www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7XL... Florence + The Machine

Great that everyone is installing, but I hope (and am not entirely reassured) that solar panel manufacturers become much more global than they are. Right now, of the top 10, 8 are in China and Japan. (Canada and US are the other two). We need them made in Europe, in Africa, in South America...

One idly wonders what level of phone operating system a digital ID will demand? Because even Sainsbury's Nectar App requires something my iPhone can't handle. It's not simply the digitally dispossesed, it's ANYONE who doesn't upgrade as often as (oddly) smartphone manufacturers think they should.

Some wonderful books being sold by wonderful people: if you're in (Manchester) town, go chat to them! Lots of other Northern publishers in attendance. It's not all London, y'know... @northernfiction.bsky.social (Includes my #sci-fi #shortstory collection! Some of them may be signed!)

All set up and ready to go at the Northern Publishers' Fair in Manchester Central Library! Come and say hello and grab a copy of The Mare for the last time!

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba... There ARE no safe US cities for football players born in other countries. Because of Trump, and because of ICE. It's the World Cup that should be moved, to somewhere not bat shit crazy.

Congratulations for electing a petulant, sulky, vindicitive child to the highest office in your country, America. www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

I love science like this. Did you know that windspeed profiles are measured by airplanes that fly through them? Increasing weather prediction accuracy and climate models? This looks to do the same - I guess on a rather smaller scale - for the sea. Great idea! (if those dive computers have GPS?)

Are you diving? 🤿 Would you like to contribute to understanding climate change? Today I found out about the BlueDOT project, which collects temperature data from dive computers to track warming at depth nearshore - filling a critical gap. 🌊🧪 (Join and amplify!) www.marum.de/en/BlueDOT-2...

Billionaires. We KNEW they couldn't be sane, because no sane person would ever amass such a stupidly large amount of money in a world where you could make such a difference with half the amount. We didn't need the proof, but thank you, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and all the others, for providing it.

Wooo! Wooo! Tomorrow marks 200 years since the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, in 1825. Reason enough to dust off "500 Miles" - and the other @liarsleague.bsky.social "Planes, Trains, & Automobiles" themed short stories! liarsleague.co.uk/2016/06/24/5... (Chuffed, I am...)

Grab yourself a copy of the latest Sci Phi Journal and find my story, "Patriot Graves". What happens when a computer game AI mourns the death of the NPC characters it creates? Particulary the boss level? Lots of other fiction and Non-fiction to make you think! www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/20...

@liamjhogan.bsky.social is the author of scifi collection A Short History of the Future and Happy Ending Not Guaranteed - as well as more short stories and collections than we have room for in this post! You can find Liam here: happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.com

Before you roll out a policy that effects EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE COUNTRY, just how big a problem is illegal workers in the UK? Exactly? One assumes many of them are working with an implicit nod from their employers - so ID won't fix that, just drive it deeper underground, with more exploitation?

North Korea, China, Afghanistan, the UK. What do they have in common? Compulsory digital ID. I'm not sure this is the direction Labour should be taking us. I'm totally unconvinced about the reasons given. And I don't trust this government not to fuck up the implementation, and us, along the way.

Violence in and around ICE activities is terrible but entirely predictable: the surprise is it hasn't happened sooner/ more often. A system of cruelty, a lack of transparency, ICE agents acting above the law, is a tinderbox. Treating people with respect isn't just the more humane option, its safer.

Submission call live for UP//ROAR POEMS OF QUEER RESISTANCE Following the success of Joy//Us, we are preparing another queer poetry anthology. Up//Roar: Poems of Queer Resistance. Jeremy Dixon and Cherry Potts are editing again, and we feel that the world has taken a dramatic turn for the worse,…

Before you scrap a medicine that is used by millions, you might profitably ask two questions: Does it do more good than harm (assuming that harm is actually measureable and proven)? Is there a safer alternative? We might ask a third: Which pharma company are you screwing us over to benefit?

I'm sorry, you were expecting a #rapture? It's "rupture".

'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... The reason "many experts are sceptical" is because this is bat-shit crazy. The US health policy set by idiots who pay more attention to wild conspiracies than to awkward medical studies. Banning the safest pain reliever for pregnant women is because you hate women.

Expansion of Gatwick will lead to cheaper flights. Ermm, who is asking for that? Cheaper rail, sure. Cheaper public transport in and around cities. Better cycle routes. But if you can already get to most of Europe for less than you can train half the length of the UK, I think flying is cheap enough.

I wonder WHY the president of a oil producing country would want to stop measuring atmospheric CO2? edition.cnn.com/2025/07/01/c... If he is convinced the benefits of "cheap" energy outweigh the costs, then measuring those costs would still be sensible. If, on the other hand, he's long petrochems...

It's a microcosm - "controlling" trans "abuses" is all about controlling women. Forcing them to conform to particular, externally applied "standards". Punishing them if they don't. Why do certain women push strongly for "female rights" that punish a tiny minority trans at such a cost to themselves?

"Once you use ChatGPT, you don't want to think for yourself anymore.*" As an advert NOT to use ChatGPT, this is next level. (* and nor does ChatGPT - want you to think, that is. Too dangerous if you begin to doubt what it spews...)

