Newest boy.

There are a lot reasons to be angry with Labour but for me this is the main one: they looked at the UK's vast resentment machine & said, yes we can make that work for us because we're the smart politics guys. They've failed miserably & in the process helped embed a punch-down ethos across the board.

Sharing, without comment, British newspapers’ depictions of the only Jewish person currently leading a UK political party . Times. Mail. Telegraph. Sun.

So, friends: I promised I'd tell the story. Now I shall. Let a (former) psych nurse tell you the true (gods help us) story of a night in a big-time NYC emergency room: and the arrival of The Man With The Bloomingdales Bag. (1/n)

People often frame this as "cigarettes will kill you" which yeah. True. But first they'll attach you to an oxygen tank and leave you gasping and barely able to walk, a pale half-alive zombie for your last decade while all your friends who didn't smoke live and laugh and sing and climb mountains.

Interesting that I've seen multiple articles, as these centenary table tennis world championships begin in London, about Tin-Tin Ho (27, English, ranked about 150 in women's world) and not one about Anna Hursey (19, Welsh, ranked about 50). "National" newspapers, eh.

When radioactivity was discovered, there was a rush to market for all sorts of radioactive consumer goods. There were water jugs made out of uranium glass, for example. I think about that a lot these days whenever I see AI products being marketed to consumers.

Still remarkable to me that half the world is doing 'unrestricted social media usage is bad for kids' and 'we need to put chatbots that tell you to kill your family in every classroom and every toy' at the same time

On the topic of Rubicons crossed, that's the first time I've ever shouted "WHY are you in the TOASTER" at a cat.

Japanese sci-fi: two robots in space, yearning American sci-fi: man gets the author's beliefs on polygamy confirmed by the aliens of ramalama IV french sci-fi: two horny bounty hunters visit the Galaxy of Breasts British sci-fi: nuclear war. Everyone dead. America's fault

Read the linked article and Cory D is articulating an observation that I don't see a solution to. Our capitalistic society elevates and rewards the hustler. What are we to do with cheaters and hustlers? They have "Captured the means of production": ALL labor and productivity benefits above the mean.

Why I'm not worried about AI replacing meaningful work: look at the fucking state of it. Google search is now almost useless. Some of that's greed, but plenty is LLMs. MS has jumped on the LLM coding train. Two years ago, Word mostly worked. Now, it's so bad I've gone back to LaTeX. It's SHIT.

A number of Jewish organizations are shrilly insisting that any criticism of Israeli genocide and warmongering is an illegitimate attack on Jews. At the same time, an increasing number of non-Jewish people are insisting that any attack on Jews is a legitimate attack on Israel. This sucks, man

The 3 genders

It is SUPPOSED TO BE A JOKE, you bastards

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

If Reform had won, Labour's statement would be that this result is a stark reminder we need to listen and learn from voters who rightly feel betrayed by modern politics. But the Greens won by a comfortable margin, so it's: these voters are stupid and also sinister and, ugh, Muslims

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

"in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) lived happily during the war." - Ilya Kaminsky

My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

This really brings home to me just how wildly different American universities are to British ones. I went to university to read mathematics, and ALL my courses were in mathematics. We're much more specialised at 18 then they are at 22. (I have no particular view on whether this is good or not.)

Seemingly I am now determined as both warm and safe.

These gentlemen moved in with us on Friday. So far we all seem to be happy about it. They were nearly Miles and Ivan, but we decided on Moon and Stone x @marthawells.com

Everybody shut the fuck up and pay attention to the most important thing happening at this moment.

2/ ~old jk is best jk~

Getting ready for 2026 like

Can confirm. I was just past my 53rd birthday. And then going from knowing the biology of sex determination being a bit fuzzy (bimodal distribution, shared traits, no one single definition etc) to *living* with the fallout from it and forced to be conscious of it every day IS A COMPLETE HEADFUCK.

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

“When I first learned about Tonga’s internet outage, I thought its citizens must have been hurled back to the 1990s. But in fact ...Tonga was plunged into the kind of isolation it hadn’t seen in more than a century.” www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

Is it morally the wrong thing to do? Yes. Is it bad for the country and the economy? Also yes. Will it harm UK students? Also yes. Is it also a bad move politically that will disproportionately harm Labour's own constituencies? Also yes. There is absolutely no reason to do this. Pure destruction.

the political policy cure for “male loneliness” is - more time to hang with the fellas (4 day work week) - more money to spend with the fellas (higher wages) - more things to do with the fellas (taxing the rich and building 3rd spaces)

@bluejo.bsky.social I've spent a chunk of today reading (often, rereading) your Reactor work that mentions Cherryh, and I just want to thank you for it. The understanding and love of her work you show, and the recognition of how difficult it can be, is really special.

Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".

Lovely to have occasion to be truly proud of the species today.

Guys, seriously. This is one of the greatest achievements in the genre, really and truly, and I can't recommend it enough.

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.”

This article is the one that probably comes closest to my own thoughts at this point in time, not only in the current action in Gaza but the long-term implications for Israel. It's written by a Israeli-American and a professor of genocide studies. Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

applying for jobs again

Look, when it comes to reducing channel crossings you have two main options: 1) Invent a time machine and stop Britain colonising half the world so that people do not have strong ties to the country 2) Provide safer and simpler options to seek asylum without having to use irregular routes. #r4today

Policeman: Name? Woman: Cheryl Cole Policeman: Your FULL name Woman: (Quietly) Chernobyl Coleslaw

Given the amount of treachery and infighting that went on pre-Starmer, apparently to deliver a Labour Party led by "competent grown-ups", this is all somewhat disappointing. A minimum of one of "capable" and "wants the right things" seems like a reasonable minimum to ask for.

This is what happens if you map the latitude of European cities onto North America & vice versa. Some realizations: Most European cities are north of the US-Canadian border. London shares latitudes with an Alaskan island chain. Houston is further south than Cairo. (🧑‍🎨: 7LeagueBoots)

Between Greta Thunberg and her fellow activists being kidnapped by Israel and Trump turning LA into his personal war zone, I hope people realise that protest, no matter how peaceful, will always be met with violence by dying empires.

Everything you need to know about the British voting public

@bumlaser.bsky.social happy birthday, you magnificent bastard.