This headline is a travesty. It's not a protest and it's got nothing to do with Henry Nowak. It's a racist riot. Call it that.

I think it would be useful if "English" as a subject wasn't called "English," because native speakers of English seem to think that it should come easily for them, when the skills it teaches are not! easy! Writing, critical thinking, reading comprehension, interpretation, etc. -- these are not easy!

Very important to remember. Has the UK ever experienced, under any elected Government, as profound a withdrawal of protections for minoritised groups as the unelected Supreme Court has delivered in its recent decisions?

every day I think surely we’ve reached rock bottom surely it can’t get stupider from here and every day I am proven wrong

1/🧵 The Supreme Court has today overturned Cheshire West and removed important protections for severely disabled people. This case hits all the keywords: guidance, segregation, “never had the right”.

I am once again wondering whether "no, the legitimate concerns racists don't have a point, fuck off, they're racist" might have been a better way of combating the far right.

Well, at least it isn't quoting David Lane. So I guess it could be worse.

Alongside colleagues, I have tabled a motion to disapprove the Equality Act 2010: Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations. We cannot support it, and we have a responsibility to our trans constituents to resist it. Please email your MP asking them to sign EDM 240.

Reminder that Klingons say TRANS RIGHTS BRING HONOR TO YOUR HOUSE

Please do this. It's febrile, MPs are worried about their jobs. It's time for them to pick a side.

We are writing to our leadership and elected representatives to express our utmost disappointment following the lack of Green voices during the Parliamentary debate on the Code of Practice, and we will be asking for urgent clarification on why this was the case.

@mariecgoldman.bsky.social led the charge of @libdems.org.uk MPs speaking out against the new draft EHRC code of practice in the House of Commons earlier today. Thank you to Marie and all our MPs who contributed. 🧡 We will keep fighting this, until the law is changed.

tl;dr: Alabama's ability to administer a new congressional map disenfranchising Black voters has been complicated by the fact that Alabama is celebrating Jefferson Davis's birthday today.

Discworld QOTD, from The Fifth Elephant

Glad to see the LDPP has finally had enough with this shit and is going to stand up for bedrock liberal principles like trans rights.

“Most people have the common sense” let me stop you right there. no they don’t

an hour after this was posted, a labour minister told parliament that customers should "alert member of staff" if a trans person walks into the "wrong toilet"

This should be a wake-up call to everyone still supporting Labour; the Tories approve of what you are doing to trans people

PNG, GIF and JPEG formats all have space for text (PNG is the best-designed; it can have multiple languages of alt-text). Apps and image editors should adopt these parts of the standard so an image has the alt-text stored in the file with the image.

fuck absolutely everyone involved in getting us to this point, trans women are women, trans men are men, non binary identities are valid and sex and gender can both be changed "biologically" if any such meaning can be usefully attributed to that phrase

I’m really cross about this. Institutions including publications have a duty to stay sane. I want to come out of this awful era with things like peer review, free journalism, the rule of law, the principle of taxation intact. It’s not daring or clever to swerve into this edgelord rubbish, it’s dumb.

As a mass movement this is Your Your Party to distinguish it from His Your Party which is legally, but not practically the same as Her Your Party.

The world-famous bathing ponds will remain Trans+ inclusive, after councillors accept proposals brought forward by a vote of 38,000 members. Understand more: https://tinyurl.com/bdfh6rdy

"He's doing these things now because no one will honor him when he's gone" is a very good line of attack against Trump.

Pro-tip: don’t name your Bluetooth speaker ‘Bomb’.

"Are You As Competent As A 19 Year Old Girl?" would be a great new reality show

Ground or minced meat in a sauce - chili, ragu, bulgogi, moussaka, qeema.

I feel I’m shouting into the void with this, but because I was actually one of the few people who’ve been following this issue really closely since it became mainstream: There was never ever a serious push to abolish the case by case single sex exemptions in the Equality Act

The trouble with this argument is - it’s not true and it was discussed in Parliament at the time. ‘Sex’ meant trans people with GRCs and it was always intended to mean that. bsky.app/profile/hear...

Modern fascistic American conservatism has other problems, one of which is a distrust of competence because it's an alternative source of authority to hierarchy. Leni Riefenstal wouldn't be allowed to make movies for Trump because she wouldn't follow notes from Stephen Miller.

I think there are at least two powerful themes that conservative writers handle really well - the grief that comes with change and the struggle to preserve the good against the tide of humans’ worse natures. Modern conservatism is all-in on humans’ worse natures and thinks grief is for losers

Sick of the relentless adult content I see on Bluesky: back pain, interest rates, tax brackets, that noise you make when you stand-up sometimes.

this is an incredible thread. somebody accidentally had their watch Bluetooth name set as ‘bomb’ and another passenger looking for info logged into a long forgotten Reddit account with the username “TheSkyJacker”

You know what we don't talk enough about? Queen & Annie Lennox/David Bowie rehearsing 'Under Pressure' in 1992. So much going on! Everyone's clothes, Bowie with a lit cig throughout, where Annie PROPER GOES FOR IT, George Michael singing along in the background. The amazing vocals. Yes, please!

"The Pod Save guys boosted their favorite failson former bartender* from when they were bros in DC and the Maine labor movement grabbed onto him as the alternative to the cryptkeeper governor they hate" is a pretty plausible account of what happened here

Who put descriptions of the MPs' signatures in the alt text and would they like to be bought a drink?

It's a real shame that the Lib Dems didn't respond more vigorously earlier, and it's cost us a lot of trust from the rightly furious trans community, but it's a joy to see we're finally where we should have been in the first place. Odd feeling: am I a little bit proud to be a Lib Dem member today?

literally the only "public toilets issue" that should exist in political discourse is that there fucking aren't any any more.

"In Britain, restaurants that serve alcohol must also offer tap water." One of those background social facts so deeply embedded that one forgets that it's not really the norm in other countries. When I'm reminded of it, it's genuinely a law & norm I think I could say 'makes me proud to be British'.

OURCS said trans women can’t row in women’s races and the whole of boat house island said ‘fuck you very much’

Before you all chime in, true sailing ships don't work well with containers. The cranes and the masts get in the way of each other. Also, lots of port infrastructure assumes large ships have engines. If you're going to have to have an engine anyway...

This is kinda shitposty but also kinda isn't. Abolishing the concept of leadership or decision-maker and forcing everything through a vote (usually of a small board/committee) is interesting. Note that one of the best run countries in the world (Switzerland) has something like this.

*sets the 'days since tech bros reinvented the bus' sign back to zero.

A sad aside: the days in which one could buy a wrench for just $5 are a distant memory for even geezers like me.

I wrote something quite long about this (12 points) - I'll link in a reply - but it's basically trying to create a parliamentary (rather than presidential) system but retaining legislative/executive separation. Which means TWO PARLIAMENTS.

The Democrats do always have some legitimate claims that their power is limited even when they are in charge, but the UK has about as close to an elected dictatorship as anything resembling democracy allows, so when labour MPs pull their smol bean act they are just lying

Every development makes it funnier www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politic...

By 1936, Nazi Germany had the 3rd largest whaling fleet in the world. Much of it operated by Unilever. The result would be the near-extinction of the Blue Whale, all in the quest for something worth more to the Nazis than gold: Margarine. Find out more on this week's Untitled History podcast!

If we want to have a serious conversation about who's being impaired by social media use, then politicians are going to have to look in the mirror and realise that it's actually them on a personal level and the demographic groups the belong to that are most susceptible.