A brief thread on Trump renewing his threat to sue the BBC. (Note I am not an American lawyer, this is perspective of an English legal commentator.) >

What could possibly go wrong?

Here's my plea to the government, media and everyone else to stop treating NHS administrators as a problem to be eliminated, rather than the glue which holds the whole organisation together.

Still not seen Toy Story 4...

AI is not the Dot com bubble It's much worse The internet did become a massively useful technology "AI" is almost useless. The massive resources out into it are just being burned. Literally.

I've always felt that Johnson and Farage put self-interest over the national interest - hence their dallying with Putin and his oligarchs. But directly colluding with a foreign government to take down the BBC feels like an act of supreme treachery

Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.

The team behind a planned collection of the newspaper strip “Eartha”, by Donne Avenell and John M. Burns, are still looking for five more pieces of original art. If you have any of the attached, please e-mail [email protected] | downthetubes news story downthetubes.net/comic-art-ap...

In the next week or so I should be getting: The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor by @bryan-talbot.bsky.social S 2 of Blake's 7 on blu ray A 1,000 piece jigsaw of Josh Kirby's cover of @terryandrob.bsky.social 's Hogfather And I'm equally excited about all 3. Not quite sure what that says about me.

We need this law in the UK!

(explaining an american car to a european) yeah so imagine if you were sitting in the back seat while driving,

OK, so now we've got a #LEGO #StarTrek set (#StarTrekTNG no less!), when are we going to get a #LEGO #StarTrek computer game. Yes, I know they're so last century, but they're about all I can cope with these days!

I’ve just launched my #Christmas Gift Guide Here’s an offer that might tempt you to have a look www.gailmyerscough.co.uk/christmas-gi...

Reality v. msm fearmongering.

We need one night a year where we turn all the lights off so we can enjoy the stars without light pollution. I think most would think it sounds like the preamble to The Purge but we all just need to agree to be nice while we look at the Milky Way.

Or maybe we should provide a universal basic income for ALL humans, no exceptions, no means tests (just take it back from the billionaires at income tax time). Humans shouldn't need to work to live. We are not work machines!

Looking up death statistics (always fun and surprising) half of the 21,000 or so accidental UK deaths are falls, poisonings claim a quarter, far more than road accidents (7%) Knife/sharp object deaths account for around 260, guns 29. Less than 600 homicides per year seems remarkable for 70m people.

Thread.

Very much this. I'm supposedly in the Boomer generation, but I was born right at the tail end and I haven't seen the benefits, like we early retirement etc. at all. The boundaries are arbitrary and therefore meaningless.

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...

David Lammy seriously attacking Robert Jenrick over the state the Tories left the prison & court systems. Everything was failure & outrageously the Shadow Justice Secretary tried to claim these problems started just 14 months ago. Jenrick is just as bad as every single other Tory.

Videos shared hundreds of times online claim that from 1 November the UK government will slow down the internet after midnight. But this isn’t true. The government has not announced any such policy.

I‘m mostly vegetarian these days. Helps that I know how to cook, and enjoy doing it. Apparently, going even partially veggie (eating significantly less meat) is one of the best things you can do to help combat climate change, so you should give it a go if you can.

It's the Fesshole/Vagina Museum crossover event you've all been waiting for. Tons of you tagged us into this across all of our socials, asking for a fact-check. The consensus of the reply guys is that it Didn't Happen. However, this is in fact very possible. Here's why...

you say "i asked chatgpt" i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]" an improv group wrote this report instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group

Fewer than 2% of UK TV adverts feature only Black or only Asian people in the cast; the overwhelming majority of ads with ethnic minority presence have mixed or cross ethnicity groups. Sources: 1. C4 Survey www.isba.org.uk/system/files... 2. Diamond creativediversitynetwork.com/wp-content/u...

Lovely stuff (as usual, of course) from Gail here. Would brighten any Christmas.

It is a great scheme - & the science is pretty simple/old. Important thing to remember that in this screening test you get lots of false positives - which is OK because there is an good gold standard test as a next line. However, false positives can be very anxiety provoking so hope yours is OK.

Terry Pratchett books will make you feel better through anything, for the duration of your life. Every reread brings a joke or pun or reference you didn't get before. Decades of joy, hilarity and genius.

UK approves UK’s largest solar farm (in Reform UK heartland Lincolnshire) - "Solar is our cheapest source of energy - it’s no wonder it's Britain’s favourite" says Paul Morozzo at @greenpeaceuk.bsky.social www.gov.uk/government/n...

Q for the sci-fi fans - what would say are the biggest Malthusian-themed mid-20thc works (e.g. on overpopulation). As non-fan I’d default to Logan’s Run & Soylent Green but sure I’m missing good stuff. Pref film but books OK (both =perfect). 1945-1980. #HistSTM

Brexit is Farage and his fellow Brexiters' shitstorm to own. He/they can't be allowed to just pivot from heckle to heckle and bad idea to worse - while blaming everyone else - without consequences. So the suggestion that Labour are going to amplify that truth is to be welcomed.

The fundamental divide is between… Those who live off wages And those who live of wealth But those who live of wealth will do everything in their power to convince you the divide is between immigrants and non-immigrants, black and white, trans and non-trans… … ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE REALITY.

Modest proposal: BBC BRING BACK 'TOMORROW'S WORLD'. Science, tech, environment reporting are woeful currently. Something that blasts excitement about what a golden age we're in of discovery (vaccines, computing, space exploration etc etc) but can also be a trojan horse for warnings on climate etc

Trump's $100,000 skilled worker visa fee gives Britain a golden opportunity to attracted global talent. Needless to say, we're going to piss it away because we're scared of upsetting Nigel Farage. inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...

Lords Heseltine & Kinnock seem more alive to these self-evident truths than most members of the Commons. Similarly, I find thinkers with direct lived experience of far right dictatorship, Greeks of a certain age for example, crystal clear about what’s happening now.

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

“Dishcloths”? Boris Johnson was always an arrant racist.

"AI could have been cool" Me, shaking that opinion vigorously. IT. IS. NOT. AI. It is at best a learning model that aggregates an aggressively mid study of data points and attempts to extrapolate information. The generative aspect of it is based entirely off of stolen content. Fuck. Off.

In memoriam...

Success! The UK Government has said that it will extend legal recognition to humanist marriages in England & Wales. Recognition will be introduced as part of a broader package of marriage reforms which the Government says will be subject to a further public consultation launching in the new year.

I enjoy a well-thought-out, rule-based magic system in fiction as much as anyone, BUT I also think that we should give more props to what Terry Pratchett did in the Discworld books, where it was less about rules and more about vibes and, more importantly, what fit a given story the best. 🧵

So what are the chances of a military coup in the US in the next few years?

Streeting calls Farage "a snake-oil salesman of British politics", attacks his courting of anti-vaxxer quackery, says Reform would be a disaster for NHS: www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

I’m opening a movie theater in which I show recently released films that I ripped from the internet but the studios are welcome to opt out if they wish.

When Kuenssberg said "20K is a lot of money to lots of people", I wish Starmer had said "Yes, and 885K is a lot more - maybe you can ask Farage where his waitress girlfriend came by that kind of dosh - but you're not going to, are you?" He must go on the offensive and stop this shit in its tracks.

Absolutely nobody - outside of the C-suite of the manufacturer - wants subscriptions for functions in their cars.

So Starmer is backing ID cards - which I do not like - in order to facilitate this government’s ugly immigration policies - which I also do not like - and in doing so is apparently spiralling down the electoral drain and throwing votes to Farage - whom I do not like? Fan-fucking-tastic.

It's absolutely astonishing: In just about 13 years, Norway has skyrocketed from virtually no sales of zero-emission battery electric vehicles to nearly 100% of all new passenger car purchases.

Ed Davey, "It's so frustrating, so infuriating that Nigel Farage gets such an easy ride from the media" "As he lies, as he divides, the BBC and others given Farage so much time and attention" "But they never hold him to account for all the damage he has already done" "The damage of Brexit"