BEHOLD! My first ever choose-your-own-adventure game! "i will strangle a horse" - over seven and a half thousand words of absolute nonsense, as you help Martin Jenkins on his first day at The Farm. brainmage.itch.io/i-will-stran... Totally free to play! I mean, you can pay, but you can also not!

It is 2025, and yet again Labour want to introduce a massively intrusive, technically and ethically problematic national id database with associated card. This is a really bad idea, and currently nearly 700k people have signed this petition: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

It is the year 3857. 3am. The mummified cadaver of Tonty Blair creaks upright, drags on a wetsuit, and shambles outside, heading for the pressurised bubble that preserves number 10 Downing Street under the waters that flooded London when the ice caps melted. The prime minister sleeps fitfully.

Couldn't get to sleep last night because my brain decided it was of huge importance to write lyrics to the theme tune from Fawlty Towers so here it is… (thanks brain)

If you don't know the story, basically Horniman bought the skin in the 1880s and unfortunately the taxidermist had never seen one so didn't quite know when to stop stuffing, it looks like it's about to explode.

🏳️⚧️ The LMS Council has officially approved a Statement of Commitment for Trans Inclusion, reaffirming our commitment to protecting the rights and promoting the inclusion of trans and nonbinary mathematicians. Read the full statement ➡️ www.lms.ac.uk/news/stateme...

If a Democratic governor talks about punching people in the mouth, he is obviously filled with insatiable bloodlust. If a Republican president talks about punching people in the mouth, you’re the violent one for thinking he was being serious.

Police would like to speak to a Señor Dalí who was seen in the vicinity.

It is September 1997 and I am writing a postgraduate dissertation. It is September 2002 and I am writing a postgraduate dissertation. It is September 2015 and I am writing a postgraduate dissertation. It is September 2025 and I am writing a postgraduate dissertation.

No, you had a silly idea watching the Finite Group livestream on catch-up.

[To the tune of Eleanor Rigby] Aleister Crowley, Practicing summoning Satan while out on the beers, Santa appears

I learn from the latest National Archives email that on Queen Victoria's first ever railway journey, in 1842, Brunel was in the driver's cab. There is a highly plausible alternative history in which the Victorian era was five years long. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-...

It is 1998. Peter Mandleson has resigned over a scandal. It is 2001. Peter Mandleson has resigned over a scandal. It is 2025. Peter Mandleson has been sacked over a scandal.

A man on the streets of the UK is asked about the “problem of immigration” and dismantles talking points with ease.

Hugh Grant, best known as "Scottish evangelical lay preacher" in A Very Peculiar Practice (1986).

One defence against vampires is to use their hyperfocus against them, and give them a complicated knot to unravel while you run away. A former colleague once suggested this as a practical application of an open problem in knot theory: is there a nontrivial knot with trivial Jones polynomial?

Today's painting from my Brave New Worlds exhibition: STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982) (acrylic on canvas paper) To take a closer look (or to buy the original painting) follow this link: barnabyedwards.co.uk/brave-new-wo...

Very much enjoying all the indignant reviews of this new Frankenstein film, written by people who have clearly never read Frankenstein, taking issue with the fact that it appears for once to be based on Frankenstein.

a cool life hack is, if someone is trying to give you advice about basically anything without first trying to understand your needs, your resources, what you’ve already tried, and what you’ve ruled out… … you already know they’re not qualified to advise, and you can just ignore them.

Appreciating Erik Satie. 'Satie’s three piano pieces changed the harmonic vocabulary of 20th-century music. The major seventh chord became ubiquitous, first in jazz, then in pop music. Repetition, rather than development, became the guiding principle of composition.’

Can't even stop people from doing machine code programming on their 1980s home computers because of POKE.

As a kid in the 1970s and early 1980s, I used to look forward to seeing my grandparents not just because I loved them, but because they had nice soft white sliced bread, rather than the horrible, tasteless, dry, chewy brown bread, with crusts apparently made of charcoal, that we had at home.

“In the late 1960s, Dr. Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale, when a comment from one of her male professors puzzled her. Who, she had asked, were the women in science? There were none, he said. Another professor mumbled something about Marie Curie being the exception.”🙃

If you have wondered why trans people (and many others) were so upset by the supreme court ruling earlier this year, this article from Sarah Brown explains it well: www.libdemvoice.org/why-are-uk-t...

