I know I'm deep in this with the diss, but forcing alliance dilemmas on NATO members is the obvious Russian strategy and we should be doing everything we can to push back.

i'm not going to lie i feel /really uncomfortable/ with how renormalised it has become to discuss whether russia poses a /direct threat/ to /the UK/ as the prerequisite for whether or not we should rearm. that's not really the point? but thanks for the erasure of your allies!

The noise I made on reading the final line was frankly Lovecraftian.

Okay, I have referenced this a few times in replies, but: some people are confused about why the SSPX would play this game of chicken and expect the Pope would blink. It's not JUST the precedent from the last time! It's also the entire recent history of the Catholic Church in China.

ALL THE WAY DOWN TO THE LAITY THIS IS INCREDIBLE

von Braun is the archetypal evil genius who Gru is ultimately based on, of course the Minions worked for him

Operation Bananaclip brought most of the minions to the US of course

God, grant me the serenity to dig through the ditches, the courage to burn through the witches, and the wisdom to slam in the back of my dragula

Okay. So. Obscure Military Holy Orders. Bear with me on this one: In 1687 the French were aggressively expanding their trade and slavery operations on the Gold Coast. As part of this two young West African boys were sent back to France, most likely as slaves. One may have been called "Aniaba". /1🧵

My suspicion is that Instagram is far more responsible for the upsurge in antisemitism than Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Frankly a lot of the daily antisemitism I’ve encountered has nothing to do with Gaza, just jokes about Jews and money, Jews controlling everything, etc.

One of the reasons the growing usage of “Zionist” as the kind of omni-villain for the left makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable is that it’s a term that seems chosen to sweep in a lot of these people while pretending to stay focused on geopolitics

If you object to the government of Israel, say “Israel.” Don’t use an ambiguous term that is wildly overinclusive and strongly associated with broader Jewish identity. That seems like an effort to draft off ambient antisemitism

This is my watercolour painting of the Hawk Stone in Oxfordshire. Legend tells that the cleft at the top was made by chains used to imprison witches who were later burnt at the stake. The original artwork is now available on my Etsy shop here: shorturl.at/HDzSI #WyrdWednesday

"What are you going to do, excommunicate me?" -- quote from man who has just been automatically and immediately excommunicated

The AntiPope is coming And everybody's humming The papists are in-fighting On to be left or right-wing

Many of the people who are all-in on reactionary grievance politics are not "economically anxious", and many of the targeted demographics are very much working class, precarious, and impoverished. To abandon "culture issues" is to abandon large swathes of the working class to fascist violence.

it's july

Thought of another fun exercise everyone can try: turn Bouba and Kiki (of the Bouba/Kiki Effect) into characters that fit your own tastes and interests

This is quite obviously child abuse, and should be treated as such.

They sent this for your posts.

great year for medievalists; first you’ve got a tyrant starting shit with the Pope and now we have a full blown schism

Great bit of premature truncation by the Clarion today...

I don't really enjoy how it's basically impossible to have a day-to-day political discussion nowadays without people insisting that when their favourite politician said [thing they don't really agree with] they actually meant [thing they agree with]

IMO medically unqualified 'birthkeepers/doulas' who make home birth decisions, or claim skills - subject to police & coronial findings - should be charged with fraud or manslaughter. 'Free birth' creates childless mothers & motherless babies. It's a scam and a trauma factory run by deluded grifters.

Good morning! Thought for the day: Tom Bombadil is the Jar-Jar Binks of Middle Earth.

doctor: you have synesthesia me: I see what you’re saying doctor: yes I know, you can stop telling me that

Around two years ago I had a very nice lunch with a former Conservative Cabinet minister whose voice I now hear in my head, they whispered after the waiter had gone “you see, this restaurant has a concept, it’s called ‘small plates’ and it’s unfamiliar to anyone who has been in a coma for 30 years”

Someone suggesting we get tapas or mezze: "Fuck yes, life is for living and loving and sharing, sign me up." Someone suggesting we get small plates: "You're right, happiness is delusion, life is empty and meaningless, and I've probably never actually experienced love in any real way."

Anglophones always act like Welsh has a bizarre orthography, like Gaelic has a bizarre orthography, like Polish has a bizarre orthography, when in real life they could get around this with the simple realisation that not all languages pronounce the letters of the Latin alphabet the same.

Imagine thinking English speakers should refer to Germany as Deutschland but not Wales as Cymru because you're vomiting up stale meme garbage about the Welsh language

Homophobia isn’t a recent thing for Bindle, in 2014 she wrote a hit piece on murdered 21 year old Matthew Shepard. Now, she’s jumped on the anti-Pride bandwagon to sell another piece, this time to make the age old insinuations about gay men and children. Ofc she wants to ban stuff, they always do.

Fellas, is it morally justifiable to log off?

But yeah, chat, becoming that bully and turning it into a political ethos will not save the left. And it won't redeem what happened to you. And it will not stop you from being a fucking nerd like the rest of us.

Whole lotta hit dogs hollering on this one lmao.

Bone lemonade. Bone. Lemonade.

I got heat stroke in Eritrea once. I became sufficiently delirious that it was very difficult to take rational steps to save myself. I recommend doing everything you can never to get that hot in the first place.

Vladimir Lenin, looking around the RSDLP with a disgusted look on his face:

there’s an elaborate Old Country curse to be had here, something like “May your mute list remind you of all you’d hoped to forget”

If I were European I would simply solve the heatwave using good old American moxie. But I will not use said moxie to solve the USA's intractable social problems because America is a real country and I am very busy.

Magdalen college only started pronouncing it that way in the 1980s, to fuck with foreign exchange students.

Paper doesn't blunt fabric scissors. That's just a lie put out by Big Scissor, to make people buy more scissors.

Draft conversion practices bill published. A few thoughts. 🧵

And health care services are defined extremely broadly - they don't need to be carried out by regulated professionals. Any crank providing "mental health" services is providing "health care services" and so isn't engaging in "conversion practices". Indeed it's hard to see who this bill will catch.

Limb (b) of this is also very problematic. It seems to protect floating 'therapy' services where there is no medical condition - exactly the space you would expect conversion 'therapists' to occupy.

Everybody wants to talk about how “addictive” porn is while Kalshi, Polymarket and Draftkings are sponsoring & advertising at every major media event, targeting primarily men, and bankruptcy rates have risen 30% since online betting was legalized

When I say that Mumsnet should be considered a driver of extremism on par with 4chan/8chan and Kiwi Farms, I am not exaggerating in the slightest

Anyway, if you're in the UK and you're questioned, challenged or stopped from using a single-sex space, whether you are trans or cis, TransActual wants to hear from you: transactual.org.uk/equality-act...

Tired of Christians turning a very Jewish and very horny song into a generic song of vague uplift. This has to be up there with Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” on the list of most misunderstood songs.