I edited a Wikipedia article recently to remove a statement that said Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were "aging actors". At the point described, she was a decade younger than I am now.

My day

40 years ago we’d have congressional hearings falsely accusing metal bands of putting backwards messages in their songs that told kids to kill themselves & now we have a planet-killing chatbot that’s all like “bet you won’t commit suicide chickenshit bitch” & the government is like here’s $5 billion

The British government admits it is now monitoring VPNs use by UK residents. Regulator Ofcom has contracted with an AI-powered surveillance service to detect the number of citizens using VPNs to evade the Online Safety Act. The UK tech minister has said a VPN ban is on the table.

Will they also be boycotting Question Time and Kuenssberg?

Iain M. Banks wrote science fiction about intelligent drones doing this, a couple of decades or more ago

If your image is a screenshot of 100 words of text, then your ten-word alt text isn't cutting it.

𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐚𝐲 Montse still has bound copies of The Amazing Pudding – the Pink Floyd fanzine that @pigsonthewing.org.uk and I coedited when we were small children. #britishpuddingday #pinkfloyd #theamazingpudding #fanzine #dogsofbluesky

This is very unfair to Liberace

"One day, son, all this will be concrete"

WAC wrong-headedness (that's the BBC Written Archives Centre) I've brought together the key links for the campaign against the changes which now make independent and exploratory research at WAC impossible - and why this matters. www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/wac-wrong-he...

The UK requires age verification to see "rude" posts.

Fascinating that you’ve tagged in violence against women charities when among the things that have been forced to age gate or shut down as a result of the #OnlineSafetyAct are reddit support groups for sexual assault survivors. Also… Brits don’t tend to say ‘parking lot’, who made this video?

He said that the agents would throw food at them to eat. The agents threatened to withhold food for a week and to beat him up if he didn't sign deportation papers. He said he saw others refuse and get beaten/receive no food. He signed because he was afraid.

A family friend was telling us about what her husband shared about his experience in Broadview before he was deported back to Mexico. She's been sharing to friends and family because she's just in disbelief & horror what her husband told her. She wasn't able to talk to him until he was in Mexico.

Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default. Here's how to turn it off. First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner

“It broke my heart, that was my savings towards a new car,” one woman who paid Milne tens of thousands of pounds told us. “He has just wiped me out.” Who is Andrew Milne - the solicitor sending "very aggressive" letters to Sheffield homeowners? www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-london-law...

What, R2D2 fights Marvin?

Fascinating article on AI, @wikipedia.org, and the fate of less widely used human languages in @mittechreviewbr.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...

While the loss of life in Louisville is terrible, it could have been so much worse. Looking at maps and aerial photography, its almost as though the plane was threaded between the biggest (and presumably most densely occupied) buildings.

Grokipedia still saying "The 2025 Dutch general election is a snap parliamentary election scheduled for 29 October 2025" and "The 2025 New York City mayoral election is scheduled for November 4, 2025". Zohran Mamdani article has not been updated. Has no article on UPS Airlines Flight 2976.

Might add "Professional Relaxer" to my LinkedIn profile

Quotes here from Tory leader Alden beggar belief.

Our country is having some kind of collective mental crisis, part 67

Can anyone in #Singapore help me out? I'd like a copy of this news story - eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/d... But it says "This may only be viewed from the multimedia stations at NLB Libraries." Is it possible to get a full resolution image? Thanks!

I lost the framed original of this while I was going through St Pancras on Sunday Nov 2nd around 3pm. Would love if it had been found by anyone?

All issues of Mycotaxon (1974–2024) are now digitised, #OpenAccess & discoverable in BHL! Thx to the work of Diane Rielinger & BHL’s Team #RetroPIDs, every article now has a DOI, connecting 50 years of #Mycology to today’s scholarly network. #Fungi 🍄 🧪 🔗 www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography...

Guardian writer still confused about this web thingy

November is the peak month for wintering Woodcock arrivals. Unfortunately, Woodcock are prone to colliding with buildings during their noctural migration. If you find a dead or injured bird, please report it via the BirdTrack App, or email [email protected]. 📷 Woodcock by Liz Cutting / BTO

Guardian writer still confused about this web thingy

County boundaries weren't always as neat as we'd like them to be. The area around Meppershall in Bedfordshire was particularly complicated giving rise to this cartographical equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders: HARTFORD SHIRE intermixed with BEDFORD SHIRE The Limits uncertain #MappyMonday

If you want to understand the emotional end intellectual malaise of British politics, this piece by @mjrobbins.com is a pretty good place to start. It effectively describes a country that has gone mad. open.substack.com/pub/martinro...

We've just added more historic Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland to our website. You can now compare first edition one-inch to the mile maps dating from the 1860s to 1870s with second edition maps published between 1898 and 1902. maps.nls.uk/os/one-inch-...

Can a CC License Constrain Fair Use or Other Copyright Limitations or Exemptions? scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/11/03/c...

So Trump doesn’t know who he’s pardoning? Sounds like this ought to be a major congressional investigation.

Excellent work that shows yet again why the cuts in Birmingham were never justified ‘having done a fresh analysis of the council’s 2022-25 financial accounts, James Brackley [U of Glasgow] claims the council underestimated its reserves position by more than £1bn’ www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

#GLAMWikiPT has been a thought provoking conference, with lots to ponder and plenty of inspirational stories. The presentation by Olena Vinsent and Viacheslav Mamon of Wikimedia Ukraine was especially important.

In which it's suggested that the not very good Trove website may have cost £2M.

@misterabk.bsky.social Would you record a 10-second sample of your spoken voice, for your Wikipedia bio, please? #WikiVIP

Does anyone know where the Iguanodon footprints found in the Greensand near Arthur Conan Doyle's house in May 1909, and which ended up on display in his billard room, are today? I suspect they remained with the family, but there are a lot of potential museums they could have ended up in.

If you're a member of the National Trust remember to vote for council members by midnight tonight. Use the Quick Vote option. Entryist pressure group Reform Trust is trying to seize control. Stop them Voting is quick and easy if your membership card is at hand secure.cesvotes.com/V3-3-0/nt25/...

21 years ago today I thought, huh, looks interesting, and created a Wikipedia account. Things sort of snowballed from there. It's been fun. 21 thoughts on Wikipedia, in no particular order: 🧵

Pleased to have played a part in making this happen

Might add "dew pond maker" to my LinkedIn profile

Geoffrey C.S. Ingram and H. Morrey Salmon are, clearly, two distinct people. This Goodreads search returns three of their works, in each case conflating them as one person But differently in each case

Wikidata Map in 2025 Another year, another map, and another Birthday for Wikidata. Last generated in 2024 by @tarrow and @outdooracorn, this year I have put the work in just ahead of the 13th Wikidata birthday to have a look at what's changed in terms of items with coordinates this past year on…

A Grokipedia search for ".jpg" (/with/ quotes) certainly finds lots of hits, for a site with no images. Many appear to be pages cribbed from Wikipedia, without attribution, where the corresponding images are used.

My latest piece, on open access and scholarly publishing - revealing my inner fangirl to the world in the process (you are not shocked, I know) 📚 #AcademicSky

100 years ago today Howard Carter opened Tutankamoun’s inner most coffin and saw the pharaoh’s mask for the first time. Here’s the photo taken that day. It’s in with all the astonishing excavation papers and photos at the @griffithinstitute.bsky.social

Airline buffs might enjoy the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives' collection of Airline Luggage labels, back from the golden age of airplane travel. CW: some stereotypical imagery of local people and one tiny swastika on a blimp #airplanes #Lufthansa #airbus www.flickr.com/photos/sdasm...