If you read only one thing today, read this letter written from prison, where she has been languishing for several months, by the awesome Georgian journalist Mzia Amaghobeli. She dared to speak the truth to the Moscow's puppets. EU leaders don't have her courage. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Pray with us for her new ministry: O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation;

I was doing some research and you have to see this book cover ⚓

A) GAFCON are numpties ++-elect S seems about as sensible as anyone who doesn't run screaming out of the room at the suggestion of ABC; B) Is there a name change thing we could start for ABCs? And +S could become, eg, AB Deborah (the first), in a have some Biblical womanhood kind of way. ⚓

It's #FragmentFriday! Have a look at this #Antwerp almanac for the year 1568. It's bound in a vellum fragment with writing from what seems to be the late 12th century. #Medieval #Paleography It's (I think) a copy of the Decretum Gratiani, a compendium of canon law dated shortly after 1140. 📜 📚💙

Niche #CofEPeeps tweet: Pathways is a Portal to Hell. I don't know how many good intentions went into it, but I'm guessing A Lot.

I called it. <smug face>

Gosh, it's disappointing that Mother Julian's church still is under Resolutions to limit women's ministry there. This is WATCH's list of all the parishes (and Bishops) who do. www.womenandthechurch.org/transparency ✝️ ⚓

Our horror at the genocide in Gaza, at the mass murder of civilians on Oct 7 2023, and at today's atrocity in Manchester, comes in each case from the same, inherent part of our shared humanity. We need to assert that shared humanity as loudly as possible, and in as many practical ways as we can.

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” ― Jane Goodall 💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

So. That's me unemployed for the foreseeable. <glum face>

#OTD 342 years ago, Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) was born 🥳 A translator and a pioneer of Old English studies, she authored "The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue", the first Old English grammar written in English. #LinguisticBirthdays #WomenInLinguistics #Histlx

Someone called their bra company "boobydoo". Really. 😮‍💨🙄

It's International Coffee Day. A moment to put our caffeine-based differences aside and unite against our common enemy: soup.

European way of life jeopardised by eco-collapse, EU report finds. If the threat were from any other quarter, our whole economy, political system, society, *everything* would be mobilised to head it off, like during COVID. But it's only nature dying, so nothing. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This is wild. We're apparently saying that Israeli waters are dangerous to foreign nationals looking to bring aid to Gaza and that's just ... one of those things?

A Desi group asked BuyMeACoffee not to let influencers make money from anti-Indian hate – and got ignored. Researchers say the role of crowdfunding platforms in the spread of harmful ideologies is largely overlooked.

Whenever I see people talking like this, I remember the Persian liberals and what happened to them after they were "pragmatic and sensible" and joined hands with the Khomeini Islamists. It does actually matter who your allies are.

It will not work, and it should not be trusted. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This morning I heard about a community of just 1,000 people in Uganda hosting 44,000 refugees. Many had come from relatively affluent areas. The community had responded by providing a small amount of food, and land, and by building a model farm, providing training on how to grow food from the land.

I do love Michaelmas. ⚓

Just fuck off with this. How about start the conversation by highlighting how much immigrants contribute to the UK - not least by propping up the NHS and social care system! Also - forced volunteering is not volunteering, it's unpaid labour.

Wait - what? They're talking about doing this retroactively?? That's barbaric!

Migrants already "earn the right to settlement" through extortionate visa costs, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds. They prop up key services, including through the Immigration Health Surcharge. Pushing the hostile environment on steroids helps no-one. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🎉 👇👇 🙌

Labour's reactivity to Reform on immigration policy is absurdly transparent - i.e. Reform attack LTR and Labour hit back with a halfway house that's still needlessly authoritarian and oppressive (servitude). Establish your own bloody agenda, stick to it and advocate it!

Of your kindness, prayers for discernment - and safe travels - over the coming week, please? ⚓

“The ECHR isn’t Brussels meddling. It’s the foundation that protects you from your own government.” 👏👏👏

This is a) incredibly fatalistic B) deeply provincial but what is most amazing is C) how they manage to combine fatalistim and provincialism with an unassailable feeling of superiority It is a remarkable, if contradictory, skill.

"on a technicality" Not really. A failure to get necessary consents to a terror charge is not a slight error. They are safeguards when a person faces a serious charge. Prosecutors should take such safeguards seriously: this is terrorism law they are using. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s...

@elisled2.bsky.social 👋 Nice to meet you here 😊.

While I endlessly vacillate on ID cards - agreeing, basically with whoever I last read - this article is emphatic: it's not the thing itself (though Ian's not at all keen) but the motives behind the proposal that are most worrying.

If liberal democracy is to survive past 2029 Labour needs to (1) rebuild its voter coalition through big policy changes on the economy, climate and Gaza, and (2) drive the far right back to the margins by mounting a vigorous argument against its politics. Instead they're....doing this?

That's ... emphatic.

New research may rewrite origins of the Book of Kells, says academic Exclusive: Author challenges assumption monks on Iona created manuscript, instead positing its origins are Pictish www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

This - www.irishtimes.com/culture/book... - is interesting for its insight into Irish revenge history, and the silencing of women's voices, but also "Ní Ghráda was briefly imprisoned in Mountjoy in November 1919 for ... refusing to speak English on her arrest." 😬😲

Pretty shocking findings from personal safety app WalkSafe 1 in 4 women harassed at work 1 in 7 face unwanted sexual behaviour Research also shows many don’t feel confident enough to report it & 16% have left a job over it www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...

Of your kindness, prayers for discernment - and safe travels - over the coming week, please? ⚓

Ah TR my old friend! Footnote to this apropos history of history, Elizabeth Elstob not only made the definitive copy of this - Queen Anne, when the study of OE was new and shiny - she *wrote marginalia in the original* that she thought would be helpful for subsequent scholars 🤭😬.

Phenomenal. In my 10 year update of A Brief History, I make the point that in the first edition, not one disease had been successfully treated using gene therapy. Today that number is at least 7.

Homes for hedgehogs! #HugAHedgehog

Doing this again, shortly : revteapot.wordpress.com/2025/03/03/o... #DeepBreath

This is wild.

People say "autism never used to exist" and then you go to the Natural History Museum and the exhibit has a caption like "Born in 1762, The Revd [name] was famously irascible, steadfast in his routine, and dedicated his life to collecting 25,000 rare beetle specimens".

Surprisingly good from Streeting.

Oh, it's paracetamol they're mad about? Wild.

It would literally cost less to provide UBI and housing, but we'd rather punish people for being poor.

I like this. I really like this. It exposes the rank hypocrisy of these ‘patriots’. Kudos to whoever wrote it via @thelondoneconomic.bsky.social

This is an impressive double hit - insisting on describing autism as a medical condition while further controlling women. Awesome.

Well, quite! China: 1.41bn India: 1.45bn Pakistan: 0.25bn Indonesia: 0.28bn Africa (continent): 1.56bn That’s well over 5 billion people moving away from fossil fuels faster and faster. NYT: “yeah but only white people count”