Design legend Margaret Calvert is 90 today. Look at that cake! If you've ever admired a road, rail or metro sign in Britain it's likely she had something to do with it. One of Britain's design heroes - happy birthday to her. Photo by: @oshgallerylondon (IG) Cake by: mybaker.co

Universities all over Europe are cutting language programs and closing the doors to the world. We want to get a more complete picture: where, when, why? If you know of any such cases, please tell us (and share the link with your language and linguistics contacts)! elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/13...

eg I’ve been experimenting with how to do original reporting in a video format on various platforms. You go “cool, 1.3m people saw a video I uploaded to TikTok in two months!” Oh hang on it earned me £135 in that time and is a massive loss leader, I should just be churning AI ragebait instead.

Middle English Dictionary ancillary materials, files, and documentation from Paul Schaffner, consolidated and updated, free to download. Some fantastic stuff here! #medievalsky www.medictionary.info

🚨 #medievalsky 🚨 Middle English Dictionary update via FB: "In its 100-year history, MED has enjoyed periods of support, and periods when that support was lacking. It is about to enter on one of the latter. After this year...UMich will no longer fund ongoing editorial work and maintenance." 🧵

The Daily Star have bought another lettuce 👀

"this would be really bad and so, ipso facto, it can't happen" is the assumption underlying the entire Trump era and it's sort of bleakly funny to see people clinging to it even as the train is jumping the tracks

My book is 50% off through Princeton's Spring Sale if you were looking to snag it at a deal. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

me, buying a book written by someone who I've never met but we sometimes like each other's posts on Bluesky: my friend wrote this

Hailing from the death word of Crin kli Bo Ten - the Blobby Marines worship the emperor in his manifestation of the Great Ginger, an ancient and incarnate figure of vengeance found in the most ancient and obscure of arcane texts Driven by a desire to Get Your Own Back they seek the direst foes

"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Keir Starmer has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Labour”

there'll be no Special Envoy on Global Finance role, then. i'll tell Gordon Brown

What baffles me is the disconnect between how determined Starmer is to stay in office and how lacklustre his efforts have been to be anything other than underwhelming as PM. Why the former if not the opposite of the latter?

I have read other books

Once more, for visibility: "Bullet trains will wipe out short-haul flights."

In 'Multiculturalism rocks, OK' news today: Bristol elects its first Somali Lord mayor today - a bloke who came here as a refugee and now serving in city's highest ceremonial role. Something to celebrate

Burnham wood comes to dunces inane

I think about this at least once a week since it happened Still waiting

Wut

Downing Street sources have tonight said the Prime Minister plans to come out fighting. "If necessary, he is prepared to give another speech about his dad."

If you can’t change Prime Minister because of the bond markets, then the bond markets *are* the Prime Minister.

This works in person too. Everyone really underrates how many bigots live in fear of the question “What the fuck are you talking about mate?” One reason why Farage has such a hair trigger for his temper is a life where he’s repeatedly realised he doesn’t have the social credit to cover his racism

Snack maker Calbee will switch to black-and-white packaging for flagship products including potato chips as a naphtha shortage caused by the Iran war squeezes ink supplies. Other manufacturers might do the same.

Thought this was a model response from @celiarichardson.bsky.social to a pretty harsh article in the Spectator about the National Trust

This may be my favourite argument ever advanced by a politician:

Look at some of those Crossrail flows. anita.garden/londonriders/

When I was 10 years old my favourite Disney was either Robin Hood or Sword in the Stone so fuck yes (Also they are still amazing)

Have we considered locking the PLP in a room and slowly making it more uncomfortable until they come up with an actual leader not one who may possibly just about be available in a years time? The alternative is Thunderdoming it

oh my god

I'm very excited to announce... RichmondCon! Come join us Saturday, 20th June at Books on the Rise for a day filled with nerditry, in the idyllic surrounds of Richmond-upon-Thames!

Easy one this. You ended up here by doing exactly what you're doing now. Which is all you know how to do: vexatious anonymous briefings to hacks designed to shitstir & fuck over colleagues & absolutely no positive political project beyond that

Thoughts from a Labour MP: “We have to face up to the fact every single one of them is fucking useless. Andy’s strategy has been a disaster. Angela has bottled it. Ed clearly a hiding to nothing. Wes is AWOL. God knows what Catherine West is doing. I am not quite sure how we ended up here.”

Relying on shouting names in a waiting room full of people with potential hearing issues seems like a very optimistic way to run an outpatients ward

I’m sure Stevenage is actually fine but this my experience actually getting here for hospital appointments so I am firmly radicalised against it

The UK has a real problem where lots of load-bearing institutions have simply quiet quit their jobs, but still aggressively demand the respect that would be due to people who are still actually doing something for society

"This will transform historical research!" Cool but it's already being transformed out of existence by the same forces pushing these transformative technologies. Forgive us if we're skeptical of a moment that's telling us "This will help you do your work--which we despise--faster and better."

Slightly increase a band: The Whomst

“Have we got another PM”

It’s so odd that Chris Mason & his colleagues are not inducing a ‘crunch moment’ for Farage. Why is he not obliged to explain how he became an MP pushing cryptocurrency after being given £5 million by a cryptocurrency billionaire? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Hospital cafes are always so unremittingly grim Even by Costa standards

Warning for board game folks: this site has a list of industry people that uses AI slop for images and bios. I’m trying to figure out how to reach out to them to ask to have the entry on me removed. Wanted to spread awareness on the slop. www.4pillargames.com/about/

it’s such shibboleth of modern politics to blame politicians for failing town centres when the primary driver is - surely - all of us buying more and more stuff online

I kind of think that if your Mouse Trap gambit to save your party and your government depends on one guy becoming PM and that one guy can't be found within the 400+ people you actually got elected then that is very much a you problem

All I’ve been able to think of with this story is the over filled walrus at the Hornimann www.horniman.ac.uk/story/friend...

"There are no more juniors. There was a funeral for their passing in 2024. Nobody came. The machine does what they do now, but cheaper. Of course, juniors weren't valuable for what they produced, they were valuable for who they would become: the senior engineer who knows where the bodies are […]

People say scientists are serious but marine biologists will spend hours quietly sitting around tables drawing on styrofoam cups and then tying said cups to deep sea submarines Because ocean pressure will squeeze the air from the cups And we are but human & we want tiny cup

I haven’t felt this disillusioned about the state of the U.K. in at least a week.

Important to note that the rally organisers didn’t invite the one Jewish leader of a political party that has been growing in support, but did invite Farage because Reform “is a serious party”