I worked in New York on a skiller worker visa. Not because there weren't Americans with skills, but because the dot-com boom had hoovered them all up, so there weren't any available. It wasn't cheap for the company to relocate me, but I doubt they'd do it with the new fee. I also doubt I'd want to.

Rude Awakenings - 2nd engineer is awoken from deep sleep mid journey to fix a problem. But maybe the problem isn't the one he thinks it is...? #ScienceFiction #FlashFiction www.patreon.com/posts/rude-a... On Anomaly, Patreon (Published by @ericfomley.bsky.social)

It isn't just the US that people are scared of visiting, because they might be arrested for basically disagreeing with the government's stance. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

There is no post about the idiocy of AI that I wouldn't believe, simply because AI is stupid. So why are you all asking it questions? Either YOU'RE stupid, or you're the guy who torments the class idiot...

When they call it "one in, one out", I didn't expect them to do it one at a time... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Seems... performative? And (unnecessarily?) expensive!

Lives, buildings, and history. There will be nothing left of Gaza city when the IDF are done. And that's not a side effect of the pursuit of Hamas. That's what Netanyahu and his hard right supporters always wanted to do. www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

One wonders what, exactly, "malicious communications" are. The image projected isn't fake, isn't distorted. No false claims are made. It invites the viewer to make their own conclusions, sure. But so? Didn't the BBC, in reproducing the image, do the same? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It is very difficult to trust the Microsoft AI announcement. The sort of AI that requires huge data centres - the bulk of this 22billion investment - isn't the sort that discovers new drugs or materials, it's the sort that feeds you hallucinated answers rather than says it doesn't know.

"How DARE you accuse us of genocide? You're just enabling terrorism!" (Launches heavy air strikes and major ground offensive on Gaza city, many of whose inhabitants have been in no position to flee, and why SHOULD they? They're not Hamas...) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Evidence is not proof. Blowing up boats (and people) in international water because you THINK they carry drugs, isn't okay if they don't, or even if they do. The US acting like some morally bankrupt superhero is not okay. (On par with blowing up buildings because you THINK they harbour Hamas.)

Illustrated Worlds #11, featuring my dark "1001 Nights" inspired fairytale, The Painted Platform, is out! Lots of - you guessed it - great illustrations to go with the stories. www.illustratedworldsmagazine.com/store/p23/Il...

It is undoubtedly weird that you need a law to force public officials NOT to lie, NOT to cover up. You might assume that the law was already provisioned for that, and there are already penalties for those who transgress. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com p.s. this week I am on a USA/Canada tour with my new book. Details and preorder links at tomgauld.com

Bullet Points 11 has stories from Sean Patrick Hazlett, @jamesaaron.net , @gioclair.bsky.social , @jeremyszal.bsky.social , @henryherz.bsky.social , @slashnburnett.bsky.social , and many others, edited by @ericfomley.bsky.social. Preorder 30% off: zurl.co/kMvPh . Print version 20% off until Oct. 15.

Oh you know, just the world's richest man (and US immigrant), owner of a social media platform, inciting violence in the UK... People have been arrested in the UK for using his platform to say what looks mighty similar. May one assume the police are waiting next time he visits these shores?

Another year, another (abject) failure to win the BBC Short Story Prize... But I see that @commapress.bsky.social Dinesh Allirajah Prize winner Edward Hogan is short listed, so I'm one short list away from the short list. Or something?

If Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation because some of their members use violence to protest then why isn't Unite the Kingdom also a terrorist organisation? I know which one actually terrorises the UK public (rather than arms manufacturers) Does the government? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

US Gun deaths average something like 45 a day. Kirk is merely the one that happened in the public view, that made the news. If you'd prefer a world in which he hadn't been shot, fine. But if you prefer a world in which he hadn't been shot but 44 other Americans were, then you're an asshole.

You'll want to tune in for this one! Controversial views! Laughter! Science (and Science Fiction, of course)! Uranium Logs! And fembots!

Big Indie Weekend Panel: PREDICTING THE FUTURE. Are authors soothsayers or simply extrapolating from the data given? @emilyinkpen.bsky.social, @liamjhogan.bsky.social, @nicksnapeauthor.bsky.social and @jcmberne.bsky.social talk crafting future set worlds in Sci Fi and Fantasy. #writingcommunity

Between Trump reading "helpfully" annotated tattoos as tattoos, and the FBI "mistaking" ammo manufacturer's marks as a political pro-trans statement, American Intelligence is... suspect? (But hey, UK/scottish tabloid media in running with it, you incompetent hateful idiots...)

Filling a billionaire's lake from drought-affected region... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... You have more in common with the asylum seeker trying to get to these shores than with this sort of creature.

The US energy secretary knows as much about fusion as the US health secretary knows about vaccines, and in both cases, the false and misleading narrative they paint serves other, more venal purposes.

It becomes difficult to take BBC News seriously when their political editor ends a commentary on Mandleson being sacked with the suggestion this wouldn't have been a problem if Farage had been appointed US ambassador, AND that would have strengthened Starmer by removing a thorn in his side.

2,977 people died in the 911 attacks. COVID-19 vaccines- the ones RFK is trying to pull, are estimated to have prevented nearly 140,000 U.S. deaths. That's around 50 911s. Over the last 30 years, childhood vaccines have prevented an estimated 1.1 million US deaths. A 911 (of kids) every month.