Our events at The Bell in 2026 May - July May 26 – Deborah Hyde – A 21st-Century Werewolf in Hull? Jun 30 – Richard Marshall – The Levitating Hamster Jul 28 – Gary Parsons – The Highgate Vampire Web: forteanlondon.blogspot.com or newsletter: eepurl.com/hV9OAr

"More than 38,000 people took part in the consultation... 84% of respondents to the consultation had swum at the bathing ponds... with 86% of respondents supporting the existing trans-inclusive access arrangements." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Transphobes are an over-represented noisy minority.

So they want to disapply UN Convention Against Torture... What kind of a sick ideology made you say this out loud? (Rhetorical question, obviously)

Just submitted a session abstract!

@isilarican.com sizin mahallenin kedisi kaçmış. Nerede diye merak ederseniz...

London Skeptics in the Pub on 4 Feb with investigative journalist Meirion Jones and How THEY stop you finding out the TRUTH. A look at the Freedom of Information Act, what it briefly revealed, and how secrecy closed back in. @meiriontweets.bsky.social More info: sitp.online/sitp/london/...

US government rn

ChatGPT and others just found an excuse to hallucinate: "Sorry guys, Internet -at least as we see it- is bullshit"

7 kişi adamı yatırmış tekme tokat dövüyor. Bir tanesi gelip dövülen adamın belindeki silahı alıp uzaklaştırıyor. Sonra iki agent toplam 10 el ateş ediyor (5'i adam hareketsiz yatarken). Ajanların savunması "Önce Papa ateş etti" kıvamında. Bellingcat'in analizi çok net: Sokak ortasında infaz!

Bunları hep zamanında @yalansavar.bsky.social ‘da yazdık. Aşıların etkinliğini, aşıların etkinliği bizzat unutturdu. Ama maalesef doğa bize üzücü şekilde tekrar anımsatacak.

The obsession with trans women in women’s changing rooms seems to take up a lot of the media space that could be used to highlight cis male sexual abusers - but the concerns over them are usually only of interest when they are dead after a lifetime of praise

You can say “Experts told you so” all day long. Somehow, it always fits.

Discovered another mysterious database, which turned out to be an @openntf.org project that has been running quietly on the site for a long time. Many companies are not aware of how they actually utilise quality software written by fantastic OpenNTF contributors!

Thanks @drkatedevlin.bsky.social for the wonderful talk and thanks everyone for the record attendance!

Starting now - and standing room only 😃

One thing that pushes me away from Bluesky is that it is becoming the “good twin of Twitter”. I see the same 20-second video of ICE assaulting a woman shared again and again, yet I learn nothing new. Is that really enough for everyone?

Shermer is an embarrassment to the term skeptic. He has been for a long time. He isn’t welcome at any skeptical event I’m aware of, and rightly so. Jesus fucking christ.

This evening I will be at @SITP London watching @chriscfrench alk about 'The Science of Weird Shit'. sitp.online/sitp/london/...

Join us on Monday, 12 Jan at 19:30 for "Your AI Is Not in Love with You (No Matter How Much You Love It)" with Prof. Kate Devlin - @drkatedevlin.bsky.social at The Plume of Feathers, Greenwich. Why are people falling for machines, and should we be worried? greenwichskeptics.org#next-talk

It's back! @londonskeptics.bsky.social returned with 'Krampus: Santa's Little Helper' yesterday evening. Thank you to @carmenego.bsky.social and Serdar for arranging a brilliant evening. More to come in 2026

A friendly reminder for tomorrow!

Oh come on! Not Oliver Sacks, please! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

London Skeptics in the Pub continues on 7 Jan with Professor Chris French (@profchrisfrench.bsky.social) talking about The Science of Weird Shit — why paranormal experiences feel so real, and how psychology explains them. More info: sitp.online/sitp/london/...

Come along! (It's friendly and very inclusive)

LLM'lerin uydurmasına örnek lazımsa ChatGPT'ye az bilinen alternatif metal şarkılarının ne hakkında olduğunu sorup sözlerini yorumlatın. Şarkı özellikle yabancı ise (Nordik/Rus/vs) bullshit makinesine dönüşüyor. Çoğu hakkında bilgisi yok, ama bir şey söylemek zorunda. İşkembeden sallamaya başlıyor.

