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Varyl Thorndycraft

@varylt.bsky.social
361 followers 829 following 184 posts

#strideforpalestine medicalaidforpalestinians.enthuse.c… . He/him. Born 330ppm Dad 416ppm.

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Reposted by Varyl Thorndycraft
Stop Rosebank @stopcambo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Delek Group, an Israeli energy giant known to operate in illegal settlements in the West Bank, is set to receive £200+ million if the Rosebank oil field is approved. So we've sent a letter to Burnham - warning him that approving Rosebank could breach his new sanctions. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Burnham warned Rosebank oil field could breach West Bank sanctions
Campaigners and Green Party leader Zack Polanski raise concerns about Rosebank's ties to an Israeli firm.
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Previously unseen lobbying shows the oil and gas industry is misleading government on North Sea drilling. For now, it looks like Burnham is listening to them. Only a Green win tomorrow will force them to listen to us. New analysis from Influence Map 👇
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James Thorniley @jamesthorniley.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Political leadership has been tragically absent during this sustained campaign against trans rights that led to the new EHRC guidance. I'm proud that the motion proposed by Max at Oxford City Council passed, and there is much more to do.
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Cllr Dr Max Morris @maxmorris.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
My speech to Oxford City Council proposing the Green Group's motion on the EHRC Code of Practice and Trans Rights 🏳️‍⚧️💚 @oxfordgreenparty.bsky.social
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Stop Rosebank @stopcambo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is a message for @andyburnham.bsky.social
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Quite depressing that George is having to spell this out. The contrast between the joy/positivity at the Oxford Green's AGM (1st since we won the popular vote in May) a fortnight ago vs the sadness at a scheduled campaign meeting on Monday - demotivated, loss of campaign managers and leafletters.😢
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Rage Against the Miocene @organiccarbon.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Over the past 40 years, we have basically said, 'To hell with it. We don't have to change. We can adapt.' And then we have catastrophically failed to adapt.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Agree. I'm not at conference but have set up a proxy vote against the motion. We won the popular vote across Oxford in May through a lot of hard work which will be undone by an unnecessary and contested motion.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A great 7 days for active travel advocates in Oxford. Last Sunday was the joyous kidical mass bike ride & last night @thewaroncars.bsky.social were at Caper Books. Oxford Greenways cycle network (connecting local towns to the city) was launched during the week
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The War on Cars @thewaroncars.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
We were told that Caper Books, which has a huge selection of children's books, opened *after* the installation of the Low Traffic Neighborhood. Safe streets are good for business!
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Sam Burgess @oceanterra.org · 02/10/2026
#Climate change is not just raising temperatures. It is increasing the likelihood of prolonged periods when heat, water stress and wildfire risk occur simultaneously. Understanding these compound extremes is essential for building resilience across our water, food, energy and health systems.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This month I am virtually travelling 185km across Palestine as part of #strideforPalestine to raise money for @medicalaidpal.bsky.social (details in bio). I aim to post reflections as I go 🚶 🚴 🚶 🚴 🚶 🚴
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This..... My 5 yo rode 13 km across Oxford last Sunday for Kidical Mass - children's version of the Critical Mass cycle protest. oxfordclarion.uk/kidical-mass...
oxfordclarion.uk
Kidical Mass rides again
180 riders took part in a joyous ride through the streets of Oxford today. Oxford’s Kidical Mass is just one of the many rides under this banner around the UK and worldwide this week. Our photographer...
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Beth Stratford @bethstratford.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Well, I for one am an economist who supports rent controls! Here’s why 🧵: Markets only work well if: -buyers & sellers have roughly equal power -producers respond to price signals & expand supply in response to scarcity -buyers can walk away if prices get too high
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The Wire Magazine @thewiremagazine.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Two newly reissued albums showcase the seismic psychedelia of George Clinton’s Funkadelic at its rawest and most disruptive, writes John Morrison in The Wire 512 www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/e...
thewire.co.uk
“A trip through the other side of enlightenment”: Funkadelic reviewed - The Wire
Two newly reissued albums showcase the seismic psychedelia of George Clinton’s Funkadelic at its rawest and most disruptive, writes John Morrison in The Wire 512
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“What we are seeing now is a complete explosion of these melt rates, leading to the disintegration of glaciers. They’re really just falling apart.” #Switzerland 🇨🇭 #ClimateEmergency
theguardian.com
‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollution
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Swiss glaciers suffer 'disastrous' year of ice loss, threatening water supplies "…in its simplest form, what we see right now is that we took an ice cube out of the fridge and it's just melting in front of our eyes." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The nation explicitly cast as a fortressed bunker ensuring "survivability" for the in-group. A.K.A. end times fascism.
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Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister, Margaret Owen OBE, arrested under the Terrorism Act outside @labouruk.bsky.social conference. Her crime? Holding a piece of cardboard with the words “I oppose genocide - I support Palestine Action” on it. She was among hundreds doing the same.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A Labour Climate event on Regenerative Farming sponsored by Nestle...who quit the Dairy Methane Action Alliance
Image of a Bluesky post from a Labour Climate event on Regenerative Farming with a photo of 3 panelists. The post says "kindly sponsored by Nestle" a company that pulled out of a methane agreement to reduce emissions
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"What does “Hope Again” even mean? Is it an instruction? Have we all been hoping in a highly unsatisfactory way so far? Are we being sent back to hope school to learn how to be more upbeat?" Hope sponsored by Palantir / Nestle et al www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Reality pays a visit to the Labour party conference, but it’s the ‘Hope Again’ that kills you
Most MPs are clinging to this year’s Beckettian slogan, but the chancellor brought his own brand of despair
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Yes this is true but also we pay for this through dubious sponsorship deals. See BP and the British Museum.
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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
We gotta start referring to data centers by both their mother and father's last names, Spain style. The Microsoft-Chevron data center, the Meta-ExxonMobil data center, and so forth. Absolutely no reason just the tech bros should be taking the heat on this shit
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🔴 BREAKING: BP, Uber, Amazon and more paying Tony Blair's think tank $25,000 for “networking” opportunities with politicians and policy makers at party conferences Experts say "looks and smells like cash for access" Full story on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-t...
democracyforsale.substack.com
BREAKING: Tony Blair Institute’s $25,000 corporate network “smells like cash for access”
Exclusive documents show Tony Blair's think tank offers corporate members such as BP and Uber "networking" at party conferences and "a stronger voice" in policy debates.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 24/09/2026
over the past few weeks several AI evaluation/cybersecurity experts have explained how what's happening is a result of human incompetence rather than "AI going rogue". I'm begging the media to show a shred of journalistic integrity and stop parroting what altman or amodei say
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"These costs are not just in the form of energy and water use, or inflated household bills, but the opportunity costs involved as alternative, socially necessary and climate resilient development pathways are foreclosed." #datacentres
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
“Mainly there are just too many cars. So moving people out of cars to more efficient spaces such as public transport, buses and bikes is part of that solution". Cars are bigger too... www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
London buses in decline? Why public transport in global cities is slowing to a crawl – visualised
As experts fear for future of UK capital’s bus network, some commuters are giving up entirely. London is not alone – with worrying implications for poorest in society
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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Terrific write-up of the book in @desmog.com today! www.desmog.com/2026/09/21/q...
desmog.com
Q&A: Amy Westervelt on the Corporate Poisoning of the Information Aquifer — and How to Undo the Harm
Amy Westervelt’s new book Brought To You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy is a must-read for anyone tracking the machinery of climate denial and delay. The...
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

