it's crazy that 500 years ago, you would see the ruler of your country maybe once in your life and hear whispers that they're the Sun God, but now with social media, you get to see on a daily basis that they're the most unhinged, idiotic, and unhappy person you know

Ho ho ho.

We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Merry Christmas BlueSky friends!

The US is not our friend.

Martha Stewart is a close friend of Snoop Dogg and he has convinced her to join him as a minority owner of Swansea City FC. Reality is letting its hair down for a bit over Christmas. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

A look back in some fun headlines in 2025... 🧵

Doggos chilling under the Christmas tree. 🐶 🎄

Fox hunting is a revolting sport. It's only survived in any form because it's done by ghastly, entitled, influential and aristocratic people who feel it's the God given right to charge about the place in silly costumes tearing animals apart for no good reason.

A bit spellbound by this. Cheers @dorianlynskey.bsky.social for the intro. open.spotify.com/track/4kd3HI...

The Epstein Files, everybody!

One should always be suspicious when the state resists disclosure of documents. And one should be more suspicious when the state suddenly purports to agree to the disclosure of documents.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

As a former editor of Popbitch – and the proud owner of a legal letter sent by HarperCollins, accusing me of being "highly likely to cause serious harm to [their former star client]’s reputation both as an individual and author” – may I just say: GET IT RIGHT UP YE

Merge the Treasury and the Home Office and create a pit of awfulness so dense it rips a hole in space time and opens up exploration of a new dimension - thus making Britain great again.

Gloves are off...

Theresa Villiers on Badenoch. Oddly I hope she's right but this is the latest in the Telegraph's 'Whisper it' series. The record of this series is not good.... (thread)

Keir Starmer needs to stand up for the BBC against Trump's outrageous $5bn lawsuit and protect licence fee payers from being hit in the pocket. Trump wants to interfere in our democracy and undermine our national broadcaster. We cannot let him.

this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.

"Bluesky is an echo chamber." "Bluesky doesn't have enough reach" "Liberals must return to X to challenge the far right" I'm not a tech bro or a journalist. Your priorities are not my priorities. Stop telling me I need to do anything other than chat about comics & telly with people who seem nice.

WTF are we doing here, BBC?

13 years ago today.

2016 Daily Mail: We want foreigners out! We don’t care if it makes us poorer. Brexit means Brexit! 2025 Daily Mail: Foreigners are leaving Starmer’s Britain because this country is poor and shit! This country would be so much better off without this hypocritical, incendiary, irresponsible rag.

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

It is very difficult to think of anything Trump has done this year that does not denigrate the USA’s staunchest allies and delight their once shared enemies, most obviously Vladimir Putin. And apart perhaps from Mark Carney, Western politicians are not rising to the unprecedented challenge he poses.

Here's PIRG researcher RJ Cross getting the Alilo Smart AI bunny to tell @savanahsellers.bsky.social about S&M, the FoloToy Sunflower Warmie telling me it is actually both a cactus and a teddy bear (???) and the Miiloo spouting the CCP line on Taiwan.

This is the full list of info the US is proposing to require from applicants for an ESTA (electronic travel authorisation) to secure visa-free travel to America. This would apply to every UK holidaymaker, conference attendee or businessperson. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-22461.pdf

MAGAZINER: How many veterans have you deported? NOEM: We haven't deported veterans MAGAZINER: We are now joined on Zoom by a combat veteran you deported to Korea

"And tonight in 'Cutting off your nose to spite your face'...."

White House Begins Christmas Season With Ceremonial Lighting Of Cross

The real asylum scandal is the incompetence of the Home Office inews.co.uk/opinion/the-...

NEW Extremism, conformity, and the problem of law How the law can (attempt to) regulate extremism, but it can really do nothing about conformism. By me emptycity.substack.com/p/extremism-...

none of these people (inclusive of UK labour) seem to understand that voters want their leaders to *lead* them, not reflect their own ill thought preferences back at them

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. If you weren't there, just a little clarification on that Spectator piece. Literally, NOBODY admired Hitler. Apart from nazis. Hope that helps.

If you give FIFA an extra $100 you can get the ad free version of the 2026 World Cup

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

"The day that will live in infamy" has mostly died of neglect.

wtf is a FIFA peace prize? that's like being an NFL laureate in physics

Exactly. For clarity, it should be “Friday afternoon reunion cum-drinking session.”

Just the best headline.

🚨Some personal news. I'm thrilled to announce that I've just filed my first copy for The New Yorker. A profile of Jonathan Gullis. "You get the sense that offstage, Jonathan Gullis struggles with being Jonathan Gullis." open.substack.com/pub/mrhenrym...

'Do you know what you look like, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube. Good nutrition's given you length of bone but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash.'

A lot of journos got addicted to the years of chaos. It made for clicks and content and that's deeply fucking problematic if we want this country to actually work. Yes - hold the government to account and do it robustly. But partisan news coverage has leaked into mainstream from the GB news sewer.

Watched BBC 6 o clock news. Just a completely unserious broadcast. Chris Mason, acting like a children's entertainer, giving a prolonged impenetrable editorial. Not a whiff of informative content about the Budget or what it means for the country. Just playschool blah blah bollocks.

A lot of Brexiters seem very bothered that a politician might have lied...

No that's not *your* on *our behalf*. Your job is to report the story, presenting all sides fairly and then *we* call it. What Mason is saying here is fundamentally not what the bbc is for! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...