Your resident Tourettes-haver has a LOT of thoughts about this.

This is what the rubes who think AI is some whizz bang solution to work fail to get. The point of the work in education isn’t the output. The point of the work in education IS THE WORK.

Soft Machine Gentle Giant Steeleye Span Magazine Julian Cope Robyn Hitchcock the Beta Band the Earlies Beirut the Magnetic Fields

Your Party elections. Do I vote for - the slate promising to devolve power to underpopulated and officially non-existent branches, which is backed by revolutionary socialist groups with a long record of exploiting underpopulated democratic structures

The great noticing continues. 👀 Former Observer journalist clocks that Blair, Campbell, Mandelson and Clegg are not great centrist politicians and a safe pair of hands but destructive, warmongering, traitorous money men serving the US Empire. They never notice at the time though, do they?

On the beer blog: one beer that I liked more than another beer, and what this tells us about BrewDog's refinancing deal. (Probably not very much, but humour me.) ohgoodale.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/a...

The byline is the icing on the cake. "Wonder what that guy who kept all the receipts is going to do now Morgan's gone? It'll be fine, I should think - not like he'll still bear a grudge over that 'Is Receipts-Keeping Guy KGB Mole?' story..."

This graphic, posted by @lucympowell.bsky.social , is pretty desperate. No numbers; no indication of what numbers it's based on; no way of knowing how accurate it is – and, of course, it's from a highly partisan source. There is something interesting about it, though.

On the blog: Palestine Action and the High Court judgment. Now updated with a response to criticisms of the judgment by @finishedloading.bsky.social . gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

Well now, doesn’t feel like gaslighting at all that individual programs are being made “accountable” for the future earnings of their graduates. !!!!

Can't see why people are repeating these claims about what Josh Simons - not even Josh Simons, someone writing on behalf of Josh Simons - supposedly said about Paul Holden. Josh Simons has said that they're not true! Or rather, someone writing on behalf of Josh Simons, but that's the same... er...

On the blog: Palestine Action and the High Court judgment. Now updated with a response to critics of the decision. gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

Just checked the BBC website. Couldn’t find a mention. Laughable for those of us who can remember the Corbyn years. Staggering lack of balance

On the blog: Palestine Action and the High Court judgment. Now updated with a response to critics of the decision. gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

Somebody mentioned a Zoom-type app for (strictly) timed interviews - there's a timer on screen at all times, and after five minutes it closes the window and opens the next one. Kind of like Chatroulette, I said.

Latest from the The Left Has Nowhere Else To Go desk:

Labour Unions want me out canvassing in Gorton and Denton, "talking to voters about the real difference Labour is making in government". Meaning:

As good as I remembered, with terrific performances from Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. Deserves to be much better known.

Bollocks, how did I miss this? Completely passed me by. I obviously don't spend enough time online...!

Yesterday I posted about a new blog post (this one, thanks for asking) both here and on X. Until quite recently, X has been providing far more traffic to the blog than BS. I've had 10x as many referrals to this post from BS. Maybe left X is finally over. gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

On the blog: reading the Palestine Action High Court judgment. The High Court ruling against the government on a Statutory Instrument is really unusual - but then, the government's case was really weak. gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

I watched TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD without having read the book. I knew it was Robert Duvall's debut role and was keen to spot him; I asked my OH at least once if *that* was Robert Duvall (which of course it wasn't). Then Boo Radley came out and I just cried.

in 2017 a popular twitter game was to type a partial phrase then see what your phone auto-completes it with. this proved so popular that it is now the only business model in the US.

On the blog: reading the Palestine Action High Court judgment. The High Court ruling against the government on a Statutory Instrument is really unusual - but then, the government's case was really weak. gapingsilence.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/p...

it's weird and disconcerting how this government lets things just slike towards oblivion apparently because it just can't be arsed. See also higher education.

This is such a brilliant and withering dismantling of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and the entire Fennell schtick open.substack.com/pub/heatherp...

Call me shallow, but I'm reposting this solely to share with younger readers the sight of Peter Mandelson with tache.

You talk about your early Christian relic, I wish you could see mine

Three lovable mop-tops and one less so.

What's the best ever cover version of a David Bowie song? I'll go first. www.youtube.com/watch?v=njRR...

Reading the Palestine Action judgment. This, from Yvette Cooper's statement explaining why PA were to be proscribed, is surprisingly revealing. She says that PA are being proscribed (a) to make them easier to prosecute (b) ...at least in part for non-terrorist actions 1/n

Anyone else keep reading BICOM and thinking BICO, and getting very confused ("I knew they were unreliable...")? #AsSoonAsThisPubCloses

Just seen a passing reference to "Your Party people", and now I can't stop thinking of this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zWp...

University lecturers please copy. 10% of the final mark, whatever.

Niche reference, but I do like the fact that the dodgy character who's just been hoofed from the LP in the HoL* goes by Lord Doyle. *although not, presumably, from his ermine sinecure itself

Ten days later, the spread is: Labour: 10/1 to 8/1 Reform UK: 3/1 to 5/2 Greens: 4/6 to 1/3 I'm not a betting man, but I'd venture to say that for a party other than the incumbent to be polling at 3 to 1 on before a by-election is really quite unusual.

Listening to Dr John's second album Babylon while reading a fan review. "Babylon" - "weird time signatures, kind of psychedelic, Beefheart-esque vocals" check, check, bit lazy but check

The "oh, dear God, isn't he going to say *anything*?" interval seems to be down below five hours, which is definitely progress.

If you want to sing out, sing out And if you want to be free, be free RIP Bud Cort

RIP Bud Cort. Harold and Maude is one of my favourite movies of all time and he’s spectacular in it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t find out anything about it. Just watch it.

So does "performative" mean "ostentatious"? Genuine Q. I only know it as a word for speech acts that perform a function ("I name this ship" etc), but that hasn't been the modal use for a while now.

"and former comms chief" is a nice touch. "I said make it *more* specific!"

Now reading: @qntm.org , There Is No Anti-Memetics Division (itself, rather fittingly, an SCP meme that's broken containment). A small but important element of the plot is pharmaceutical memory removal: take the pill and forget him, or that, or yesterday, or everything. [Whole-body shudder]

Hard core.

Dreadfully sad news, not least b/c he was younger than I am... I didn't know Des well, & now wish I had - I never realised I had a couple of his downtempo ambient house cuts, and I shall be tracking down a copy of the David Bowie album. A great loss. www.beerguild.co.uk/news/much-lo...

Faithful friends who are dear to us Will be near to us Once more She wore Blue.... velvet... I hate hybrid earworms.

OK, fine. I voted Green in 2005, I was a member of the party from 2015 to 2024, and I voted Green again in 2024. Fairweather Labour supporter, that's me - and yes, I'm extremely pleased that McSweeney's gone, at least for now. Before dismissing what people like me think, a couple of points.