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Wide shot of the BRITISH MUSEUM. There are suggestions of fascism around the streets - tanks, barricades, an Orwellian 'Big Brother'-style poster on a wall. A voice of a TOUR GUIDE emanates from the museum:

TOUR GUIDE:
So the Tapestry tells acrucial chapter of our nation's history...

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[Cut to interior of museum. A long Bayeaux-style TAPESTRY is on display, and the Tour Guide is speaking to a tour group]

TOUR GUIDE [smiling]:
How modern fascist Britain was created. 

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TOUR GUIDE:
The Tapestry begins here with the 2008 Crash, then austerity, then the AI Crash...

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TOUR GUIDE:
...and by the end of the room it's just full-on fash. 

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CHILD IN TOUR GROUP [gesturing to the tapestry]:
What's this middle bit?

TOUR GUIDE:
This is the 2026 Battle of Legitimate Concerns 

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TOUR GUIDE:
[show a reporter standing next to the Dover protests]
Here's the media saying the government have got to do something about the legitimate concerns...

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CHILD:
...About the failure of capitalism?

TOUR GUIDE:
No about brown people on boats

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CHILD:
[pointing at boats crossing the sea on the tapestry]
Are these boats the mega-dinghies?

TOUR GUIDE:
Not all of them

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[we see one of the boats  is a giant yacht]
TOUR GUIDE:
That one's a superyacht,
carrying money from the American fascists to the British ones.

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TOUR GUIDE:
You see really it's as much a story of convergence as it is of conflict.

[An alarm sounds in the museum]
DING DING DING DING 

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TOUR GUIDE:
Ok, tour over everyone 

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TOUR GUIDE:
It's time for the Two Minute Hate!

