There is ONE thing I am looking forward to this heatwave: Pictures of paschal candles that have melted in churches. Here's an example from a few years ago. It's my favourite phenomenon. Because, well... Look at it.

Farage claims the BBC are putting him "in danger" by pursuing his £5M crypto bribe. They must have done something really reckless, then, like calling for "cold, hard rage" from the public in response to it.

Immigration went down, and they didn't even care. Time to continue taking their demands at face value, I guess.

The most “metal” photo you’ll see all day. (Pic credit: Nick Bull)

How are things in Belfast? Are the people with Legitimate Concerns about paedophilia attacking unionist politicians’ homes in response to the Donaldson verdict? They aren’t? How strange. Their Concerns seemed so Legitimate when they were burning foreigners out of their homes a few weeks back.

Suraj has a point.

You may disagree, or rightly point out that consequences matter far more than motives, but my take is that the driver of the most morally repugnant decisions Starmer took was cowardice rather than malice. Maybe that's actually worse. The damage weak men can do.

been furious with Starmer for long enough that this is genuinely coming as a surprise to me, but I'm feeling a bit.......sad this morning? not really about him per se but about the waste of time, I guess, and the end of yet another political failure when Britain really couldn't afford another one

What a disappointment Starmer has been. I wasn't expecting a charismatic radical progressive, but if you'd offered me a former human rights lawyer as PM in 2020 I'd have bitten your hand off. Such an opportunity squandered. Paralysed by indecision, innate conservativism + absent leadership skills.

Still true #WorldCup

Today is World Refugee Day. Please donate if you can. x www.refugee-action.org.uk

You can join our call here: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Not my best work, but felt like this was what's on the menu for Bsky today.

The thing about AI is it’s… just not that good. Like, it’s *fine* at stuff, but never more so than your second-most trustworthy colleague. It’s also a bullshitter. A really plausible fake-it-till-you-make-it bullshitter. It’s like the digital equivalent of a posh 20-year-old boy.

Massive dystopian racism klaxon!

"WITNESS HISTORY IN DALLAS" is certainly a *choice* for an advertising slogan, FIFA.

It’s not hyperbole that part of what kept the queer liberation movement going in the Reagan era was the partying part of the “bury your friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance at night” schedule. Without joy there is no air left to fight

My friend took his family to see the Michael Jackson movie and his son claimed it was the greatest movie he’d ever seen but I’m a real MJ fan so I don’t believe the accounts of little boys

I don’t think the world is divided into bigots and not bigots. Making your empathy bigger than your anxiety takes some effort. You become a bigot when you stop bothering

The good thing is the actual sway of public opinion in the UK is massively, *massively and overwhelmingly*, against the racist hooligans. They're a small minority here. The bad news is that various facts about our political system and media ecosystem may mean that fact doesn't matter.

AND the minority by far. We have to fight the lie that they are representative

Musk still has some way to go before he can match Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool full of gold coins. If a standard pool is 25 metres long x 5m x 1.5m, it holds roughly 3600 tonnes of gold (at 19.1 tonnes/m^3). Gold costs $130M per m^3, so McDuck's pool is worth about $4.6Tn.

You know that Elon's internal monologue is now saying "pathetic, you're not even a quadrillionaire yet."

The Two Trumps

It is quite strange to listen to political coverage currently, even from mainstream sources, and remember that net migration has quartered since its peak, and is likely to fall to Cameron's tens of thousands target next year and this has made no difference to the discourse.

'Opening the World Cup' does sound like something in Norse myth that would cause the sundering of the earth and release of all evil

There are people all across Belfast helping relocate people, get them food, clothes, meds and more. You will likely never hear about them on the news. But they are many. And *they* are Belfast.

basketball’s all like gimme that pumpkin i need it and tennis is all like fuck this lemon you take it.

Then left again, next left, then take another left, and one more, then left again, then hang left, and again…

*mortal kombat voice*

This is exactly it. The work is the point.

All the time. Especially with footballers. I am 11 years older than Harry Kane and yet he is clearly the adult compared to me.

And then he'll post about it on a website rigged to help Nazis and post non-consensual pornography.

Tell you what, I'm really not enjoying how much Facebook is pushing some really grim racially divisive narratives from online grifters onto my feed. Almost as if there's a concerted effort fron somewhere to capitalise on the grim tragedy of this week in the worst possible way.

Cool cool. Can we ban the over-55s too. That'll probably make a greater impact on society.

Bloody hell. I saw Anthony Head doing Frank N Furter in Rocky Horror in the West End in 1990, when he was still (to me) just that guy from the coffee advert, and he was wonderful. Fuck’s sake, Death. Look at the list we sent

Goddamn. This news gouges a big chunk out of my youth. And yours too. Not unreasonable to say Giles was THE father figure for millennials and Anthony Head was the dictionary definition of the kindest of gentlemen. 72 is no age. None at all.

an enormous and influential tract of British media has no interest in addressing the fact Nigel Farage is a far-right agitator, and that is a complete failure

Josephine Baker, 1973

Stewart Lee was brilliant tonight: "If you're unsure of which toilets you can use feel free to shit in a bag and mail it to Graham Linehan, he sorts through them by hand"

They were just following hors d’oeuvres

Polanski and Badenoch are too online while Starmer is not online at all. The future belongs to the party leader who's exactly the right amount of online.

Fuck me, it's like watching a Cole Palmer post-match interview.* *No shade of Cole's skill as a footballer or, I'd imagine, considerably more enlightened politics. But he ain't no public speaker.

As a runner and a writer, I heartily co-sign this message.

Bsky is apparently gonna start flagging whole accounts as nsfw soon so if you don't already know about your moderation settings, highly suggest switching nsfw from Hide to Warn; otherwise many creators will completely vanish from your timeline when they roll this out.

So bored of footballers thanking God for their victory. Just once it would be great to here "I'd just like to thank the vast unforgiving blankness of the abyss and the futility of existence for making sure I leave it all on the pitch. Life is absurd, up the Reds!"