Bad news, guys. "Baby it's cold outside" discourse has started already on Threads, so it'll be on its way over here before long. Brace yourselves.

Good lord, the reason European welfare states even exist is because of Christianity. By the third century CE, the church was a major threat to the Roman Empire because churches were providing welfare services to citizens. Welfare is the basis of Christianity's power and influence.

Has anyone seen/written a long read about the impact of mediocre genAI on the equally but differently mediocre offshore content farms that it has displaced? Seems like it would be quite bad for India/Philippines etc

Weird the way the entire world went mad and only the creator of the IT Crowd was unaffected.

Enjoying UK inheritance tax and council tax discourse. Multimillionaires are arguing that they shouldn't be liable for one because they worked hard for their property and that they shouldn't be liable for the other because their property's value is a result of growth that they had nothing to do with

Apparently I'm supposed to be nice to Pyramid Scheme Cousin because her daughter has anorexia or something and that's why she's miserable all the time, but I'm like, I've known her for forty years and she has been intolerably miserable for at least thirty-three of those years.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts that you didn't really want to go to but you went anyway because your friends wanted to. Madonna (2016) P!nk (2013 maybe) Rihanna (2011) Mariah Carey (2003?) The Leeds United Calypso Band (2005)

Jesus really wasn't all that influential; it was Paul who made fetch happen.

Dawson's 20 Load Weekend

Um. There’s a woman presenting this too.

How odd, I'm sure the left wing Bluesky political brains trust told me that the ALP would vote with the Coalition to sacrifice environmental measures rather than ever work with the Greens

There's a guy in the office who is wearing golf pants and has a slutty little moustache, and I can't stop looking.

Do drivers of electric cars not realise that they use public resources (roads and associated infrastructure and services, as well as stuff like policing) much more heavily than people who do not drive cars? Do they actually think that not using petrol reduces their impact on society to zero?

Are we still doing diner journalism? Because today at a greasy spoon in Stateline, Nevada, a 65 year old birder named Maryanne told me that she likes that “Mamdonnelly” fellow and thinks that Donald Trump is a pedophile.

*pedantic voice* it's the *average* number of seconds in 6 weeks. One week in every year has 3600 fewer seconds, and another week has 3600 more seconds. (It's still a very cool little fact though 😄)

Jack Monroe's Self-Love Stew for dinner. No photo because a stew is never especially photogenic, but it's tasty and a very quick and easy weeknight meal to cook.

Over on Threads, Americans are very cross with me.

New socks 🧦 🧶 Gender is wavy and swirly sometimes, and sometimes it's neat and organised. Much love to and solidarity with my trans friends. (Also, I hope the pattern is somewhat distinguishable? My colour vision is so messed up that it's all one big mass to my eyes.)

This is why you don't want a majority as large as Labour currently has — you end up negotiating with your own party in public, and it makes you look weak. (And to be clear, she is weak – she has the support of the prime minister and literally nobody else.)

Important investigative journalism has happened.

I love this sort of post where "this country" could be pretty much anywhere. Does she commute to central London from somewhere in Kent? Has she tried to get from New York to LA by rail? Has she got a sore back from the overnight train from Sydney to Brisbane? Maybe Berlin to Dresden wasn't much fun?

I did the math on this a couple of years ago and it checks out. There are at total of 140 people coming for lunch, and enough birds to serve 142 people. Of the people coming for lunch, 66 are aristocracy (ladies dancing and lords a-leaping), and the other 74 are staff.

Americans think that copyright is more sacred than the word of God.

Madonna

"people only crime out of economic necessity" and "elite crime is the biggest issue in the world" are positions held simultaneously on this site

Madonna

My mental health must be worse than I thought as it turns out some of the people I have dinner with in restaurants are actually apparitions.

John's knitting tip of the day: don't spit splice white yarn if you've been drinking red wine 🍷 🤦‍♀️🧶

Some straight dude did big cums in his wife's pussy and she ended up needing a year off work, I was available to cover for her and one thing led to another.

Lunch at Yanguofu. Their new mushroom soup is a BIG umami hit!

Random chatting with a hot guy on the train, so I've got a bit of a spring in my step.

This white lady thinks that me having opinions on the aesthetics of a craft I've been doing for over twenty years is the same as white people barging into Aboriginal spaces and taking over.

Gladys would never have allowed this

Trackwork is making my journey today much more irritating than I had hoped it'd be, but I'm listening to Carly Rae Jepsen, so it's okay.

Half are called "pickled yum-ions" and the other half "rectum destroyer"

I have roasted a chicken.

Tbf Charlotte absolutely would do this

My current irritation is idiots getting things right completely by accident.

Sock progress: I'm past the heel of the second sock, which means I'm on the home stretch. I've enjoyed making these socks, but my colour vision deficiency means I can barely see the pattern 😭😭😭 🧶

One thing that really weakens your professional credibility is saying you don't know how to use basic software as if it's somehow cute. Like, if you're giving a presentation, acting like knowing the basics of how to use PowerPoint is beneath you does not make you appear competent and in control.

I'm being forced to use Power Query and I hate it

The UK needs either sustained tax rises on the middle classes to European levels or to accept a US model where public services don't exist. The billionaires are a fairytale to avoid hard choices. Labour are fucked because they dodged this one. This isn't a great sign for the other left option.

Share a TV series you've watched from beginning to end more than once

I see the Queen is continuing the queenly tradition of trolling people via headwear

A dinner to mark the birthday of someone who departed us. Snapper steam-baked in paper with lemon, dill and white wine, with asparagus and broccolini.

I've been watching "Young Royals", and while I think that I would enjoy it more if I wasn't being asked to care about an arsey teenager sulking for 18 hours, I do recognise that the intended audience is arsey teenagers who spend their lives sulking, and they want to see themselves represented.

I do like the way they've found the person you're least likely to have any sympathy at all for to use in the photo.

I'll never understand why survey designers use 5-level Likert scales for questions and then smash the levels together when reporting the results. Like, what is the point of making people decide between "agree" and "strongly agree" if you're going to just decide they mean the same thing?

Good morning from Parramatta, where I have walked into the cafe and they are playing a tropical house cover of J-Lo's "Waiting for Tonight"