Waking up and it's still dark outside like

what do you MEAN y’all only read one book at a time

the budget should be a publicly published document with footnotes and everyone — government MPs, opposition MPs, academics and journalists — should have to read the whole thing before commenting on it!!!!

*leaps in* also, stop talking on behalf of women. I support trans rights and welcome trans women in women only spaces. You're not talking on behalf of women, you're talking on behalf of a small group of people who have made their obsession with trans people everyone else's problem

Obviously this government are wantonly reckless and idiotic and their treatment of universities, and see this as a disciplining of an out of touch elite. But what all of this unwillingness to intervene means is that a critical industry will collapse and a lot of ordinary people will be unemployed.

Happy St Katherine's Day to all scholars, librarians, and Katherines. May you win an argument against an annoying man today, in the true spirit of Katherine herself.

Right after my second birth, I had a postpartum hemorrhage. This happens in about 1% of births. Whenever I talk about this, free birth advocates ask what interventions I had in the hospital that caused the hemorrhage. None. There wasn't time. I gave birth 30 minutes after being admitted.

This might be one of the most disturbing pieces I’ve ever read. Staggering investigative work from Sirin Kale and Lucy Osbourne www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I can’t bring myself to read this, but one day I hope there is as much time and energy devoted to the problem of the online radicalisation of vulnerable pregnant people and parents, as there is to the online radicalisation of young white men.

Latest update from @britishlibrary.bsky.social says they are launching a new version of their main catalogue on Monday 8 December and around that time also launch an interim version of their Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Hooray! www.bl.uk/stories/news...

I would argue that midwifery is actually the oldest profession. A number of other mammals have similar practices of checking in on herd members labouring. We have the capacity to help each other and we have always done this. THAT is natural. To help is to be human.

I’m gonna come right out on here on main and say that my father-in-law, who most of these people hero worship, fully believed in the role of medical intervention where necessary, and in the importance of birth attendants who can recognise that ‘when necessary’ part

There are plenty of links between the anti-trans “women’s rights” movement & anti-feminist conservatism. And opposing abortion is a logical conclusion for a movement that says no, you should not have agency over your own body; no, you do not know best about yourself; no, you have no choice.

Also this, of course! If women are defined by the production of large gametes, the production of large gametes quickly comes to define women. Feminism once argued that biology was not destiny; the anti-trans movement insists that it is. bsky.app/profile/jack...

the “ban on gender selection” has always been objectionable and unworkable anyway. sorry but either pregnant people have a right to abortion or they do not. you don’t get to decide why someone might choose to terminate a pregnancy, nor do they have to tell anyone the “real” reason.

The EHRC want to exclude women from femal single-sex spaces based on how "female" they look. This is off the scale sexism and misogyny. Millions of women will face harassment as result of this insanity.

I don't use the word lightly, but this is really just evil isn't it. "Your identity makes us uncomfortable so be gone from public spaces." Fuck off.

'The science select committee should recognise that its remit covers all of research, and conduct an inquiry into the Library, with a view to helping it recover. It could quantify the funding that is needed to properly rebuild the Library’s digital infrastructure'.

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-...

Plans to leave refugees in a state of perpetual uncertainty about where and if they can rebuild their lives are not just performative cruelty, they are counterproductive to integration and the economy. It doesn’t have to be like this - 1/2

We should stop the boats because it's dangerous, and we should stop the scapegoating of immigrants because it's wrong and cruel. Controlled migration is good for the country, helps build our economy and diversity strengthens our communities. (1/6) 🧵

As for seizing jewellery - the cruelty of it!!! How dare we propose this! If we want asylum seeking people to “pay” the costs of the asylum system, no1. Stop adding endless costly assessments every few years and no2. Give them the right to work and therefore pay taxes that fund the HO. All v bad.

There’s just so much performative cruelty and stupidity in the asylum announcements that it’s hard to know where to start. But one place to start is that if its aim is to reduce small boats crossings, it won’t work. We’ve had 5 years of deterrent policies. They don’t work.