Ayda 2-3 kez Feysbuka ve Twitter'a girip Skeptics in the Pub etkinliklerini ayarlıyorum. Her seferinde aman bir şeye bakmayayım, sinirim bozulmasın, takılmayayım falan diye stres oluyorum.

Social media checks have been around since Trump’s first term, just for visas, so only for the "lesser people". Funny how when a western dictator applies the same stuff to western Europeans, it suddenly becomes a huge deal. It was always a huge deal. Some were simply exempt from this idiocracy.

One of the rare taxation efforts of Labour, affecting upper-middle classes. It might have been more extensive by targeting those with several properties. It also seems like right-wing media is pretty negative about this move, which sadly means that there will be a U-turn pretty soon :)

Unspoken Rule: If you’re asking data from a legacy system, keep your transformation requests simple. The other developers probably don’t give a sh*t, and they’ll do a half-baked job if you complicate things. (Not that I know of anything!)

IDE karşıtı arkadaşlarım meğerse IDE derken Visual Studio'dan bahsediyorlarmış. Eski bir C projesini recompile etmem gerekti diye girdim VS'e, üç gündür çıkamıyorum. Böyle garip bir IDE görmedim ben. Ne nerede, nereden ne yapılıyor hiç bir şey anlamadım. Eclipse çok gürültülü geliyordu bana, haşa!

I’m really looking forward to this. The London branch was the very first Skeptics in the Pub group, and it started a tradition more than 25 years ago. Now we’re bringing it back. Exciting!

Skeptics in the Pub is finally back in London with @deborahhyde.bsky.social! We’re kicking off our return on 3 Dec with Deborah Hyde, who’ll talk about Krampus and the folklore that shadows St Nicholas. A great way to restart a long-running tradition. More info: sitp.online/sitp/london/...

What does ‘safe’ mean for people persecuted for their identites like the non-religious & LGBTQ+? Their risk doesn’t disappear because a country looks stable on paper. Reassessing thousands of cases every 30 months won’t capture that nuance, and the Home Office is already overwhelmed.

Adana'da pencereye çıkıp cloud'a ateş ettiler!

Cloudflare'in çökmesi AWS'den daha yıkıcı... Internet gitti...

Tonight, I'm in conversation with @lizzicollinge.bsky.social MP. As a humanist and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, she offers a rare, clear view from Parliament on @humanists.uk's campaigns in action. She also happens to be very fun! humanists.uk/events/in-co...

But... his... e-mails...

India’s traditional healing cornucopia comes with a side of heavy metal poisoning. Arsenic, lead, mercury... but also elephant dung? Ayurveda can harm your liver. My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

♥️

We had a packed room yesterday for an excellent talk on the history of quacks and charlatans in medicine by @drjlange.bsky.social at @greenwichskeptics.org

That’s a really good piece explaining what set QED apart and highlighting the nature of skepticism in this generation. Thanks, Hayley!

Good point! These kinds of misconceptions are supported by politicians as well.

Conspiracy: Grok is secretly engineered as a secret AI Ethics project. They want to make a point on how ugly a bad actor in AI business can get.

Remember, remember 5th of November..... O sırada Luna...

Kılıçdaroğlu taktikleriyle çakma sağcılığa öykünmek yerine etkili muhalefetle çözüm öneren solculuk bir kez daha zafer kazandırdı. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Join us on Monday, 10 Nov at 19:30 for "The Quacks and Charlatans of Medicine" with Dr Jenny Lange (@drjlange.bsky.social) at The Plume of Feathers, Greenwich. From goat glands to bleach cures, how medical fraud has fooled the desperate, then and now. More info: greenwichskeptics.org

#QEDcon was really special this year. Here are a few shots I took during the event, including the awarding of a special book of memories to the organizers.

Ordered a new one to replace my lost rainbow TARDIS pin! Thanks @jamiebgall.co.uk

We had almost exactly the same list for Tayyip Erdogan, nearly 15 years ago. Either Trump's moving a lot faster than his fellow autocrats, or the U.S. doesn't have quite as many "checks and balances" as they like to think.

"Sosyal açıdan desteklenmesi gereken" derken tam olarak ne demek istiyorlar acaba. "Zorla yapıyoruz, bize kalsa umurumuzda değil" mi yani?