Dan Wooton's commitment to providing excellent follow-lists is the only thing about him worthier than the nitrogen he will one day release into the soil.

'Professional' used to be synonymous with 'autonomous'. Lawyers, bank managers, doctors, teachers: the whole idea was that these were highly-educated professionals who could be trusted. Over 30+ years, nonsense about 'post-code lotteries' and other drivers of centralisation sucked the autonomy out.

My son just came out of the bathroom singing 'Another wee bites the dust', in case you were wondering what an idyllic Sunday sounds like.

The only thing Israel could ever do to attract negative consequences from the West is the only moral thing it could ever do: become a single, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, genuinely democratic social democracy, beginning with a truly open Truth and Reconciliation committee and the Right to Return.

This is a subtweet of Almost All Media Britain.

If calling for the US to stop arming a genocide in Palestine was naïve because 'it won't make any difference'... Explain how poor Zelenskyy has had to come crawling to the US after ONE DAY of Trump withdrawing funding? www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Liberals, looking at the world, and deciding that the REAL villain is an elderly environmentalist. For True Blue Dems, even the worst fascist is a misguided friend, who can be brought back into the fold; meanwhile, the mildest socialist is anathema, scum, needing to be crushed utterly.

Once again, for the hard of thinking Vote Blue No Matter Who Dems: this is on you, too. The problem ISN'T Trump. Every society has had aged, reckless, violent, idiotic buffoons. The problem is a system that allows a creature like that anywhere near power. YOU are part of that system.

Have any of my mutuals been to the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum? Was thinking of going in on Wednesday.

Seeing this stupid take all over Bluesky yesterday and today. No-one EXPECTS the Republicans to be anything other than cartoonishly evil. The Democrats trade on being seen as better than that. In a duopoly, if THEY can't be decent, the politics well is poisoned for all.

My son gave up trying to win the Indiana Jones game and is now just beating up every fascist he can find. Honestly, what an absolute MOOD.

You want to WATCH them get MARRIED? The most intense, personal moment of their LIVES, and you want to WATCH? I mean...OK. Don't want to yuk your yum, but...wait. They fucking INVITED you? They asked you to watch them actually...exchange their vows? Both of them? I'm sorry but that's just sick.

I need to enter a Face/Off scenario with someone in this situation. I'm the opposite: I like talking to people, but my face says 'Step away now before I burn your homestead and salt your crops.' So no-one ever approaches me.

(Tentatively inserting this into The Discourse with tweezers, then sprinting away to throw myself into a ditch before it explodes along with everything else in the world, but...this looks like it *might* be Very Good News indeed.) www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

'...if you can keep it.' Benjamin Franklin, 17th September, 1787.

While we're doing lessons from history: was there ever before a leader who was wildly popular with millions of ordinary citizens, but who the Senate feared was becoming a dictator? I wonder, if by any chance there was, how those Senators dealt with the problem. It's a real doozy!

My Y10 class discussed the impossible demands of Sonnet 116's definition of true love - I asked them to imagine having to still love your first ever crush from Y6. 1. Boy A immediately turns to look at a friend sitting behind. 2. After a pause, boy B says, quietly, 'I wouldn't mind.' Adorable.

Average Annapurna documentary. Climber: I've climbed every other 8,000er. I've trained for 30 years. I have every possible respect for this mountain. I am here in celebration of the Sublime, not to triumph over Nature. Anapurna: Lmao. Lmfao. Your frozen bones will be eaten by my eternal snows.

The most terrifying thing about generative AI isn't how it can't do original thought, or produce beautiful art. Nor can most of us. It's that it confirms the billionaire class in its belief that most people are replicable and replaceable. And now millions gleefully collude in their own replacement.

AI was meant to free humans from drudgery so they could make art. Instead, the techbros designed it to free humans from making art, so that they had more time for drudgery.

Water, fire, air: flame Hissing, leaping; warming . Safe. My elements, soothed. #Haiku

Everyone who says handwriting is an outdated irrelevance hasn't had the sheer pleasure of holding this charming letter from Professor Tolkien to a friend of my grandmother's, explaining some printing issues which delayed the publication of the last volume of LOTR. Look at those elegant dots!

How am I supposed to tell you all the things I like when I don't know myself? When the things I would die rather than lose - the vertigo of the infinite stars on clear nights; the sudden flame of my son's smile - are so unknowably essential, that 'liking' is entirely too dilute a word?

On the other hand, my beloved ex-College tutor responded to students of mine who asked his advice on a project, revealing not only that he is deep into his own exciting project (I thought he'd retired), but that I was 'one of [his] favourite ever students'. 🥹

Posting on Bluesky is like whispering secrets on a windswept mountain. It's occasionally cathartic, but no-one will hear you, and the effort is scarcely worth it.

