A real feeling of “oh, this’ll do” on Radio 3’s Mixtape today.

The normalisation of right wing discourse in both major political parties, let alone in much of the media, has been one of the most striking, and disturbing, changes in my lifetime. Things weren’t great in the 1960s (Smethwick) but this is off the scale.

As a current @hammersmithandy.bsky.social and former @ruthcadbury.bsky.social constituent, and as the uncle of a trans man (who, under this code, would be excluded from *any* sort of single-sex space), I would be very grateful if you’d add your name to this.

At least Chamberlain used appeasement to buy time for rearmament. What’s Starmer’s consistent appeasement of the far-right in service of? Conflict and argument avoidance. “Coward” doesn’t come anywhere near an accurate description of that man’s personality.

Angry does not cut it. The far right's gleeful radicalisation. The right's failure to police its cordon sanitaire. The government's indulgence and excusing of their extremism. The BBC's decision to still invite Matt Goodwin back. A pox on all of them. Fuck you.

With apologies and caveats to the responsible news people who don’t make the decisions about who appears on programmes and bulletins: But I have stopped watching and listening to TV news and current affairs. And I used to be a daily user of it.

cc @nation.cymru

Happy Pride Month. If you're a gay man, please remember your power. People often think that gay men are innately fashionable, which means if you wear some stupid shit for long enough, straight people, including homophobes, will copy you and then you can laugh at them.

This is magnificent (I’d like to have seen more mention of my number one gripe, cookie pop-ups, but maybe they’re not such an issue in the States).

Today Microsoft moved all its GitHub copilot subscribers to token-based billing. If you want to see what happens when people have to pay the actual costs of AI, the day is finally here. It's obvious that every customer sees the deep, meaningful value and isn't angry at all.

Brb just writing a script which will automatically reply “this number is no longer used regularly” to certain messengers.

Unable to sleep, I was thinking about all the people I’ve worked with in my various office jobs over the years, and realising how many of them probably vote Reform these days.

Currently reading r/ThatHappened stories on LinkedIn. Yeah, the cabbie definitely let you off your fare. Suuuurre.

Okay so I read the whole of the Pope's latest encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas", the one the internet is calling the AI Encyclical, but it's about a LOT more than that (of course it is, it's over 40,000 words). Here's a thread of quotes...

While we're all chatting about corridors and liminal spaces... precastreinforced.co.uk/2025/09/26/h...

PART-TIME JOB OPPORTUNITY with Off the Record Twickenham This is an exciting opportunity for a qualified bookkeeper to join a small team in a 2-day per week finance role Apply by 22 Jun 2026 bit.ly/3CP3BcJ

I'm increasingly of the view "You don't have to persuade them, just outnumber them".

Couldn’t, off the top of my head, remember the name of the treaty. Disappointed with that. Otherwise, quite satisfied with this performance. catfishing.net #704 - 6/10 🐟🐈🐟🐈🐈 🐟🐈🐈🐈🐟

I’m the reason there’s a fence around an open-air swimming pool in Cambridge.

Classical music has gotten too far from its roots. We need to bring back traditional practices like: - performers cutting passages they don’t feel like playing - putting random pieces of unrelated music in between movements of a multi-movement work - hiring audience members to faint

Awake since 5am. It’s not the heat, it’s the daylight.

My darkest shameful literary guilty pleasure is that I do actually like the odd novel about the inner angst and relationship difficulties of an upper middle class literary type

One of my few motivations in life is not to become an embittered old man complaining that the kids don't listen to me any more.

I’ve seen this first-hand in my family: from anguish and self-harm to relaxation, joy and fulfilment.

Going to say this once before anyone says "oh you're such a pu$$y, that's not hot" ... Heatwaves Are Relative 1️⃣ UK is an island surrounded by warm ocean currents, so our air is packed with moisture. it's never a "dry heat" like you get a lot of places. 🧵1/4

Smoking reduces life expectancy by 10 years. It's utterly ridiculous to say that social media is as bad.

Today we celebrate 100 years since the birth of one of the immortals of modern music, Miles Davis. Thank God someone recorded this performance of ‘So What’ for future generations. youtu.be/zqNTltOGh5c?...

As I’ve said many times before, if you think X is a vector for fascism you should also be worried about Facebook which, even with its recent troubles, still has an order of magnitude more users than Twitter ever did, and which is being pumped full of Restore and adjacent propaganda

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

We had a visitor in the front garden just now.

I filled in this survey because people like us, who aren't filled with right wing hatred and obsessed with immigration, need to be part of the conversation. www.national-conversation.ox.ac.uk

The fact Peter Murrell bought several different consoles suggests he was buying games which were limited to one platform. Otherwise I can’t see why bother. Unless they were presents, but even then.

Is there an iOS app which will measure room temperature? Presumably not, as the heat of the phone would influence it.

I misread the headline at first and thought Carol Vorderman was standing in Makerfield. She is not.

Hardly a hot take, but any product labouring under the name of ‘Baby Genius’ is a total waste of money. My son turned out pretty smart, but I don’t think that’s because we played Mozart.

I used Copilot (free version) as an experiment once. I asked it to write a personal statement for my CV. What it produced was so bland and generic - and, for that matter, obviously AI-written - I immediately discarded it.

My new interest is AI’s continuing struggles with the letter ‘R’

You can dig through the political implications of all of it, but frankly, I do think we should be honest: Reform is just a licence to be cruel. Their whole politics is built on facile grievances, extrapolated into a loose hatred that attracts not idealogues but just nasty people.

I’ve almost drowned twice. The first was at a school swimming gala where, luckily, my distress was immediately obvious. The second was in a busy swimming pool surrounded by friends and only one person spotted me. Otherwise I’d have died 31 years ago. Archive link because £££: archive.is/5hPOq

Took me a while to work out these guys weren't claiming to be more Cremorne than anybody else

Did anyone actually believe Burnham was going to be better than this? This is how he was as a minister, and it’s how it’ll be if he gets the top job.

He really hasn’t helped his case at all. But it doesn’t matter; he’s already shown us what sort of person he is. I don’t think he should even bother apologising. www.linkedin.com/posts/billth...

My partner’s stunningly boring Swiss cousin has just visited. He’s planning a road trip in Wales. So I did the decent thing and guided him to all the must-see places. Looking forward to his postcards from Port Talbot and Rhyl.

This is certainly my experience of LinkedIn so far. You have to hunt for the non-AI posts.

Badges aren’t really my style. Can anyone else think of a way I can show visible support?

I rarely step outside the London bubble, so for me Brum and MCR are about equal.

You didn’t think this thread through, and your party has finally lost my vote.

EHRC's hypothetical trans man is not allowed on either the men's or the women's wards. There is one private side room. Who gets the room? - A patient with compromised immune system who needs it? - A dying patient who needs it? - An infectious patient who needs it? - The trans man who doesn't?

The EHRC Guidance is merely guidance. It is not law. You do not have to follow it. You are breaking no laws by allowing people to use the bathroom of their choice in your building. You are breaking no laws as a trans person by using the bathroom of your choice.

And none of the people who think that's good believe him