Tell me you’re not into preserving railways, model trains, knitting, whist, industrial archeology, woodworking, watercolour, rambling, horses and riding, craft beer, Jane Austin, theatre, photography…

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

As opposed to this, no problems ever thanks to good shape and support! perfect place for baby to n/ap

My 18yo nephew said once, when he was about 7, that he thought it must have been an even bigger asteroid than the one that killed the dinosaurs that had "destroyed Pluto". Turned out he'd heard grown ups saying Pluto "wasn't a planet any more" and thought that meant it had been blown up 😭

Incoming 18 year old undergraduates have never known Pluto as a planet (ousted in 2006!) and that makes me sad all over again for Pluto - and the students with an impoverished solar system - and me as I’m so old.

General impressions of #ecil2025 so far: everyone is still VERY concerned about AI literacy. German conference food is excellent but the queues are surprisingly inefficient. Bamberg is a really pretty place but I wish I could see it without the pouring rain!

Anyone who can’t see through the “free speech!” “Cancel culture!” Bullshit now - the whole project has been about amplifying bigotry & shutting up criticism, is utterly complicit - Gervais, Carr & all- the reason they have far right fans is not the quality of jokes but the quality of propaganda

I'm at the #ecil2025 conference in Bamberg, Germany this week. Probably won't be posting much (and it doesn't look like there's much activity on the hashtag, sadly) but feel free to follow/mute according to interest! Program: www.conftool.org/ecil2025/ind...

Someone in this airport has a cat in a carrier! I can't see them but can hear the plaintive meows 😭

Either the Blues Brothers soundtrack or Bananarama

Currently en route to Bamberg, Germany for the ECIL conference this week! Well, sort of... Flight was due to depart at 11.15, last update shows it is delayed until 13.45. 🤞🏼 we get there at some point today...

10 years ago, the Charlie Hebdo attack showed clearly how free speech could be weaponised Calls for absolute "je suis Charlie" free speech were accompanied with heavy policing of critique and dissent We learnt nothing and still lap up the (far-) right's hypocrisy on the matter 1/

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Long, fascinating, and uplifting thread. I'm really glad I saw this 🙂

Siri kept calling me Shirley today. I was starting to get really angry and then I realized why... I left my phone in Airplane mode.

why don’t iphones have snake

Oh shit his honor hit him with the “I ain’t reading all that” meme

THIS is the kind of order judges should be issuing against performative complaints.

Ok I *just* got the medic/veterinary wordplay here 😭

And the fact that I have never seen these delights in an English supermarket is proof that we are indeed the cursèd part of the isle 😭

This link might also work for folks. And my heart aches for you and Chris. archive.ph/XlY4j

Ten years ago yesterday, I wrote a story that changed the next decade of my life. I hate that it matters more today — I mean specifically, today — than it ever has before. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But here it is. www.thedailybeast.com/what-do-you-...

think if you're broadly a centrist and were suuuuuper concerned about attacks on free speech from the left and so you decided to give the right a hearing then you need to realise you were taken for QUITE the ride (and don't really have anyone to blame but yourself)

coates is genuinely a generational writer

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Charlie Kirk and the pundits and politicians sanitizing his legacy.

A little present from my past self arrived today! Thank you Past Laura, I was in need of a boost today so this was perfectly timed 🥰

this is going viral but the fuck do y’all think tradwife instagram influencers are about

live your life so that when you die everyone talks about how hot you were and not how you were a hateful bigot

Genuinely have been waiting since I heard the news for the menswear guy's take on Redford's incredible style 🥰

Today's adventures in MS: the blood tests I needed before starting treatment revealed I have latent TB! (Basically: I've been exposed to TB at some point, the bacteria is in my blood but inactive, so I have no symptoms and am not infectious). Latent TB can become active TB (10-15% lifetime risk) 1/

RIP to a man so hot the obits are obligated to talk about how hot he was

@nlisn.bsky.social is attempting to assess the proportion/spread of neurodiversity across across all UK library sectors. If you identify as neurodivergent, with or without a formal diagnosis, or suspect you may be - please fill in our short survey! Reblogging/signal-boosting much appreciated!

nah not robert redford LOOK AT ALL THESE ASSHOLES STILL WALKING AROUND BEING DICKHEADS THAT COULD HAVE DIED INSTEAD COME ON

And this is how I find out that Robert Redford died 💔

many horrors / strawby picker #critterposting #alttextposting

[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that

Let the potato rest!! 😭

Very interesting musings here on language, and what makes LLM text so obviously artificial

My granddad's cousin went to Spain in early '37 to fight the fascists and kept a diary of his experience. One entry read that he'd been shown how to clean his rifle by another, more experienced, Englishman by the name of Eric Blair. So yeah, I think we all know what Orwell would think.

In this week's Guardian Blind Date: A hundred words for no + nani puri confusion. My review digs deep:

Obviously, I'm always going to be biased towards a stealing cat, but I honestly think this is the greatest cat name ever. apnews.com/article/cat-...

As others have pointed out, the idea that we can control their behavior by modeling respectability (cooperating with the compulsory grief around Kirk, for example, and not saying truthful/angry things about him) is akin to an abused person's belief that they can control the abuse by being perfect.

reposting with alt text because this feels incredibly significant. the right-wing disinfo machine means a lot of the people grieving Charlie Kirk never heard any of the things he said that would have tarnished his brand as Guy Who Just Wants to Have Dialogue Across the Aisle

FREE HIM

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”

I have something cohering in my head about the prevalence of surface reading and how a whole cadre of people have made themselves more susceptible to tone than content and how this links not only to the growth of the far-right but to LLM-induced psychosis.

GLOW