I see and I hear and I speak no evil; I carry no malice within my breast; yet quite without wishing a man to the Devil one may be permitted to hope for the best. -“An Ethical Grook” by Piet Hein

Kenilworth Books is a lovely shop. The team ran a very popular book stall at the Talking Maths in Public conference over the last couple of days, and were so nice. It was a real pleasure to work with them. #tmip25

This makes me happy for reasons I don't understand and don't want to understand

And I didn't do three maths degrees (including a PhD) for people to seriously start claiming that a few bits of statistics and linear algebra might be conscious.

Palimpsest

Ben Folds Five, Fun Boy Three And that concludes today’s #TOTP Premier League results.

Yes, absolutely. I'm also wary of generative "AI" because my job is to help students learn the knowledge and skills that genAI shortcuts and (badly) pretends to do for them. However, I'm very much in favour of innovative and ethical use of machine learning and expert systems in scientific research.

Think I'll read this once a week forever. Patricia Routledge, I love you.

This is a pretty good bit

Wheeeen theee Bird in your room represents all your gloom Nevermoré When you're trying to grieve but that corvid won't leave Nevermoré It will rap Tippy tippy tap Tippy tippy tap Waking you from naps aaand Your dream-a Then will fly Never tell you why Even if you cry Landing on your sideboard Athena

He was very good in person with his trans fans too. Growing up going to SF cons, I met many trans people before I even knew what trans meant. I gave my parents very little they needed to accept in their child, so they had lots left over for everyone else. 😉 www.thepinknews.com/2021/08/06/t...

Warren 'Werewolves of London' Zevon* was taught music by Stravinsky**. *There are many caveats to this (not least of which is that Warren Zevon is so much more than Werewolves of London, but it is the touchstone for most people). **Zevon studied alongside conductor and composer Robert Craft.

The UK's best-known fictional Nazi, Herr Flick of the Gestapo, sang at Winston Churchill's funeral. (Richard Gibson, who played the character in the 1980s BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, was a pupil and chorister at St Paul's Cathedral in the early 1960s.)

Sam Altman: I see humans achieving omnipotence using dark matter by… 2030 maybe? That’s if OpenAI is given a quadrillion dollars Theo Von: Yeah Altman: Or, we may become a race of slaves, genetically modified to be harvested by robot spiders. That’s if OpenAI doesn’t get the money Von: Right

One for @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social - I was reading this morning about the Asda 'Price Promise' stones that were erected across the country in the 90s loststonesofasda.wordpress.com Some are definitely on the way to being archaeological monuments, such as this one in Trumfleet, South Yorkshire

"Look, I've pushed the tub of treats onto the floor several seconds ago, and you've still not opened it and fed me any. Get on with it!" #proofofcat

www.reddit.com/r/transgende... Guess what? The story about the trans M&S employee and the bra fitting is a pack of lies and distortions. Want to know what really happened and how colleagues stood up for her? Read her own account here.

"When my agent gave me the news, I hugged him so hard he had to catch his breath before saying he couldn’t represent me anymore."

Well, today it’s the 204th anniversary of the government trying to sneak the dead queen, Caroline of Brunswick, out of the country without attracting too much attention, resulting in a riot in Hyde Park, two deaths, and the beginnings of universal suffrage

As always, pterry:

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

Well this isn't exactly Skynet is it? "I see you've just bought a smart watch. How about a new toaster to go with it?"

@gralefrit.bsky.social You have to see these! A friend of mine has been collating a series of images entitled "Things my students have written turned into Philomena Cunk quotes" and they're just glorious.

Me trying to impress on my line manager the importance of him approving my annual leave request so I can have cataract surgery in a couple of weeks, and thereby be able to continue actually doing my job when the new term starts.

Hmm, this seems like a wise and sensible take on UK university finance until and unless you’re willing to question the austere and impoverished neoliberal logics underpinning its core premises. 🧵 1/7

Very few people seem to understand university finances and, distressingly, this includes many academics and most policymakers. This is an attempt to condense the key points you need to know. open.substack.com/pub/profseri...