Dear UK Civil Service, Please, I beg of you, stop using ’Minister Surname’ in official communications (as well as informal conversations). Yours faithfully, Citizen Douglas. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Come for the horrific AI Christmas illustration with demonic snowmen and magical creatures. Stay for the deliberate dehumanization of people, even for Christmas.

Enjoyed this discussion on Clare Carlisle’s new book very much.

The 4 Cs, that's what Labour needs to focus on: Calmness, Competence, Care, and Communication - of its values and achievements. That's what any Labour leader needs to promise and deliver.

Seems a good moment to enjoy the best football single ever recorded, written by the great BA Robertson. youtu.be/gmzDOqUdu8A?...

The way this fella’s belting out the Albanian national anthem it’s almost making me feel proud to be an Albanian myself.

Oh well. Watched the highlights and it wasn’t even close. Well done to the @thornsfc.com for getting there, though.

Can’t be as bad as those JJ Abrams reboots, whatever this is like. Never seen any films so ruined by such terrible casting.

Scrolling through, and I misread the first bit of a post as saying a growing number of Republicans were planning “to vote to release the flies”, and in today’s dystopian timeline I was ready to believe it.

It didn’t ‘define the election for the public’. The election was defined by wanting to vote the Tories out of office. This tax pledge was not why anyone voted Labour. The real (unspoken) pledge Labour made was not to be a bunch of chaotic rule-breakers who couldn’t be trusted to run the government.

I'll be giving a talk with @williamtemplefdn.bsky.social on 4 December: 'The Third Dimension of Our Environmental Crisis'. Join us online 4 December, 6–7.15pm GMT for free eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-third-...

Honoured that @timjackson.org.uk has written this wonderful Foreword to this book!

The Quest for Prosperity | @timjackson.org.uk’s Foreword for @maitrereynard.bsky.social’s new book The Meaning of Growth: Anti-Environmentalist Rhetoric and the Defence of Modernity. → cusp.ac.uk/themes/aetw/... cc #Postgrowth #LimitsToGrowth #Progress #Modernity #ProsperityWithoutGrowth

Watching Olivia Moultrie develop into a world class talent has been one of my favourite things in football this year.

Er… @afcwimbledon1889.bsky.social WHAT is going on?

any policies that impede the uptake of solar impede resilience

This week in 1986: Marco Van Basten and one of the greatest volleys since records began. Holy Scissorbastard. What a goal.

This is the biggest point: no one can say what all these new data centres are *for* - other than the vaguest idea that this is the future and we have to keep up.

Off and on over the past couple of years I’ve been working my way through all the old Dr Who episodes from the beginning. This week it was time to say goodbye to Jon Pertwee. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

Oh the Traitors - I thought for all the world that final episode was going to be an anticlimax. But how wrong I was. It kept delivering right to the end. What television.

Been listening again to @robertrotifer.bsky.social’s brilliant album The Cavalry Never Showed Up these last couple of days, and especially this, the stand out track - youtu.be/pYXu_dbBmi0

Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC

A truly despicable performance from AFC Wimbledon there. Like 11 plus blokes who’d never met each other before. Well done to Gateshead and their fans - a lot to feel good about on the way home.

Another day another #Spiked pundit on #BBC. This time: Ella Whelan on #bbcaq. Spiked are right-wing shock jocks funded by the Trumpian Charles Koch. Profiled on the BBC all to provide clicks when Spiked offer no substance & nothing constructive to public debate.

The Sixties were a failed spiritual revolution. A nominalist revolt against the religion of mankind (the state/the people/the nation/the Man/das Man), it succeeded ultimately in replacing it with the religion of the individual - an illusory religion of subjectivity which is now collapsing into chaos

Radio 3’s Night Tracks is an abomination. Its celebration of the banality that classical music is a soothing escape from the fast-paced everyday world of the present makes a travesty of the entire station. I do hope a rearguard action was fought against the self-serving idiot who pushed it through.

"It’s hard to picture Powell as the smiler with the knife" Renewal co-editor Morgan Jones (@morganj0nes.bsky.social) has written for the Guardian about Lucy Powell's victory in Labour's deputy leadership election, and what it means for the future of the party

Trump Defends Demolition Of Yggdrasil, Ancient Tree Of Life https://theonion.com/trump-defends-demolition-of-yggdrasil-ancient-tree-of-life/

I tried to cover a lot of ground here. A few points developing the argument, regarding current government's "Pride in Place" etc: basically I like this stuff, but worry a bit about lack of realism about what they might achieve in isolation.

Trump’s doing more damage to that building than the Royal Engineers managed in 1814

Leavitt: "At this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president's main priority."

A really interesting conversation about posting and politics with politics poster Will Stancil:

It’s more important than ever these days to do what you can to lift the spirits of those around you. And that’s why I’m proud of giving the gift of laughter to my U14s by going completely a over t in goal tonight. One of those where trying to stay on your feet only makes it funnier.

In his new blog, CUSP researcher @maitrereynard.bsky.social explores the spiritual roots of political climate denial and society’s attachment to growth—and how defending growth has become a defence of modernity itself. → cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/blo... — cc #postgrowth #modernity #limitstogrowth

Iain McGilchrist in @jonathanrowson.bsky.social's Spiritualise report. I have much the same thought every time some AI assistant tries to justify its existence by popping up and asking if I want it to summarise whatever I'm reading.

I said to my daughter shall we watch something together? She gave me five minutes so I showed her the cabin scene from A Night At The Opera. youtu.be/PFu0KyrNAAA

"I wanted to address a recent interview in which I was egregiously misquoted as saying: 'I legit can’t wait to fire these ungrateful poors with our company’s new AI agent.'"

Rereading @jonathanrowson.bsky.social's landmark Spiritualise report for a talk I'm giving in December. Have got to the chapter on death. This is a good one to remind ourselves of. (Point 2 refers essentially to job-work, and not the meaningful kind.)

Radcliffe & Maconie are on sparkling form this morning. A joy. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

For no particular reason, ahem. Betteridge's Law, btw www.bbc.com/news/article...

Jumpers for goalposts! Bananas on the pitch for John Barnes! A lump of concrete in the eye of a Luton fan! And get to smash the train up on the way home!

I mean, I could be wrong… and who can really say what things would be like in a few years…. but I really do remain convinced that if the PM ordered the Royal Navy to blow up some trawlers in the Channel, they’d at least tell him they weren’t able to aim straight.

In case of interest @climateofgavin.bsky.social @climategeorge.bsky.social @kevinclimate.bsky.social @marchudson.bsky.social @katharinehayhoe.com @billmckibben.bsky.social @volts.wtf

“The importance of viewing climate denial as a defence of modernity is to understand that anti-environmentalists have got something right: there is something fundamentally incompatible between the idea of environmental limits and foundational aspects of the modern world-view.” My piece in Resilience

Please give it a Grade-length slumber. It needs a very good rest, to be rebooted in 15 years with absolutely no one who had anything to do with New Who involved.

Ok, I’m resolved to do a post a day on something that isn’t the state of the planet or the state of our politics.

Funny, because I thought the Devil was saving them for himself.

"...‘morbid irrationalism’, a degeneration of neoliberal arguments for growth into alt-right crackpotism. This is what happens when the demands of denying the worsening reality of climate change, while maintaining faith in a failing economic orthodoxy, pass the point of rational self-respect"

Climate denial and the defence of modernity www.resilience.org/stories/2025...