Six weeks since the PM said Britain faced a choice between decency or division and our bad, obviously, for not understanding that he was in fact Team Division

Wonderful tribute to a teacher: young Sofonisba Anguissola paints herself being created by Bernardino Campi -- yet at same time, she is of course creating him! Today is her day.

With the ending of permanent asylum, taxes on foreign students, two U-turns on income tax, a refusal to listen to business concerns about hiring costs, again I ask ‘who are Labour for?’ What is the vision underlying all these choices other than responding to last week’s polls?

Someone should ask Starmer and Mahmood whether they think the Kindertransport, for example, should have been a return ticket. Whether Alf Dubs, rather than becoming a Labour MP and now Lord, ought to have been sent back with his family to Czechoslovakia once it was liberated from German rule.

slightly obsessed about the end of this lady's effigy tomb with the voluminous folds of her dress and petite heeled shoes

When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/

the next Bond movie should star five wannabe Bond actors (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Regé-Jean Page, etc) as trainees at MI6 boot camp, competing to be the next 007. the eventual winner gets the job by sleeping with his instructor.

Before numbers, Dutch city buildings were given distinctive stone tablets, or gable stones. Sometimes they said something about the resident, sometimes it was patriotic, but it could be anything. My current favourite is this (17thc??) leopard on Zeedijk, Amsterdam. I love him. #GevelsteenSunday

Seems like this car's been on this hill forever.

Human Geography at Leicester is facing closure. Staff contracts are to end in June 2026; students are to be relocated to other universities, or taught out by a maximum of two (!) teaching-only staff. Other departments and subjects are facing closure, too. Please join the demo!

hey I dunno who needs to hear this today but if your toddler decides that they’re obsessed with beetroot and eats like half a kg of it for dinner warn your nursery the next day

today has been the most Monday of Mondays I have had in a very, very, very long time.

Got a really nice photo this afternoon when the sun broke through the clouds for a few minutes.

Halloween, in my religion, is Samhain, the time at which the veil between the worlds is thin, and we recognise that life continues and exists in many forms. We offer hospitality to strangers, knowing that loved ones may be among them, unknown to us even as we are known to them.

oh god people are replying now

Parents, please check your kids’ candy this Halloween. I’ve just found an ancient metal whistle with the inscription “QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT" inside a Snickers bar. I blew it and heard a note of infinite distance, and now I’m haunted by a figure in pale, fluttering draperies. Be safe.

why did this take two fucking days though? did the Prime Minister have his notifications switched off? was he stuck in the bath? why, exactly, is this obviously true thing something that apparently needs running past the boss anyway? what is *wrong* with their comms operation?

"The idea of deporting people with settled status is disgusting, and anyone proposing it should be immediately drummed out of polite society. Breaking promises made in good faith to our friends and neighbours is racist, extremist and immoral." I'm basically shouting at the sky here, but still.

(if anyone would like to maybe start some sort of campaigning or pressure group of and on behalf of immigrants with ILR and settled status in Britain then I would be interested in helping, or indeed trying to get it off the ground myself, email in bio, etc)

I spend a year plotting a mystery novel and then this happens.

This is, for clarity, exactly my position. A lot of machine learning is amazing (and has been for years!) - you will pry google lens from my cold dead hands f.ex. But poor quality, unnecessary, forced on you, misleading, thieving slopAI is stealing its valour & spoiling the whole brand/concept.

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

Um. There’s a woman presenting this too.

I cannot understand what these people think the purpose of human life is? It is *not* "pursue joy, deal justly, love well, try to understand as much and see as much of this beautiful world and of the deepness, richness and variety of human culture and experience as you can before you die"?

The Bishop of Birmingham has written to the Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick about his comments about Handsworth

It’s becoming increasingly, scarily acceptable to be openly racist in UK politics with zero consequences. It’s also seemingly increasingly taboo to call someone out for being racist, but lets all keep calling this out: complaining about the “lack of white faces” in a city is really fucking racist.