Yesterday Kier Starmer announced Labour will nationalise British Steel, and save 2700 jobs. Today, the Uni of Nottingham put 2700 staff at risk of redundancy. This is just one university. Across the UK 15,000 higher education jobs need saving. Where is the rescue package for our universities?

COLIN

A. has just sent me a photo of the stuff that poisoned me, I assumed she’d thrown it out but she’s kept the remaining 29 sachets hidden under her desk in case the allergy people needed them. Sensible but unsettling

Almost certainly the most psychedelic photo I have taken of a bullock at sunset.

"An author who fabricates a citation commits a serious breach of ethics, and using an automated system as a proxy to generate such citations is equally unacceptable." - yes! Exactly this!

The Atten Bum

I've just been stopped by a copper. He gave me the verdigris.

I’ve been waiting to see an allergy specialist since November, when I had my Big Allergy Surprise, and thanks to a cancellation I have an appointment today. I’m very keen to learn more, also rather nervous about tests

Andy Burnham: Manchester Manchester Manchester MPs: London? Andy Burnham: London London London

Tachikoma. I have model Tachikoma. I have cuddly soft-toy tachikoma. I have tachikoma iron-on patches. This is not weird.

If I take the top 7 off my spreadsheet: 1. Undercover Miss Hong 2. Song of The Bandits 3. Gyeongseong Creature 1 4. Twinkling Watermelon 5. Alchemy of Souls 6. Vincenzo 7. Inspector Koo But they're sorted with dates in them, so manually...

If they want feedback: my mech for groceries absolutely has to kneel down so I can get in, I'm not climbing up it like that at my age. Also it needs bigger feet.

This is only on Netflix for 3 more days so you'd have to intensively binge the 18 episodes, and frankly it's not worth it unless you really want cheesy eunuch-focused TV

Fun fact: the magical child safety solution which Jess Philips cited in her resignation letter is a vendor-specific offering, which benefited from an intense PR and lobbying campaign, and was previously praised by ... Prince Andrew. I always keep the receipts. heatherburns.tech/2026/02/20/t...

Apart from the other aspects of Jess Philips' resignation letter, I don't think there actually is magic technology to stop kids uploading sexual images. Partly for technology reasons, partly policy and business, & partly because kids can get around age controls by drawing a moustache on their faces

The UK ranked 22nd in Europe. We were ranked 1st in 2015. Shameful

I feel judged by this USB cable. It does not approve.

Make a band out of two others Blackpink Floyd

Streeting is Mandelsonson

Is the Maul cartoon as good as The Bad Batch?

Instead of using "what did your parents do" as a social class indicator, I've been wondering about how useful "what did your childhood friends' parents do" is. Class is about community and upbringing more than individuals anyway

I honestly think this is just about the (deeply weird) gendered way in which work is imagined. Steel is masculine, and done by authentic real members of the working class (white men). Academia is effeminate, politically suspect, and employs chiefly women. Ergo it cannot possibly have value.

I know some people will call me insane (I've been called a LOT LOT worse), but I genuinely think that there will come a future when the most attractive, prized colleges to attend will be those that do NOT use AI at all I really do At these non-AI universities, students will actually learn stuff

This is an ancient Egyptian cosmetics holder in the shape of a very cute hedgehog. It’s made from glazed pottery. The wry sideways glance from the hedgehog is, as the youth say, sending me. 🕰️664BC-332BC 🏛️📷 BM

Fucking incredible. Play this for every university administrator in the nation. She says AI is the next “industrial revolution” and all the students BOO loudly. And then when she says “a few years ago, AI was not part of our lives” they all CHEER. She is shocked by their reactions. I am not!!!

14/10, Very Good Dogg

I see Keir Starmer is banging the drum for British steel. No word, however, about higher education. Steel contributes around £9.8 billion to the UK economy a year (including downstream impact), while universities add well over £100 billion...

Hmm! Affluent I have become! Truly wonderful the shower is. Mmm.

Starmer is, once again, using words, but only words.

I like the Lupin III/Cowboy Bebop feel to this, resembling the sillier parts of the original comic. I hope Boma/Borma is canonically a trans man in this version. Maybe I can treat it as something new and not compare it to GiTS:SAC...

What a timeline line up!

In a civilised society a number of people with high salaries would be extremely going to jail for this.

I suddenly found myself the owner of some greatly enlarged testicles a few weeks after my vasectomy and I did not like it at all and thank goodness for antibiotics. Absolutely not attractive or comfortable. These men are weird.

No need to be rude, Mahmood Just make sure he leaves, Reeves Get him out number ten, Benn Just get yourself free No need to be down, Brown He don't have to bleed, Reed You're taking a while, Kyle Please get yourself free

Now I feel like a monster for eating pumpkins

Not me, laughing at this for 10 minutes straight.

New backronym: Lackadaisical Leibniz Mill.

My love for Elizabeth Gaskell's novel 'Mary Barton' only increased when I discovered that the London County Council had banned it from schools because of its depiction of trade unionism and riots. (Liverpool Daily Post, #OTD 10 May 1907)

Something similar would be good in the UK

The biggest data sets (DORA, Faros, CircleCI) on the impact of AI code gen on software teams show that, for the majority, changes to code are taking longer to get into production, and the software that ships is less reliable. Worse software, later. Now there's a marketing strapline for you.

*wades in* Right, technically a barm is leavened with leftover beer, not yeast or sourdough, so squabbling about what your region calls a round bread thing shouldn’t be relevant at all because a barn is a barm, but-

That Taken website about browsers sharing information was completely underwhelming: partly wrong, partly normal. The fingerprinting is relatively mild now - maybe we should hide exact font types, but what else do they expect people to do? Is it marketing for a VPN company? It's daft scaremongering

Aha, I've just read a nasty review of my new book, Feminism for a World on Fire. Kathleen Stock takes umbrage at my argument that feminists should be 'pro-immigration'. Yes, I do believe that if you call yourself a feminist but you are prepared to strip refugee and migrant women of their rights

When the pumps fail and the polders flood, only one man stands between Rotterdam and the sea. MAD JAAP: FURY POLDER. Coming 2026. “They took his cargo bike. His bakfiets. That was their mistake.”

Modest proposal: People who use "staycation" to mean "going on holiday" to be placed under indefinite house arrest.

Can't prove this but maybe the reason for Attenborough's longevity is that whenever Paddington arrives to shepherd his soul on, he fends him off with his powers of nature narration. "The perplexed ursine psychopomp withdraws, his hunt unsuccessful. Perhaps a 1970s bass player will make easier prey."

This stood out to me when rewatching 28 Days Later recently - and he's a cycle courier! Surely one of the first things he'd have done is find an abandoned bike rather than trudge miles around London avoiding zombies!

Bicycles are more practical in post-apocalyptic scenarios, but ate somehow less effective onscreen. youtu.be/WhhONtKnao0?...