The Ash Wednesday procession through the Chicago suburb of Melrose Park from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church - honoring immigrants, immigration detainees and those killed by ICE & Border Patrol - has begun. Chicago Archbishop and Cardinal Blase Cupich is near the head of the march.

Tfw you didn't study much medieval history at school

Read this before going to this morning‘s Ash Wednesday Eucharist, which was beautiful and where my vicar invited me to administer the ashes to him, and honestly, I have thought about the line ‘Courage is visible. Hope has taken flesh. “I am coming to the cottage.” a lot today.

GUYS GUYS OMFG my favorite LGBTQ Catholic site published a Lenten spiritual meditation on “Heated Rivalry” and it’s genuinely so beautiful I cried??? it’s all about how queer identity/self-acceptance and queer community and queer love (including, yes, all the onscreen queer sex) are sacred things

Absolutely right. Like Chris, I resent the framing that European governments are learning this from the US. It’s totally routine for hundreds of black African people to drown in the Mediterranean when trying to reach Europe. The EU, and its homegrown structural racism, enabled that all by itself.

‘Carnage of concern and upset’: Women’s Institute groups close after transgender ban

This entire 'debate' is so maddening. We have been promised that a groundswell of rushed, dissatisfied detransitioners was about to emerge for nearly a decade. Not only have they never materialized, but academic research continues to show small numbers, long assessments and miniscule regret rates.

Yesterday I went to a fringe meeting previewing some qualitative research from Theos about young people joining the Church of England. Mix of church traditions. But while there are more men than women, they talked about valuing church as a space for faith in Christ and also for sharing emotions⚓️ 1/4

“[Christians] should ask themselves if they are not perhaps perpetuating the same dubious situation [as the Inquisition]: for instance, by making their prime aim the attainment of positions of worldly power—in order to spread the Gospel more effectively, of course.”

My daughter’s horse boo says love horses, fuck colonialism, which is very valid.

Please fill this in, what the government is proposing is cruel and unnecessary and reading through all the different questions really lays that bare.

anyway the consultation shuts tomorrow, one minute to midnight UK time: www.gov.uk/government/c... Amnesty have some good guidance here. Go on: media.amnesty.org.uk/documents/Am...

filled out the horrible settlement consultation and I’m sorry, the question that is framed as a negative so that you have to ‘strongly disagree’ with something not happening?? This has enraged me

The ancient praise-shout, "Hallelujah,"

Soft, pink branding, hard-right politics The far-right, anti-migrant Pink Ladies in Kent are attempting to present themselves as a grassroots initiative concerned solely with women’s safety. searchlightmagazine.com/2026/02/soft...

thank you also for those disappointments and failures

America! I hear you're excited about some #SuperbOwl today. Let me suggest these superb owls instead: milkweed.org/book/the-com...

Almighty God, who hast knit

TV peaked when every planet on a sci-fi show would look like [SOMEWHERE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA].

Apologies for crashing the thread, but seeing you here reminded me that ‘Tomb with a View’ and ‘Steeplechasing’ were two of my absolute favourite reads last year, the way you balance history/architecture/the present human dimension is beautiful.

Poetry recommendation: read Simon Armitage’s Pearl // Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a weekend an loved them - utterly beautiful but also really thrilling to read. I am now reading Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them (90% through) & it is a fun but also surprisingly moving read.

The thing is, if you think Jesus *is* just a human teacher, then the Jesus you arrive at (having stripped out the supernatural bits, since you have to do that if you think he's merely human), isn't very likeable.

Rachel Reeves: "It is not right that people who don't go to university bear the cost for others to." I don't use local leisure centres and I don't drive, so will I be made exempt for taxation that pays for all that stuff? Or is it only education we'll be going after

To no one's surprise. www.thepinknews.com/2026/01/29/h...

I'm sorry, but the reaction to Brianna Ghey being murdered by people she knew offline *because she was transgender* becoming 'we should stop teenagers from being on social media' rather than 'we should deal with the recent horrifying rise of transphobia in the UK' is unbelievably fucking bullshit.

