Grok's new "feature" that allows users to undress women in photos posted to X is a new low for the platform. If you're somehow still active over there, I urge you to let this be your final straw.

Welcome to the Public Domain, ARCTIC ANTICS (1930) ❄️ 🐧 Another 10 Silly Symphony shorts join the public domain. No rattling bones like last year's THE SKELETON DANCE, but we do get up to some Arctic Antics 🐻❄️ Learn more ➡️ blog.archive.org/public-domai... #PublicDomainDay #PublicDomain

Moon, January 1st 2026. 95% illuminated, and two days until full Moon. Crater Tycho is prominent, with its ejecta rays spread out for up to 1,500 kilometres. *They* (the lunar geologists) think Tycho is a youngish crater, having been formed only 100,000,000 years ago. #astrophotography

Fascinating gender split here - e.g. American men are twice as likely to read history books than women, though there's no difference at all for historical fiction.

Latest frustrating trend I've noticed: YouTube accounts uploading videos with dramatic titles, only to tone them down 24 hours later once there's less need for clicks. So, "Dark Energy Is Getting Weaker, and It Changes Everything" becomes "Scientists Measured Dark Energy Doing Something Strange"...

Really enjoying this Goodreads chart of all the books I've read in my life. Particularly: (1) the way it creeps upwards over time as I read new books, and (2) you can really tell when I took two years of English literature modules at university/

Our projection for the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary election based on the latest @findoutnow.bsky.social poll for @scotnational.bsky.social 🎗️ SNP — 58 ➡️ Ref — 27 🌹 Lab — 13 🌱 GP — 13 🐤 LD — 10 🌳 Con — 8 🔵 Alba — 0 ⚪ Other — 0 devolvedelections.co.uk/scotland/

“The Dark Frog tied one end of the rope to a tree. ‘Turn for me!’ he shouted. I turned the rope for the Dark Frog. He jumped twenty times. ‘I am beginning to get hungry,’ said the Dark Frog.”

As it's 3am and my mind is racing from finishing Death's End, here's a thread of some generally spoiler-free/soft-spoiler stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the Three Body Problem trilogy. 🧵

Dark energy just got even weirder and why the Universe may end in a 'Big Crunch.' 🔭 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Checking in on global animated films, and turns out India has an emerging cinematic universe focused around... the avatars of Vishnu?

sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Avoiding antagonising bees remains good life advice, apparently.

I obviously don't know the background for estrangements in these anecdotes - the authors rarely tell us - but they always seem to promote the idea that it's a random act of cruelty by children who have been indoctrinated by the internet. Which doesn't sound particularly credible.

will also add - yes, this is my personal crusade - that turning podcasts into videos implicitly asks women to once again make more effort than men, as the bar for "camera-ready" for one gender is obviously higher than for the other

And it's been 2,000 years since there were any job openings for newly qualified wizards

Our first post-LDR Christmas together!

The War Between the Land and the Sea was enjoyable enough, if pretty flawed in places. But I'd have had a lot more respect for the show if it had committed to an interspecies romance plotline with this guy.

UK (GB), YouGov poll: Who do you think Ebenezer Scrooge would vote for? REFORM~NI: 43% CON~ECR: 28% LAB-S&D: 20% LDEM-RE: 1% GREENS-G/EFA: 1% SNP-G/EFA: 1% PC-G/EFA: 0% Fieldwork: 23-24 November 2025 Sample size: 2,155 ➤ https://europeelects.eu/uk/ #BahHumbug2025

UK (GB), YouGov poll: Who do you think Father Christmas would vote for? GREENS-G/EFA: 32% REFORM~NI: 23% LAB-S&D: 11% CON~ECR: 11% LDEM-RE: 9% SNP-G/EFA: 2% PC-G/EFA: 0% Fieldwork: 23-24 November 2023 Sample size: 2,155 ➤ https://europeelects.eu/uk/ #merrychristmas2025

and RaspuTim, who WOULD NOT die,

I'm no longer in academia but, as far as my opinion counts, I'm not sure that pitting different fields of history against each other as being more or less deserving to be taught and researched is going to solve the crisis in humanities.

