I'm willing to bet most of your feeds lack sufficient Highland Cattle. Yes, this one is black and not ginger. That's the original colour scheme. She's gorgeous.

Nature based holiday with kids: Me: "oh look! Oystercatcher!" James: "I do not understand why you get so excited about such a mid bird. Its like an Aldi puffin." Muttermutter nothing wrong with Aldi muttermutter NOT A MID BIRD.

I come with empty hands and the desire to unbuild walls.

Took the kids to visit the beautiful St Michael's Kirk in Linlithgow and the very lovely volunteers showed the kids some historic highlights. And this model. Apparently, there isn't usually a tiny Jesus in the door and they aren't sure where he came from. Which is wonderful in its own right.

This crow is not impressed with the weather.

Theology with my 8 year old... Me: "oh look. A crow." Caitlin: "it is hiding from the evil crow god." Me: "the existence of an evil crow god implies a good crow god, doesn't?" [1/2]

A lot of people clap and cheer at Arkell v Pressdram style legal letters. But the most deadly legal letters are calm and polite, and this one is lethal.

It's a terrible photo. But I am flattened with a migraine today and this little sunbeam has been taking cobwebs for its nest and cheering me up. Long tailed tit, Scotland...

Bloke on LinkedIn said I was "catastrophising, as women tend to do" when I said I made my kids tidy their rooms because mess drives me up the walls. Bet he has a cleaner.

How come “How are you going to pay for it?” is never asked about endless war?

This is so, so wrong. Labour continually going for the evil small minded nasty vote. Refugees deserve actual refuge once their case has been judged real. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

This is such a simple but also amazingly revelatory thing.

Listening to a sherlock Holmes story. "...and flown to tea, as agitated women will," explained Sherlock. Pssht, Conan Doyle. What do you know. [Puts kettle on].

Congratulations to Hammah Spencer and the people of Gorton and Denton! How about that? People *do* vote for progressive parties that stand up for what they believe in and you *can* win without being Diet Reform.

I just used "a bit systemsy" as a criticism in a big meeting and we appear to have collectively agreed it's a real word.

I went on a lunchtime excursion to the beautiful Palestinian Museum, Dundas St Edinburgh today. Well worth a visit.

If the paper that supported fascism in the 20s (both 20s) considers you a menace you’re probably doing something right

I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*. I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.

I went away and checked and apparently a Turkish Footballer in the physical real world really did perform CPR on a seagull. Just, more of this please. www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Any merit in the drivel I write comes from learning painstakingly how to write essays. To assay - to test - exactly what I thought and knew about a matter. Great essayists - Woolf, Orwell, Bacon, Montaigne, Hazlett - are utter intellectual joys as you read how they test themselves on topics too.

We are deciding right now whether we want to be a country with ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.

I've just signed "Back the National Commission Amendment" - Will you support the campaign too? actionstorm.org/petitions/nc... @OpenBritainHQ

Gosh, this is sort of beautiful. A 4000 year old data set.

Prevention remains a central aspect of the government’s reform story for health. But do rhetorical commitments translate into hard cash? Our blog explores the complex story of public health and prevention spending. Read more: https://bit.ly/4rDWbAM

I'd like to thank the people making a terrible fuss about Bad Bunny. As an increasingly dull suburban mum of 2, I rarely discover new music. Debi tirar mas photos has been my driving music of choice all week. 10/10 recommend.

This Starling really wants you to know how unhappy it is that you are not surrendering your bacon butty right now.

I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors. Great work everyone.

I just found out that the goddess Nemesis had an aspect of being a goose. Makes so much sense.

Well, this is beautiful. A journalist's reflections on what matters, written before he died. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My Facebook feed is amusingly full of King propaganda. Nothing about royalty bar the odd wedding photo all this time, and suddenly, the history bots I don't follow but turn up are full of Charles's love for textile industries and plants. And his TV show on Prime. Total coincidence, I'm sure.

A lot to think about here. The Borg represent both a classic, part-human monster, and also a society that rejects individual distinctiveness. There's an irony here, in that treating some kinds of people as monstrous plays a major role in pushing our society to be more borg-like.

Oh dear lord, they want to rule and can't choose the correct door.

The press are still insisting on referring to 14 year old children as underage women, and I want them to explain why. Other than that "the owner absolutely did not know these people at all nope of course not."

I think that "at best, astonishingly ignorant and ill advised" should also be a disqualification from senior political roles. It's your job to know stuff and get good advice. You fired the good advisors? Stop being in charge.

I just think if you can afford £6 a pint you can afford £6.05 a pint- or whatever they cost round your way- so that children can eat and stay warm.

Stop saying underage women. They are children.

'Bring back the two-child benefit cap to cut the price of a pint by 5p' is actually a perfect Reform policy, though. Immiserate thousands of people for a meaningless stunt.

Today's tiny up-cheering thing- bloke who realised his wallet had come out of his pocket on the bus in time and went back and got it. Hooray, bloke. Phew.

Epstein's predators were men. There are probably more rapists in the Epstein files than there are trans people in the UK. And yet the pearl-clutching TERFS are playing useful idiots to fascism by working to drive trans people out of public life, and worse.

Spring. We will get there. The light is coming back.

Hairy acorn! I didn't know there was any such thing. I'm finding the idea of hairy acorns oddly up-cheering.

Typewronger All-Night Bookshop Fundraiser: How to Help! - After our last post we've had so many comments and emails with folk asking how best to support the shop, so here goes! #typewronger #fundraising #notforproffit #donate #books #bookshop #comunity

[Not crying in the middle of a co-working space] This is absolutely lovely, everyone.

100 percent you're going to see some right wing jerks complaining that Springsteen has gone woke because they never once actually listened to his lyrics before

Politics isn't working. It's time to call time on the broken culture in Westminster and have a fresh start with a fair voting system. Add your name to @electoralreform.bsky.social‬'s call to #MakeSeatsMatchVotes action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/3782/pe...

Thole - a Scots word meaning to endure, to get through this - ye'll thole. See when everyone on LinkedIn was choosing their words and it was "elevate" or "connect" or "growth" - thole. This year, thole. We'll thole it.

A few years ago I read The Plague by Camus, during Covid, when it read like a straightforward narrative of plague. Of course for the 80 years before that everyone assumed it was a metaphor for fascism. And that works too. One must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence. Brilliant book BTW.

Today I remembered that Scottish rolls Royce factory workers in 1974 refused to fix Chilean war planes, grounded half the air force and saved many lives. Nae pasaran. I can probably do without Amazon, right?

Annually, on the last Tuesday in January- if you’re late for work and use the excuse “a bunch of Vikings & a longship were holding up traffic” it is perfectly acceptable. 😉 🔥 Wishing Guizer Jarl Lynden Nicolson, his squad and all a brilliant Up Helly Aa 2026! 🔥 #uphellyaa #vikings #lerwick