As you may know, I have stopped using Twitter, and have decided to reproduce some of my more memorable threads here for posterity. Here’s one I hold wrote after a particularly engaging swordfighting lesson. Buckle up, swordfighting fans, because I *have* studied my Agrippa! [BIG ASS THREAD]

🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright: - 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is) 🧵 1/2

Finally visited a trendy shop that keeps being advertised to me to potentially buy a Xmas present - step in the door: there is a DJ playing thumping beats. Step out the door. Think I'll just order stuff.

Hot tip for those staying this weekend: One of the best films of the year just went up on @netflix.com Watch 'Left-Handed Girl' = Feel better about life. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rXn...

A couple of weeks of 2025 to go but I think we can all agree Colson Whitehead called it:

There are a lot of factors contributing to disillusionment among creators, but one big element is that you can work and strive and dedicate years to honing your craft and building an audience and still be fighting for pennies, while the money people will gladly throw billions at the new slop fad.

Please boost...people need to see this. 😭💔 A translator in the European Parliament burst into tears during the speech of 11-year-old Roman, who miraculously survived the Russian shelling of Vinnytsia 🎞: Radio Liberty

This is what you don't hear every time this junktank appears on the BBC. *Why not?* Great exposure by Sam and @desmog.com

Thank you all, the update than we can barely believe we get to make. To everyone who supported us through this last month, we couldn’t have even come close to this outcome without you all. Have a peaceful festive period, we’ll see you in the bookshop soon 🧡

The real victim at the centre of this absurd case is very clearly Dr Beth Upton To witness the way in which she’s been dehumanised and vilified by Peggie and their (Sex Matters) legal team, the tribunal judge, the British media, and UK politicians has been beyond horrifying Solidarity Beth

Note to self: Before recommending people in your specific animal-with-a-particular-condition online community watch a new nature doc because of the inspiring story about a wild animal with the same condition, make sure and watch to the end first... 😬

Reaching the point where I'd rather pay more for something if it comes with the guarantee I won't be asked to fill in any kind of feedback form

be the bitch doing something yourself that you want to see in the world

In London this week - recommendations for good gallery shows to check out during the day?

The diplomatic "achievement" of the ceasefire was to recalibrate the tempo of the genocide sufficiently to get it off the front pages and the news bulletins, thus alleviating the political pressure on Israel's western accomplices. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

I’m a past winner of the Orwell Prize & won partly because I exposed Vote Leave’s unlawful activities. Michael Gove was its co-convener & refused to answer a single q. He’s now a judge of the prize & our world is truly one that Orwell would recognise bylinetimes.com/2025/11/25/m...

Big time "Your dad commenting on the route your brother took home for Christmas" energy

Not saying I would be caught by sirensong but I would definitely crash my ship straight into a rock if I heard this

Tired: Lessons must be learned. Wired: C*nts must be prosecuted.

This is wild af

Time to look into your settings, folks.

Oh, look. That thing that was always going to be a total disaster turns out to have been a total disaster. I will never not be angry about this.

We have raised concerns about how Waterstones have chosen to open a sixth Edinburgh branch rather than a location in one of the many underserved communities across the country. ✍️: c.org/tRvvQM7Jrt (2/3)

“But the most absurd & preposterous of all… was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled ‘A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is’” —Charles Mackay (1814–1889) on the South Sea Bubble, in Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

3/ Since 1950, the world has created 6.3 trillion kgs of plastic waste —91% has never been recycled even once, according to a landmark 2017 study in the journal Science Advances Read @vbivar.bsky.social on Fossil Fuel industry decades of lies about Recycling www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

NEW @phenomenalworld.bsky.social @polycrisis Its a Plastic Planet. You are poisoned by plastic, the world is plastic. @katemac.bsky.social & I asked @vbivar.bsky.social to analyse the fossil fuel industry's latest trick. phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

For #InternationalMensDay - a thread of amazing Allies. First, Sir Walter Scott who supported several female writers including Susan Ferrier who found the 'burden of authorship' heavy. Scott called her his 'sister shadow' & said she was a better writer than him. (she was!)/1

This is happening like clockwork and exactly as the activists predicted.

"Utterly focused" on the Cost of Living. Water Bills - Authorised record increases. Energy Bills - Still going up, still the most expensive in the world. Rent - Refused rent control. Council Tax - Going up at maximum or above. I would hate to see him doing nothing.

For #RobertLouisStevensonDay (I'm running late I grant you) I give you D E Stevenson, 2nd cousin of RLS whose father disapproved of her writing so she did so in the attic of their Edinburgh house. She sold 7 million copies of her 40 novels. Yes, more than RLS. Gaun Dorothy. Where are the Women tho?

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Argonaut is my local, and is the best bookshop I've ever been near. They're lovely people who care about what they do, know the tastes of their regulars, and have been nothing but supportive of me and my work. Waterstones can fuck right off.

This has become the normal ‘local news website’ reading experience.

Being a sheep gets a bad rap - hang out with my pals, eat and sleep all day and do it all in our snazzy, warm jumpers we grow ourselves. What's not to like.

Delighted to see On Falling directed by @lauracarreira.bsky.social smashing it at Bafta Scotland awards - I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura earlier this year, here she is again for the still curious... www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ma...

Seriously - who sells a bookshelf with shelves that are too short for a standard paperback. Wayfair - that's who - grrrr

A lovely story of an archivist reaching out for religious community support to fully understand a holy book in the collection, and that community getting a wonderful experience in return. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Hey the Nazis did this to my grandparents so this sounds cool @teamlabouruk.bsky.social

MeToo did not go far enough. People were saying "MeToo has gone too far" when it had barely just picked up momentum. It was an attempt at reckoning with how institutionally misogynistic and sexually exploitative most institutions are and what women are constantly put through. So it was crushed.

Pope Leo absolutely cooking

The broken remains of James Macpherson’s fiddle are held in the Clan Macpherson Museum, Newtonmore. They also have the original Banff town clock, reputedly set forward by 45 minutes to ensure that Macpherson was executed before an expected reprieve could arrive. 7/7 www.clanmacphersonmuseum.org.uk

Outlaw, fiddler, & folk hero James Macpherson (c1675–1700) was hanged #OTD, 16 Nov, for being Romani. Prior to his execution Macpherson composed his famous “Rant”. Macpherson sang his lament on the gallows & smashed his fiddle before meeting his fate 1/7 blog.historicenvironment.scot/2022/06/the-...

I talk about this all the time but the fact that the world has been built in a way to protect violent abusers has never been more glaringly obvious than the effort to protect the people in the Epstein Files.

At the Place for Pulling up Boats (one word in Gaelic) the tide is full. It seeps over the grass, stealthy as a robber. Which it is… —Norman MacCaig, “Two Thieves” from THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009) #poem #poetry 9/12 birlinn.co.uk/product/the-...

From the corner of Scotland I know so well I see Edinburgh sprawling like seven cats on its seven hills beside the Firth of Forth… —Norman MacCaig, “Assynt & Edinburgh” in BETWEEN MOUNTAIN & SEA: Poems From Assynt (Birlinn, 2018) #poem #poetry 6/12 birlinn.co.uk/product/betw...

Norman MacCaig (1910–1996) was born #OTD, 14 November. A self-described “Zen Calvinist”, when asked how long it took him to write a poem he would reply “one cigarette – or two for a long one” A 🎂🧵 “Toad” THE POEMS OF NORMAN MacCAIG (Birlinn, 2009) #poem #poetry 1/12 birlinn.co.uk/product/the-...