This is utterly ridiculous, but it’s not imo *more* ridiculous than any of the other Shakespeare conspiracy theories, tho’ I see that as always it depends on classist (& laughably wrong) assumptions about what a provincial grammar school education meant back then. www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/shak...

Greek authorities are pushing new measures that would punish people working for organisations registered in the Ministry of Migration and Asylum’s “NGO Registry.” CSOs in Greece stand united and defiant against these attacks on the fundamental right to defend human rights.👇

If they'd led with who was writing it, maybe I would have been less sceptical...! (Also because frankly I am a fan of people I like getting (presumably!) well-paid gigs).

You know where you can find mass infant remains? right alongside and under the foundations of medieval churches. because infant mortality was heartbreakingly high and these assholes are doing everything they can to bring that back

The anchestors (Thule inuits) of the inuits in Greenland today migrated from Canada in 1400, about 400 years after the Norse arrived in Greenland. Paleo inuits lived in the north when the norse settlers arrived in the south, and they were displaced by the Thule inuits.

Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calleth us each by name, and follow where he doth lead;

Singing

A few days ago, I stood in the graveyard of an 1100 year old church, getting damper and damper in the drizzling rain. A woman walked into the graveyard, waved, said hello, and, as we had previously arranged, handed me a paper bag full of human bones. The life of a churchwarden is a strange one...

Guardian headline: 'use of ADHD meds has more than tripled!! 😱😭🚨' Article details: barely anyone who might need the meds has access to them 🤷🏻‍♀️

The US granted visas to Jews but only allowed 30,000 in from Germany a year. You had to wait for your number to come up. Meet Robert Smallbones. An unassuming British diplomat who 'hacked' this system so effectively (saving 48 THOUSAND Jews) the UK government kept his scheme secret for decades /1 🧵

we hear so much about trans people from the British press yet so rarely hear from them - I'm really pleased this piece was commissioned, and will also be in the physical paper: www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

Not for the first time, it looks like Channel 4 just handed the keys to their socials to an evil genius:

MLK was only 39 when he was killed. Growing up, I thought that was old. But I’m 43 now and I’m stunned by the burden he shouldered at such a young age. I’m also a lot more aware of how hard it is, at any age, to carry the hopes and dreams of an oppressed people on your shoulders, as so many do.

the great thing about it being the year of cabbage is it will also be the year of broccoli, the year of cauliflower, the year of brussels sprouts, the year of kale

Springsteen dedicated “The Promised Land” to the “memory of slain Minneapolis woman Renee Good, decrying the ‘Gestapo tactics’ that he said have resulted in a climate where citizens can be ‘murdered for exercising your American right to protest.’” variety.com/2026/music/n...

I must point out that the consensus position of Greenlanders is not "we are content with Denmark," it is "we are trying to build up and diversify our economy so that we can become an independent country at soonest possible opportunity." Notably, of course, neither of these positions involves America

V. Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin;

"What happened to losing weight the old fashioned way?" Says the most boring, mid looking bloke in every office up and down the land. Every time they say it I can hear them. This is why I am the way I am.

Museums / kid places opening at ten is the most louche nonsense out there. Do you know how long I’ve been up by 10am do you know how many hours I’ve had to fill? where were you at eight which is basically lunchtime you might as well wait until dusk and serve absinthe to everyone on entry jeez

Always a highlight of my week, but this episode is especially charming!

the only ADHD advice that anyone needs is: don't sit down, never sit down, sitting down is what gets you

When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the foreigner. The immigrant who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself, for you were refugees in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. —Leviticus 19

Video was leaked today of UK police setting dogs on and using CS spray on people seeking asylum, protesting their detention under the "one in, one out" policy, inside a detention centre (in case you thought the UK immune from what ICE is doing in the US): www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Here's how the Earth article looked in 2001 when Wikipedia was a month old, long before Wikipedians realized their fledgling online encyclopedia would be read and edited by astronauts in space someday