 at 10:06 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Keep on selling stock and not buy the 'cars', long way to go yet.!
February 27, 2025 at 8:11 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Haha. Probably the maddest thing I have ever read. I'm dividing my attention between this and some of the more amusing TV adverts.
Cover of the CCRU (Culture Cybernetics Research Unit) collected writings. Nick Land et al.
February 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Yep. Captain Amazing from Mystery Men.
February 26, 2025 at 7:44 AM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Ha, just found the flyer from where our group (The Grunge, no I'm not joking) used to rehearse. Look at the prices in 1997.

Meanwhile in Newham lots of unused and/or expensive spaces, no room for music to 'grow'.
Flyer from Studio Bleu rehearsal studio in Paris
February 22, 2025 at 1:15 PM
hughbarnard.bsky.social
Here are the switches towards sanity. I'd add Amazon towards 'anything else than Amazon'.
Facebook goes to friendica, tiktok goes to Loops.video, Youtube goes to Peertube, Reddit goes to Lemmy
January 23, 2025 at 1:44 PM