It is both absolutely true that millions of US Southern Whites are currently unreachable, AND that the poorest 20% of White people voted for Harris over Trump. Far too many US 'leftists' seem itching to absolve themselves of responsibility for Southern states. It's 'basket of deplorables' 2.0.

Blocking everyone who posts obviously AI-generated images, no matter what their 'message', is gloriously cathartic. It isn't often that life provides unambiguous markers for discerning right from wrong. But using generative AI - the kind that's immediately obvious - is a shining beacon of idiocy.

Inspired by the 6 year old child at the Kassam this evening who turned to shush the Luton fans - AND IT WORKED! because they started laughing - this is a thread about hilarious things you've heard children say and do: please add yours! I'll start with a few of my own, which I promise are true: 1/?

I wish this were so. But the people aren't good enough because: 1) Capitalism encourages the venal, sociopathic, and shallow; 2) It will ruthlessly destroy leaders who might improve things; 3) It has stolen all power from the people, so that they cannot rise up to remove corrupt leaders.

This reminds me of Oscar Wilde's tour of the American West, where bemused NY socialites, expecting to hear of him being beaten up by prostitutes and miners, read of how he got on famously with them all:

'There was jam on the handle of the door. But I quenched the anger which rose in me Because I thought of the day When the handle would be clean And the little hand Gone.' Séamus Ó Néill. 'I'm not going to do Nothing any more, Pooh. Well, not so much. They don't let you.' So much empathy. ❤️

This is a subtweet about how almost all educational research gets filtered into schools by managers (including politicians) eager to make their mark. Researchers: A small pilot study showed that reading short summaries of texts can sometimes be as efficient as... Schools: BURN THE BOOKS, LUDDITES!

This happened to several members of White's Club in 1777, who once bet their asses against a gambling collective from Brooks' that the club tortoise, Bertram could complete a circuit of the downstairs privy faster than Brooks' pet sloth, Cicely. Bertram began well, but lettuce was his downfall.

Obviously, the new top rating needs to be Canada Dry.

David Lynch, like William Blake, always saw angels in the tree. Their message was always his. Love one another or die. The corollary? If you truly love, you will never truly die.

Dorothy Sayers, wise in matters of peoples' self-perception: 'It's embarrassing to be taken seriously as a person.' I'm not sure I could ever take anyone seriously who were not embarrassed by the prospect of it.

After I gained followers suspiciously quickly, I culled any who seemed too beautiful to be real. So, if you are still following me, I guess I have good news and bad news.

And your specialist chosen subject? ... #Mastermind #ExistentialCrisis #Weltschmerz

Tired, but shiny-eyed with enthusiasm about weird, interesting stuff (Late Natafian, the siege of Münster, the Victorian language of flowers, runic alphabets, and Enochian rituals, since you didn't ask). I DO love my brain! It is such a lovely place in which to live.

4D Chess from China, tbf. This was always the endgame.

I am DESPERATELY craving summer vibes, sunk as I am deep in the oubliette of this frozen winter. Name a song which best conveys that sense of warm, endless evenings, sea-salt-thickened hair, chilled rosé on a terrace, sand between your toes, and a cicada chorus? Mine: youtu.be/ItidwkXHr5g?...

It is horrifying that a hero is such a monster. What he did, though, is infinitely more horrific. Please don't start the nuanced conversations about his own abuse, art being separate from life, etc right now. The real victims are clear. If you can, please donate. www.safehorizon.org rainn.org

Literally switch the words 'liberal' and 'left/lefty' here to see the actual problem that's been going on since Reagan/Thatcher at least. If liberals would compromise with the left even half as much as vice versa, we'd be delighted. But supporting genocide was a bridge too far.

The Borrowers. Incredibly small, disaster beckons if seen by humans, essentially parasitical.

Nothing and no-one does cosy like a cat. Except, perhaps, two. #Cats #Blueskycats

All the Actually Good things people associate with 'masculine energy' - decisiveness, cut-the-crap boldness, prioritising logic over emotiveness - are wildly dissociated from biological sex. So we're just left with provably masculine traits: stupidity, violence, and early death. No thanks.

I accidentally kicked my cat (not hard - an under-my-feet-in-the-kitchen-shuffle) and said 'Meow Maxima Culpa' and she looked at me exactly as disgusted and contemptuous as an Oxford Latin Professor would have looked and anyway that's how I discovered cats speak Latin. #Cats

I remember reading an interview with MrBeast in which he straightforwardly pointed out that he cannot have the luxury of individuality, for fear of losing subscribers. When eyeball time and thus advertising income are the priority, ANY stance at all is a weakness. The final logic of social media.