[They all leave the museum]

[ends]
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"The central problem is not the pace at which renewables are being added, but the social & economic system that determines trajectories of global energy use. A real transition can only happen through the rapid & permanent reduction in the absolute consumption of coal, oil & gas..." #ClimateCrisis
versobooks.com
Renewables, ‘Electrostates’, and other Myths of the Green Transition
The start of this month marked the publication of the 75th edition of the Energy Institute’s 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy, the flagship publicly available dataset on global energy productio...
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass.  It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots.  This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.
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Kees van der Leun @sustainable2050.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Glaciologist @matthias-huss.bsky.social shows that the centre of the Great Aletsch glacier in Switzerland (the biggest in the Alps) lost 6 meters(!) of thickness just this summer. "No words...", he adds on LinkedIn.
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Daniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:
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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is surreal. Real the thread. The University of Brighton is destroying virtually all workers rights overnight, and derecognising the major unions.
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All Our Yesterdays @allouryesterdays.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
22 years ago, Prime Minister Tony Blair was telling us how urgent climate action was. Bless his cotton socks. I wonder what he is up to nowadays?
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
But is it fascism? Do they really yearn for apocalypse? Isn't that polarizing? Shouldn't we be nice to them? We made a short video so folks can hear the end timers in their own words and judge for themselves: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK2n...
youtube.com
How modern fascism works | End Times Fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
YouTube video by Naomi Klein
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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
According to our media, millions of people running out of water means "economy is at risk". The fact that we've been programmed to see the world in this way is a key component of climate and ecological collapse.
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"Traffic erodes community ties – neighbours talk less, trust each other less, look out for each other less" - Prof. @jpinasanchez.eurosky.social, @universityofleeds.bsky.social
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
For the record, climate change is not going to kill us all in a few years and neither is AI, but that shouldn’t be the metric by which we judge how bad something is.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Lovely afternoon at Binsey village fair, Oxford. Meeting lots of lovely folk, getting splattered with egg in the egg throwing competition and discussing Thames Water bill boycott...
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This is completely on Andy Burnham Last week Labour could have stopped this. Now we have a single person giving more money than the entire general election spending limit for a political party www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...
telegraph.co.uk
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Nelle from Magandjin @nelle.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Exhibit 1. Jaywalking. Jaywalking, a legislated illegal act, was 100 years old in 2025.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Climeworks' Mammoth facility in Iceland removed 675 tonnes of CO₂ in the first half of 2026, almost 6x as much as in 2025. If they keep it up, that'll be 1350 tonnes a year*. That's a time machine that takes us back 1 whole second in a year! 🙄 *Mammoth has a stated capacity of 36,000 tonnes. 🫠
bloomberg.com
Carbon Removal Pioneer Climeworks Increases CO2 Capture Sixfold
The world’s largest direct air capture plant is sucking more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a lower cost, an improvement for a sector struggling to scale economically as global warming surpasse...
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 08/09/2026
Microsoft pumped a mind-blowing amount of money into carbon removal. This is how it went for them:
a graphic showing targets vs emisisons for microsoft, with a failure for both emissions reductions and carbon removals
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
🧵CO₂ removal (CDR) is back in the news, but just because the UNEP report says we need CDR, it doesn't mean we'll have CDR. Many challenges will take decades of research and negotiation to solve. Here are some examples: Technological: We currently don't have any durable CDR method that scales.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
All the plastic humanity has ever produced is ~10 billion tonnes. Humans emitted ~10 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere in the first three months of 2026. When we appreciate orders of magnitude, we see how intractable the CO₂ problem becomes once we dump it into the atmosphere.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Not sure we need a committee to answer this one: "Whether DEFRA and the Environment Agency are equipped to coordinate adaptation across government and whether enough funding is being invested in adaptation across government"
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Polly Pallister-Wilkins @pollypw.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I run an MA programme on conflict studies and one of the first things we teach is conflict escalation and, well, the UK government is now an active agent in conflict escalation as it is clearly suggesting that violence is a way to have your political concerns listened to.
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Varyl Thorndycraft @varylt.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Sarah Davachi's latest (just out) is excellent long form minimilism. Highlights are lovely organ drones, sometimes accompanied by strings plus the choral pieces are beautiful. sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/the-wi...
sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com
The Will of Tongues, by Sarah Davachi
13 track album
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Polly Pallister-Wilkins @pollypw.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
When I lived in the UK none of my concerns e.g. affordable housing, climate action, increases in welfare spending, scrapping tuition fees, an ethical foreign policy, were ever framed as legitimate concerns. lnstead I was routinely told to fuck off by most political parties for having such concerns.
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