ce post est tellement @mitildide.bsky.social coded

Oh goodness, and the new instalment of the Amina al-Sirafi series by @shannonchakraborty.bsky.social. V excited about that too. (I am excited about all the books, John!)

Of all the 80s things for them to reference, I never expected Chockablock

Sir Terry Pratchett is best understood as one of the most interesting, deeply ethical practical (I would say Pragmatist but I cede to actual experts) philosophers of the late 20th Century who just happened to work in deconstructed fantasy literature as his medium.

If you do get one of these for Christmas please be a responsible owner and pick-up after them.

All I want for Christmas is an obituary notice for Donald Trump choking to death on a dildo carved from a single giant crystal of capsaicin.

Oops. Just opened a cupboard and discovered a million documents I didn’t know I had.

Current special relationship is that Britain gives Donald Trump two state visits, and he attacks bans British citizens from entry to the US www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I mean yeah it’s an authoritarian takeover but can we take some comfort in the fact that the people doing it are INSANELY stupid?

I am once again tapping the sign.

@gailsimone.bsky.social Not in Canada, just in SPACE

From tomorrow night onwards, there’s a series of lighthearted Only Connect festive specials on BBC Two. But there’s a proper episode tonight at 8pm, for anyone who wants a last shot at difficulty before the liqueurs kick in. (When you watch tomorrow night’s, you’ll know how literally I mean that.)

My husband said "I wouldn't be able to move on that quickly" about a friend whose wife had died. I wouldn't either, but that's mainly because he's put me off men for life. When he dies I will live alone happily with my cats.

So, just to confirm, the BBC can’t keep Robin Ince on the air because his trans allyship brings the organisation into disrepute, but they can keep David Walliams, who performed Nazi salutes at the recording of this very show, on the air despite him being predatory towards women. Cool. Very normal.

So Bob Cratchit would have been paid £2,881.51pa in today’s money for a 40 hour work week. If he still did a 60 hour week it’d be £4322.26. So Scrooge was a certified bastard, but at least he didn’t spend his money on space ships or AI

40 hours per week at 1.25p per hour is £26pa (we can assume he wouldn’t get any time off so we can do that as a 52 week year rather than a 48 week year), £26 in 1843 vs today, is a change in value of 10982.7% with an average annual inflation rate over the intervening 182 years of 2.61%

Keep seeing people say that Bob Cratchit would be on £60k per year adjusted for inflation and that Scrooge was better than modern bosses, but, Bob Cratchit was on 15 shillings per week for 60 hours of work. So 75p in new money, but, doing that job now he’d be on 40 hours per week.

I’ve been your best friend for over 30 years and you’re just going to sack me off for some guy you’ve know for, what? Like a year? Friend: for the purposes of this conversation can we just agree to call him my son?

Does anyone wanna see a really good Getty image of Rita Moreno and Sam The Eagle having dinner in 1979?

Re-reading IT by Stephen King, and now having read his full canon and going back it strikes me how well that first chapter of the book is written, the first description in chapter 1 is of dead traffic lights, a reference to the dead lights of It that ends the chapter balancing the story of Georgie

Most people think teaching involves filling in empty spaces in children's knowledge. Actually, it's disabusing them of bollocks that they've picked up from halfwits on the internet and, often, their families.

These are the people who are willing to go on the record. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...

If any journalist wants to talk to a trans man with a PhD in Human Genomics who was trained in labs that studied the evolution of sex, I'm right here Or just keep platforming Republicans who have a 5th grade understanding of biology so they get more trans people killed, sure 🤷🏻‍♂️

On the off-chance that you are one of the three people left in the world who hasn't heard me talking about stegosaurs, you can catch me here, on The Ancients podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=I9Vk...

Tonight in The December Comfort Watches: John Wick! Or, why you shouldn't mess with Keanu Reeves. Or his dog. whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/16/t...

Apples xkcd.com/3180/

My little nephew is too young to read my stories, but he adores me and wants to read my stuff. So I wrote him a children's book, just for him. He loved it. This year he wrote his own version of that book as a gift to me. It has the same color cover. It has crayon illustrations. It owns.

Dial M for metaphor.

Earlier this year all conservatives agreed that mocking somebody's murder should cost you your job, so one of them should go fire the president.

Sounds about right.

Hoo, this blew up. If you like this sort of thing you should probably buy Private Eye - I write the Street of Shame pages about newspaper ridiculousness there. Private Eye - Select Your Offer share.google/jHbB5qkXWjac...

Great sketch on the empty space that is Reform.

No idea what telly Lord Sewell is watching, because I can't think of a single show with this plotline let alone it being something that is inescapable for young white men who subsequently now face a crisis of masculinity drawing them to the far right?? 🙃

This column by @stephenkb.bsky.social on the antisemitic mass murder in Australia, reflecting on the justifications for acting on ancient hatreds, is very good indeed. Depressingly comments have not been enabled. Because they couldn’t be. www.ft.com/content/4209...

Is it because you write about it in the Daily Mail? Oh - it actually is.

came dangerously close to spitting out the tea I was drinking when going through that shot/chaser

Rob Reiner: I'm going to make a coming of age drama, a fantasy adventure story, a romantic comedy, a psychological horror and then a courtroom drama. Us: Across your entire career? Reiner: In a 6 year period. Us: That sounds- Reiner: -Each one will be arguably the best movie in that genre.

That was… quick.

my favorite thing about the benoit blanc movies is that they aren't really about benoit blanc. he is not grappling with demons from his past. we are not getting flashbacks to the husband whose murder he never solved. he just shows up and does his job like mary poppins for homicides

WORD I am really, really tired of "we tease the tragic backstory of the detective" can't a detective just detect, the murder is surely sufficient drama.

One possible flaw in Bari Weiss's plan to remake CBS News in her image is that she is a bad and boring journalist and nobody actually likes her.

Look, you can have low taxation or you can have functioning public services. You can't have both. Lots of people, including the UK government, seem to have forgotten this fact. Taxation isn't theft. It's the foundation of society.

We should stop using euphemisms for death. My father wasn't "lost", I know exactly where he is. If my mother had "gone to a better place" I'd visit her in Cheshire.

I am in a real ale pub in Amsterdam and here is the customer at the next table (who drops in regularly for dinner):

Just when I thought I couldn't admire the man more... 🎯 🎯 🎯 💯 💯 💯 👍 👍 👍

How the BBC & ITV give disproportionate coverage to Farage & Reform: hard evidence from a serious study. BBC & ITV now give Reform more coverage than the Conservatives, more than the Lib Dems & nine times the Greens. Superb research from Stephen Cushion. www.enhancingimpartiality.com/blog/broadca...

Here is a bit of my resignation speech from last night

The fact is no presenter has ever had to leave the BBC for expressing conservative views, or even explicitly endorsing a right-wing party. Was never a problem for Jeremy Clarkson. Was never a problem for Andrew Neil. Was never a problem for Alan Sugar

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people