I am so here for Ursula Le Guin stickers on my street

"Who would make the best Christmas dinner?" "Well, definitely the women"

This 1974 photo shows, with startling immediacy, a group of freshly-excavated 2,000 year-old Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an, China, with their original vibrant colours. Once exposed to air & sunlight during excavation, the colours started to disappear almost immediately www.snopes.com/fact-check/t...

During my PhD, I accessed a folder of documents that, upon opening, fell apart into pieces. Turned out nobody had opened it in 40 years and, before being acquired by the archive, it had been shredded by mice.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

10 years ago today. Powerful and poignant. #DavidBowie, genius to the very end.

Funny animal videos no longer being trustworthy just fucking sucks all around. I love the wonder of animal behavior and what it says about the experience of being alive. It's because it happened in reality that it's so fun. It's not fun if it was just made up. There's no wonder there.

Think this is the first time I've been scolded by a printer.

New post just out: "The Overshoot" Net migration is collapsing, and will fall further over the coming years. We could even have net emigration. What does that mean for the country and the political narrative as we head towards the next election? (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

Today's #UnexpectedEbayFind in this button badge featuring "Peter Puddock", the one-time mascot of Edinburgh's Royal Commonwealth Pool (aka The Commie) 🐸🎀🏊, created as a result of a 1987 competition by Edinburgh District Council...

Quick assessments and protocol-driven treatments like CBT or SSRIs "makes planning and auditing easier, but encourages services to treat each case as a short episode that ends abruptly, rather than an evolving set of needs that may require ongoing support." theconversation.com/what-looks-l...

Happy birthday to Jane Austen, and to this very on-brand Economist chart www.economist.com/christmas-sp...

Vaccines are great. That's it, that's the tw- uh, skeet

The thing about measles is that it’s the only known virus that triggers immune amnesia - it causes your immune system to forget everything it has previously learned. Meaning you essentially reset to zero and are now at risk of basically everything. It can take 2-3 years to get immunities back.

Maybe if this does well we'll get a Nineteen Eighty-four adaptation too! "Rats! Get it, Winston? Just like I ratted you out!" "Aw, maaaaan! My Big Sister would never do this to me!"

Clickbait is meant to have a higher probability of being true than, idk, the Moon falling out of orbit

The Plough and the #NorthernLights over Stromness this evening. #Orkney

A typically insightful article from the Ferret explaining the issue of constraint payments for Scottish windfarms www.theferret.scot/why-are-scot...

Very glad I got my vaccine a couple of weeks ago! It's still not too late for anyone considering it.

I was monitoring the Sun in h-alpha for flares this morning and a surprise prominence exploded from just over the limb! About 18 minutes in real-time. Details in ALT. #astrophotography

"the Wayback Machine saves 150,000 gigabytes of webpages every day... a mere day soaks up 150 TB and a copy of the entire archive is 175 petabytes" www.pcgamer.com/hardware/til...

#Homs celebrates the first anniversary of Assad’s fall.

I'd completely missed that the new UK-Norway naval agreement has been named after Lunna House in Shetland www.shetnews.co.uk/2025/12/04/n...

I don't understand why any business thinks it's a good look to argue with low public reviews. I guess there's sometimes space to clarify a misunderstanding, but it's not really a welcoming vibe if potential customers see a business yelling at previous customers who had a bad experience.

This is a key point for neurodiversity as well: regardless of the policies that states and health services adopt, more people are going to learn about autism, ADHD etc online, or dip their toes into communities, and realise they offer explanations for their lifelong differences and difficulties.

“Machismo is a plague” Seen in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.

In the devastated city of El Fasher, satellites have spotted a network of newly dug incineration and burial pits thought to be for the disposal of large numbers of bodies. 150,000 residents remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF.