When I started transition one of my nieces asked how she can be sure she's a girl and not a boy, and her mom asked her, do you like being a girl? and she said yes, and her mom asked, do you want to be a boy? and she said no, she likes being a girl, and her mom said that sounds like she's a girl then

Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/pray-2 #smbc

boosting for @katiedoesthings.bsky.social as she continues to bounce between trying to pay off large but vital expenses!

Dear lazysky, how would you describe this screw, so I could buy another? Its unpictured head takes a hex key.

the thing about reading gay historical fiction about nineteenth century politics is sometimes the author gets really, really into the suez canal

Testicle goblin!

I think these aren’t the right screws for me.

Why do Leeds and London get the union flag but Sheffield and Manchester get St George?

Brain is very in the “best not say that lest I upset” mood today. I’ve written and discarded so many replies.

I genuinely think you should read the entire thread, all of you. And hope that you, like me, will agree with it's conclusion. He's right that it's an artform in and of itself.

I remember, many years ago now (with ny transport strategist hat on) being asked in a BBC interview if Crossrail would be Khan's biggest legacy. The thing that had the biggest impact on London. I said: "No. It'll be ULEZ." (The low emissions zone)

Not now horny dolmio advert

Alternatively: imagine finding out that older woman who owns you actually had you bred specifically with all your fucked up little problems because she finds it endearing

Strigil

What. The radio is telling me that quarks have consciousness. Am I dreaming or is it Sunday morning spiritual programming?

The international standard road sign for slippery roads has the rear tyre marks crossing over. This probably explains why Calvert and Kinnear (and many other sign designers worldwide) replicated it in their design for UK signs. But I want to know who drew the original this way and why.

Who is in charge? An aspect of the almighty mess that is the For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers Supreme Court judgment that I have found surprising, perhaps shocking, is the silence from parliamentarians about the Supreme Court’s ignoring the will of Parliament.

🔀 Due to a plant pot sale, the speech (and as a result the counterprotest) has been diverted to Cornmarket Street.

Help, help! Can anyone put me in touch asap with someone from Staff LGBTQIA+ Network, UWE Bristol? It's for a thing 🤗

Dark star over my head

Let me just geek out here: this instrument - not this kind of instrument, but this actual example - was played at the premiere of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks almost three hundred years ago Bloody hell! www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYR...

What the judge said was horrendous. But the framing is typical bigoted UK. Here's a German headline on the subject: "Trans woman sentenced to prison for sex with transphobic man" www.queer.de/detail.php?a...

Reminder: when I spoke at the anti-Trump demo in Parliament Square last month, the biggest cheer I got was when I said that transphobia is fascism. All transphobes, including the “nice”, middle-class “gender-critical” ones, are fascists. Every. Single. One.

Just Maccabi Tel Aviv fans chanting "death to Arabs" and "We will win, let the Israeli Army win, fuck the Arabs" as they arrived in Amsterdam for the Ajax game last November . They also chanted "“Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no children left there! Olé, olé, olé”

We are awarding our President's Medal to 'In Our Time' as it has done so much to showcase humanities & social sciences. We'd decided this before the news of Melvyn Bragg stepping down, but glad we got our timing right & had a chance to celebrate with him! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/renowne...

if you're trans you have to stay alive. i do make the rules

Block the regime bsky.app/profile/did:...

Link: www.gov.uk/government/n.... Strange to remember that my Uncle, an observant Jew, a Judge, and Tory voter, would omit the bits of the Haggadah at Passover that referred to the return to Israel because, as he would say, in this family we don't agree with that. Hard to imagine that combo now.

💥WIN: Victory in landmark case on gender recognition Am so proud to have worked on this case, and to work for an org which fights for - and successfully defends - trans rights. "A huge victory for trans people’s human rights in this country, at a moment where things have felt particularly dark."

A little record of Good Law Project court successes. There's a perception put about by critters that GLP never wins anything, so it's pleasing to be able to counter that.

My name has been on this list from the beginning. If you are a cis woman ally please ensure you add your name 👇

Decades after the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, can politicians please not second-guess expert safety assessments for football stadiums. Thank you. An Aston Villa fan.

Okay! This is going to take a while so I had to finish some stuff first, but: Why Da Pope Fucking Up Opus Dei Is A Huge Fucking Deal: a thread

Israel’s football authorities have consistently failed to tackle the issue of behaviour on the terraces because the targets for chants etc are Arabs. The racism is in that sense institutionalised. That has consequences

BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV is set to effectively disband Opus Dei in the coming weeks. This would be the most sweeping internal reform of his pontificate — and a dramatic continuation of Pope Francis’s legacy.

I need a new editor stet

"The passive voice" is not any construction that obscures agency, it's a specific syntactic structure that *can* be used to do so; alternatively it can be used to highlight agency! "Area man dies following altercation with police" is active voice. "Area man shot by officer John Smith" is passive.

they need to make an "unguent tunnel" we can wriggle through to do skincare

The BBC are accidentally running the subtitles to Mrs Marple over the Mercury Prize, and it’s rather wonderful. A few of lines could plausibly have been written by Jarvis.

As far as I can tell the NHS systems regards me as female. Local GP gave me a new number immediately, as if they’re used to it and it’s entirely routine. But I’m still dependent on the goodwill of anyone in the NHS with access to my medical records. It’s so bloody fragile.

this will kill people.

It's great when a liberal starts campaigning about actual liberalism and not about centrism, isn't it?

I had to go to London Bridge to see the new clock. And accidentally let myself be tempted by a lovely soft clock hoodie. (Will model later!)

On my way back north after attending the unveiling of the new rail clock at London Bridge; the timepiece is all at once disarmingly simple and delightfully ingenious…

New BR clock! Love it.

One of the perils of reading @jasperfforde.bsky.social ‘s Shades of Grey books is getting unexpectedly excited about spoons