👀 www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

That’s a wrap! @mayeroflondon.bsky.social’s Scottish Time/Life @renardpress.com mini-tour is complete! Book signing @ Waterstones Glasgow & Uni of Glasgow’s Creative Conversations in convo w/Nicky Melville. Edinburgh leg: @typewronger.bsky.social chatting & time-travelling w/wonderful Joanna Baker…

Good morning Glasgow

This isn’t protection. It is subjugation, instrumentalisation, exploitation. “The notion that male politicians need to protect women and children comes packed together with a shift towards a new strand of patriarchy” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“The literature prize went posthumously to the late Dr William Bean of the University of Iowa. In a succession of papers, he documented the growth rate of his fingernails and toenails over 35 years” www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

This is what Sandi Toksvig texted me when she first read TIME/LIFE. So please come to my BOOK EVENTS, Scotland and online, this Monday If you're worried about the rise of populism or gripped by themes of love and loss, TIME/LIFE is a book for you and these are conversations for you. Details in🧵

Can it really be a quarter of a century since Paula died?Some memories bleach and fade with time but she is/was too vivid to succumb to that process. Everything the world thought it knew about her was wrong, including the idea that she had gone. catherinemayer.co.uk/everything-y...

What a difference three days make 👀 #reverseferret

Damn, I only ever considered marrying two fair-haired men, Robert Redford and Andy Gill

One week today! Next Monday 22nd September, @mayeroflondon.bsky.social is in Scotland for two events! 1pm Glasgow, in conversation w/Nicky Melville @ Uni of Glasgow Creative Conversations, University Chapel. 7.30pm Edinburgh at Typewronger Books, in conversation w/Joanna Baker. Both events are FREE.

Are you scared about what’s happening in the world and don’t know what do about it? So are we and same here—but we have some ideas. Take a look and if this resonates, join us and share buttondown.com/society-of-h...

It’s the Weimar Republic if the brownshirts had video links www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Please do subscribe and share whether you are involved in technology or any activity impacted by it--which is, in case you haven't noticed, every area. Hope is in short supply, tech plentiful and problematic. Things do not have to be this way.

Listening to Evan Davies pose this question to Michael Gove: “Is there a hyper scrutiny at the moment that means that ministers or public officials are more likely to be tripped up by something than maybe 10, 20, 30 years ago?” Srsly. Too much scrutiny. That’s the problem

Here’s Mandelson being “intensely relaxed” about the “filthy rich” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

This is the worst rewrite of the Three Musketeers I’ve ever seen www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Another thought, as the French government collapses… I don’t think that teaching of history takes into account the abject failure of the political mainstream

And an anti-migrant protester who ‘wanted to protect kids’ is a paedophile www.thetimes.com/article/7916...

Had the similar thought for two years or more Protest movements don’t work when the leaders of the systems aren’t paying attention at best and dehumanising at worst Strategic hypersensitivity can quickly smear and diminish - there’s an entire media ecosystem based on grievance farming

Have been musing on that as well. It looks different when you’re in the midst of something similar.

I remember being taught about good Germans and bad Germans, the brave few who resisted the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the masses who enabled it. Now I wonder if there weren’t a huge contingent desperate to stop it but without any sense of how to do that.

What’s the most unlikely or unfortunate time you’ve ever fallen asleep? (Keep it clean people.) Here’s a list of my top four weird ones, including what happened last night… #exhaustion #sleep

Fascists care about freedom of speech in much the same way that incels care about women

Never entered a poetry competition before so THRILLED to be on the longlist. 💃🏼💃🏼💃🏼 Check out full longlist and preorder the anthology. renardpress.com/interwoven-a... @renardpress.com

These are the words of Reporters Without Borders director general Thibaut Bruttin. Some 150 media organisations around the world today are supporting calls for the killing of journalists to stop and for movement of media in and out of Gaza to resume. #letreportersintogaza #protectreportersingaza

Out shopping for a new pair of trainers, but gave up on one shop after hearing the sales assistant tell someone significantly younger than me “oh, I wouldn’t recommend those to an old person” and guide the customer towards a “more suitable” choice

Walked down a street festooned with union flags, all of them at half mast. My first thought was “who died?” Then I saw an England flag in a window and wondered if this might just be an area populated by patriots with very short ladders.

Me interviewed about feminism at Hay / How the Light Gets In (and no, I don’t understand the title of the video either) iai.tv/video/why-po...

“You can’t believe anything we’re being told about Gaza." “Then why aren’t you protesting the ban on foreign journalists?" “You can’t believe journalists." #FreedomtoReport

Simple lessons learned the hard way. Or the things we do for research.

Has anybody met the journalist called Margaux Blanchard? Does she even exist? pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

It doesn’t have the ring or romance of “I am Spartacus” but I am Sisyphus. Other writers will know exactly what I mean.

This is horrible and also inevitable until mainstream politics stops pandering to the far right

The phrase “real-world harm” came up a lot when dealing with what to prioritise and tackle at tech companies. Not that online abuse was fine, but could it spill over into something happening on the street. There couldn’t be a clearer example of the dangers of false information than this.

A kind email about my novel TIME/LIFE www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Life-Ca... FYI this sender is correct that the book draws on my experience of widowhood but I wrote most of it before I was widowed. Here I am talking about this & more on @tinybookcase.bsky.social: pod.link/1524142040/e...

Live commentary on White House meeting focusing almost exclusively on what Zelenskyy will or will not be wearing today. Torn between despair and thinking that if I were he, I would turn up in a suit - one made of camouflage

Here's a statistic even the Telegraph should understand. 100% of recent rulings against the newspaper by the press regulator featured inflated statistics, one about illegal immigrants and the other about crimes by "foreigners" pressgazette.co.uk/the-wire/new...

Enjoy my green avatar (!!!!) and please listen to the conversation on the wonderful @tinybookcase.bsky.social podcast.

Because there isn’t enough to worry about in the world, the Mail wants to tell you that athlete’s foot can be fatal

Vale, Sergeant Troy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #TerenceStamp

Hugely valuable piece about Gaza and how fears of disinformation are becoming a kind of disinformation.

“Forever home” is such a strange phrase

Best caption wins a bottle of bleach

“According to the report, in at least one case the unit misrepresented information in order to falsely describe a journalist as a militant, a designation that in Gaza is in effect a death sentence.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Yet again, merely by being interested in economic reality, provable financial value and hard-headed market analysis, the FT has become a strong centre-left voice. The FT hasn’t changed its position; the right wing has just gone on a journey to cloud cuckoo land economically in the past 10 years.

Might fiction be able to uncover more about our real-life political timeline than non-fiction ever could? | iai.tv/video/strang... Join authors @mayeroflondon.bsky.social and @masieghart.bsky.social as they discuss how science fiction can shed light on our present political reality. #langsky

“Typically a journalist will be killed by Israeli forces and then Israel will say after the fact that they are a terrorist, but provides very little evidence to back up those claims” Jodie Ginsberg, chief exec, Committee to Protect Journalists www.bbc.com/news/article...

It is criminal… to suppress peaceful protest

This freedomtoreport.org