Home Office Ministers state publicly, on the record, that they are deliberately making life worse for older people and people with disabilities who depend on care services, but it's worth it because it reduces net migration.

I really don’t get this line of reasoning… to curb the far right we must… buckle to their demands???

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

They fundamentally do not understand that if you want a space that encourages the people in it to flourish, you get that by actively focussing your energy on what you do for the people inside the space. Putting barbed wire around a field is just not the same thing as planting seeds in it.

It will never fail to somewhat appall me that the reaction of many people to "mental health issues are rising and poorly are increasingly seeking support for them" is, axiomatically, "wow we need to reduce those diagnoses". A crisis can't be a crisis if you throw out most of the numbers!

A Labour government passed the Equality Act. A Labour government was in power when the Supreme Court interpreted it to not mean what ministers at the time were clear it was intended to mean. The Labour government response should have been to legislate to fix it. Not doing so was a cowardly betrayal.

Hope is here. Help us beat Reform in May. Donate today ⤵️

definitely appropriate to be reading @garethdennis.uk's book in the luggage rack of a delayed CrossCountry train (which is the one after the one we were trying to catch an hour earlier and which was too short to physically contain everyone trying to get onto it)...

it's not a cartel, it's a trade union the wilful refusal of elected members of the *Labour Party* to understand or acknowledge what a fucking trade union is and what it's fucking for, istg

The Phantom Menace is fine actually but if you disagree you probably aren't a fascist

Under the same law that's supposed to protect people from bigotry, and being given at least as much weight. it's just the most straightforward and blatant paradox of tolerance exploit

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Dick Van Dyke has OUTLIVED Dick Cheney

Yeah, what amazes me is that Röhm didn't have the advantage of being able to check a biography of Ernst Röhm out from the library to see what happens next, but these guys do, so what is their excuse? And, I mean, they're all deeply incurious, arrogant people, that's it, but still.

lots of people explaining to me (in good faith, tbc) that these companies are afraid that if they give people guidance on what to use/not use these tools for, it shrinks their potential market size, and, yes, i am aware. that's part of the problem i'm complaining about.

more fuel for my rant about how the scouring of the shire is an essential part of the narrative and leaving it out of the movies was a huge mistake

and yet Palantir have ruled out bidding for contracts on UK digital ID delivery because it's too undemocratic. PALANTIR. when PALANTIR are like 'hey steady on, government, we're not sure we want in on this round of surveillance state stuff' that's...sure a thing

Saruman levels off the charts

the National Trust said it’s an unprecedented year for acorns and I love this for him

I keep seeing AI techbros talking about how full automation of work is inevitable and then going to 'so either we can contribute to making that happen or ignore it, these are the only options for what to do about it' and, uh, what? no, if that's your focus, get on prepping for the consequences?

People treat it like there’s some kind of competition for who’s been victimized the most and not a collaboration to make sure we’re all victimized as little as possible

"Hey Shannon, what's the mood?" Thinking about how people have managed to coopt feminist language to subtly denigrate men, rather than bring women equality. How men wanting tool-shaped soaps is "fragile masculinity" but women with rose soaps are "enjoying femininity"

Absolutely spot on - and also completely in line with their essential purity/taboo ideas of sex. Tale as old as time: this kind of sex is dirty, but I want it, therefore the dirt 'belongs' to the object of desire, who can be sectioned off and disposed of as contaminated, while I remain clean.

mostly it's that we didn't understand how things worked then but also I do believe that to some degree some of those things felt possible because they *were* possible, or it was possible they might become feasible. just. possible isn't inevitable.

Discworld QOTD, from Going Postal

A concrete thing every UK person who cares about trans rights can do right now: 1. Email a link of this report to your MP, with highlights from the executive summary in your email. Ask them what it means for your constituency and their party - highlight trans people's legally mandated human rights

you shouldn't get to say "we will not tolerate any form of discrimination" while discriminating, actually.

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

if the rage-bait works too well it might be fake ::clap clap:: if the rage-bait works too well it might be fake ::clap clap:: look, we’ve all been fooled before when a deep-fake makes us sore but kindly doublecheck your source, it might be fake ::clap clap::

Here are the authors who have pulled out of the Queer Polari Prize due to the inclusion of self-identified TERF/Gender Critical author Boyne. They deserve support & I think it’s worth buying from an independent bookshop or borrowing from a library!

the initial draft of the syllabus I'm writing describes genAI as "a fascist environmental catastrophe disguised as a plagiarism machine, marketed to people who dislike thinking for themselves" maybe that's too much for the course policies section but my heart knows what it knows

🧵 A Thread of UK University Statements on the Supreme Court Ruling and EHRC Guidance Against Trans Inclusion This thread catalouges statements by UK Universities in relation to the Supreme Courts transphobic ruling and the EHRC guidance for trans segregation. I'll try update it daily. 1/?

Musk has no technical skills whatsoever, but he wants to appear smart. So he takes bits of information like this, told to him by junior engineers, and regurgitates it to appear smart. Musk did this with the Twitter stack and Twitter's senior architects called him out publicly, then he fired them.

TERFs who don't even skate are dogpiling manufacturer Bont after they put out a message apologising for their head of marketing in North America's inline department celebrating the trans sports ban by Donald Trump.

Note that a key point of the case was that Peggie was sacked on the basis of discriminating against and bullying Dr Upton in the workplace. The courts refused Upton's request for keeping her name private and the judge ruled against that giving license for newspapers to continue the harassment.

I've been chewing on what it means to be a man in a second Trump term, especially when we're surrounded by bad examples

"when people know their rights we can't do our job" sounds like your job violates people's rights then

78-year-old climate protester Gaie Delap has had her prison term extended for being “unlawfully at large” when govt contractors were unable to find the right-sized tag for her wrist, which would have allowed her to complete her sentence in the community www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Also a sport where the international governing body for the sport has an explicitly trans-inclusive gender policy. Long Island Roller Rebels are a WFTDA team. The Women's Flat Track Derby Association's official position is that trans women can play women's roller derby.

Roller derby is a weird nutty absurd sport with a ridiculous amount going on at any given moment and a lot of different ways for different types of body to be good at it, many of which aren't obvious.

when there are three people shouting on a roof and you close the entire street to get a fire engine to get them down, what is most disruptive here is not the protest, it is the *policing of the protest* but obviously no authority is ever gonna take responsibility for their own overreactions.

if you require the force of the state to enforce the gender binary it probably isn't actually inate. i know that everyone knows this already and you can't debate them with facts and logic but this is driving me fuckin nuts

I do actually believe in science pretty clearly and am opposed to attempts to enshrine the political order of sex according to a bunch of ideologues in law.

Why do we need AI to spot pot holes? The reporting isn't the problem, we have millions of citizens with eyes and broken suspension. The issue is the resources to repair. Surly paying the massive bill for pointless AI reduces the resources available to repair the potholes. I don't get it.