Name Four (More) Non-Person Things That Make Your Life Livable (Because You Hated Leaving Them Out): 5) Music 6) Finding interesting new rabbit holes to go down 7) Rereading a favourite book (or finding a great new favourite book) 8) Really Comfy Socks

Name Four Non-Person Things That Make Your Life Livable: 1) Houseplants 2) Art 3) Plushies 4) Kits for making things

Olives taste great with milk chocolate spread.

Maypole is very fun for all ages and very kid-friendly, so if you or someone you know is likely to be in (or able to get to) the neighbourhood! The EFDSS run great events.

There’s some very nice ones in this lineup. Particularly excited by the Chocolatier and her chocolate dragon, personally, but the Monster Hunter, Cute Witch, Unicorn Elf and Bubble Tea Fan are all great, too, and I’m kinda tempted to pick up a few extra of the marching band for Lego Park reasons.

Toto’s Africa. THE MOUNTAIN RISES LIKE A DIFFERENT MOUNTAIN ABOVE THE SERENGETI I’d lose it within a week. OTOH, they’d learn nothing except how long I can rant about song lyrics because I would be *very* hard to redirect.

Any Dick & Mary Francis Book With A Protagonist Over 25. Not remotely traumatic, just entirely bored by the more grownup concerns of divorce and mortgages and disappointment-in-life-thus-far and so on.

I have been firmly insisting that calcium lactate crystals are fake and a conspiracy planted by Big Cheese for over a decade now and I have no intention of stopping.

A Casablanca remake is one of my idle moments dream project speculations cos it’s near-perfect with like three problems (for instance I feel they could have hired an actor to play Laszlo instead of just propping up a block of wood). Obvs a modern version would never have The Resonance but still fun.

A photo of me has been hung in the National Portrait Gallery.

Starmer 2023 & Starmer 2026

Describe your favourite games poorly: A truly staggering amount of mass murder for the purpose of making fancy little outfits for your imaginary friends. Rules lawyering your way to the top of a tall pointy building.

This is a nice article about the effective use of Lego in an educational setting. (Also, the educational model is currently up for vote on Lego Ideas should you be sufficiently invested to throw it a vote.)

Huge news we finally have a wholly worthy target for EVERYONE to be mad at bsky.app/profile/kern...

I suppose I could claim the Thames - and it would certainly be less obscure - but really the closest is the River Quaggy.

I have a time thing (mainly: I understand time exists but we don’t really talk) and thus have trouble conceiving of the new year as a thing that matters, but obviously it *does* matter to people who are not me, so! Happy New Year and may it be better than the last.

As Is Tradition. (Also I can HIGHLY recommend the Official Plushie.)

I have honestly never seen an example of hearsay as clear as this. This anecdotal evidence was not even provided to the author by the subject! Assuming the guy even *existed* to tell unlikely tales (someone asked you if you were black? Suuure.) it’s still gone through layers of Telephone.

They do excellent work, so if you’ve got some money earmarked for donation and haven’t picked a recipient yet…

We’re nearly at the end of our @biggive.bsky.social #ChristmasChallenge. Thanks to your incredible support, we’re 77% of the way to our target. Please help us to raise a final £2,710, with all donations going directly towards supporting our youth folk activities. Donate now: bit.ly/4pT7C6V

Bluesky has a scold issue, people bursting into hobby posts to scream that the OP should be DOING SOMETHING IMPORTANT. I have come to the conclusion that we must fight fire with fire and scold the scolds.

Personally I think they should hire Tig Notaro to say all his lines and cgi her into the show in his place It is after all the traditional way of coping with such things

Please write to your MPs and ask them to vote against these cruel cuts. I do not think anyone voted Labour to get more austerity.

So… Austerity, then. We’re really going with trying to fix all the problems austerity has caused by doing more of it. Great. That’ll work. (It will not work.)

Even now I'm half wondering if this is some softening-up exercise for a more limited (but still dreadful) set of final proposals, but just to be clear - this would be an act of outright barbarity without precedent: not copying the Tories, worse than the Tories. www.itv.com/news/2025-03...

Scroll down, click “no” in answer to “was this page helpful?”, explain how wrong they are. I figure anything from the very brief (“restore the information about transgender and queer people, it is factually inaccurate without it”) to the elaborately loquacious will work just fine.

I am *very* excited by this new chonky plesiosaur development. Obviously the charm of snakey loch ness plesiosaur is immense, but this has a relationship with our current seascape and its denizens that has a charm of its own.

The Dickin Medal is the highest award that can be issued to animals in British military service. Bearing the words "We Also Serve" it has been awarded 75 times since its creation in 1943. Only one cat has ever received the award. This is the story of Able Seacat Simon, of HMS Amethyst. 🧵 1/25

I found myself starting to doomscroll, but instead of doing that I have decided to stop scrolling and tell you about communal shower traditions in Iceland and why I love them. And no, it‘s not sexual. It‘s because of mental health. Yes, this will be a 🧵 1/?

We can say this with confidence because we have diagrams! Popular Mechanics did a piece on the film and published a stage plan to show how it was accomplished. Vitagraph films tended to be among the most innovative of the 1900s and this is a fun look behind the curtain.

Most excellent thread giving a brief run through of the methods for making colour films in the silent era.

This is a thoroughly wonderful thread.

I don’t know what I expected a baby tapir to sound like, but I would not have predicted “adorable peeping” and I’m delighted.

I am locked into Microsoft at work but I can do anything I like at home, so Libreoffice is back in the works, baby! Crush the oppressor! Let's bring back all the browser wars Microsith propaganda!

The thing is, if enough people cancel their subscriptions and tell them why on the exit form, they will start panicking. It doesn't take that many of us to move the needle.

Find one hobby you love that involves regularly talking to people (dancing, tabletop, volunteering, etc) and one hobby you love that you can do completely by yourself (embroidery, reading, whittling, etc) and nourish yourself with them consistently and regularly. Many hobbies can do both! Still two.

This is v charming, and there is video!

I got my mandatory migration notice letter from ESA to UC and I’m… well. If there is a level of cope that would be ideal, it is not where I’m at. I would infinitely prefer being left alone to eke out my subsistence in peace.

Deeply charming thread.

I have reorganised my nail polishes, which, in my opinion, very nearly resembles being useful.

I’m so pleased Menswear Guy is here. His threads are excellent.

The alt text is worth a look. The Shard is never my favourite building but, uh, this is Worse. Or Better. Definitely Funnier.

Matt Rossi and his wife have long been pillars of the online gaming community. I can’t do much, but I can at least share this.

The later thread.

Ah. Per a more recent thread, I did guess correctly.

The local Christmas Fair has been cancelled on account of it being windy enough that it’s been judged unsafe, and look, I am decidedly not well enough anyway but I *had* made plans to send Partner out with a camera to Record The Shinies and I’m feeling moderately thwarted.

The replies here are absolutely chock full of Shiny Things. (And Garius is a good follow anyway if you like occasional history threads or women’s football or cat pictures.)

The CUTEST lil dino.

I can’t blame former home ed kidness for my lack of participation in the IKEA meme: My name just ends in “th”.

'Sooner or later it will dawn on these based-and-redpilled keyboard berserkers that the problem with winning an election and pumping the government full of your goons is that you do not then also get to be the counterculture' open.substack.com/pub/lauriepe...