My friend who lived in arctic alaska would have to tell people this ALL of the time. I got her a penguin one year as a gag gift. But do you know what there are in Greenland? Polar Bears. Good luck embracing one of those.

HELP REQUEST: Would anyone who speaks Spanish and English be up for sense-checking some subtitles on a short film (<15 minutes) please? I have no budget, I'm afraid - it's a short LGBTQ+ film in English, and it's been accepted into a festival in Spain.

NEW: NEW: Standards commissioner finds Nigel Farage committed seventeen breaches of MPs code of conduct. He failed to declare £333,000 in outside interests (more than 3x MPs annual salary)…

Wow, sure would be pretty crazy if a ton of experts in the artificial intelligence field relentlessly warned everyone about this state of affairs being inevitable over and over for years.

In a screeching u-turn from its Manifesto the Government now backs conversion therapy for trans people. That is what 'supporting' trans youth but denying them the medicine they need to physically transition means.

This small man (in all of the ways) needs to feel big so he commits a battery on a woman who is merely taping him with her cellphone.

Did not expect to make it to 2026, I hope you all have a lovely new year

Definitive proof that the earth is not flat: If it had edges, cats would have pushed everything off them by now.

I think the best way to explain the X vs Bluesky preference is whether a person thinks the left is more annoying than the right is dangerous. The reason so many Noah Smiths end up on the X side of that equation is that while the left annoys them personally, the right mostly endangers other people.

There are huge carveouts in IHT for things like the primary home. So it’s already generous, but such taxes are important to redistribute generational wealth. If you oppose hereditary members of the House of Lords, you should support inheritance tax for the same reason.

Dear @patmcfaddenmp.bsky.social , I make this post with zero political inference, if as a career civil servant, I cannot adequately get your staff to understand that without additional support, I am going to end up unable to work, or dead, within the next year, then the process involved is failing.

According to DWP the disabilities destroying my life, hugely increasing my cost of living to a point of barely surviving, mean I score a total of ZERO on their PIP eligibility. Apparently, a department that wants to get disabled people into work, won't support me until I have worked myself to death

Not just tourism. It ends US global business.

Zelenskyy: “The United States does not want Ukraine to be in NATO. “What separate agreements the US has with Russia — we do not know. “Over time all secrets come to light.”

All those stories of illness spreading? Believe them… Graphed data on coughing levels from all users of the sleep app I use (Blanked out central London to hide my personal location, sorry!)

"womens rights activist" is the pretence for loud misogynists, transphobes, and homophobes, in the current society where such bigotry is government policy.

When elected Pope, they become the head of a country "holy see", do they automatically gain dual nationality? Or does Italy give the equivalent of indefinite leave to remain to all popes by default? Anyone know?

Does anyone know of a site akin to Spareroom for finding people for flatshares in London? In urgent need to avoid being evicted for xmas.

Frustratingly, remainers said this again and again during the Brexit referendum: European states are small and in global terms weak on their own. And Europe’s enemies want it that way. But of course that was talking Britain down and other such delusional rubbish.

It’s weird how much of an influencer Jesus turned out to be; he only had 12 followers! (No offence meant, heard the joke, thought it was funny)

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Looking to find someone to share a flat rental in London asap, please let me know if you know someone.

🧵 Ten years after Brexit, data catches up with lived reality. UK 🇬🇧 GDP 8% smaller. Investment ⬇️ 18%. Productivity ⬇️ 4%. GDP/capita 10% lower than comparable nations. Not bc of a single shock, but bc Brexit drained confidence, investment, capacity for a decade. www.euronews.com/business/202...

BREAKING: “The idea that leaving the EU was the answer to all our cares and concerns has clearly been proved wrong." Keir Starmer says that "wild promises were made" about Brexit. He adds: "The same argument is now being made about the European Convention on Human Rights"

Turning Point at OU posted this girl's essay in full and man is it rough

Oh, hello Thursday.

🤞

I am very uncomfortable with this idea, its bringing an even greater populist approach to justice - and reduced legitimacy too.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

I have failed to sleep for so long I am now too hungry to sleep…AAARRRGHGGGGHHH

Apparently there isn't good evidence that Google uses Gmail to train LLMs — I'm still glad to no longer rely on gmail for email, because I am a skeptic (paranoid?) and just don't trust that what they say is what they do

Incredible. Grab the data whilst you can this won’t be up for long

Analysis of the language used in Trump’s Ukraine “peace plan” shows it was drafted in Russian and translated into English. I’ll try to dig up a link.

For fuck’s sake. Opt out instructions in the link. www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...

If the USA so desperately wants to placate Russia with land gifts, they should offer Alaska

The anti-trans movement has always just been a veneer for the increased normalisation of misogyny and homophobia

"Trans people could be asked about whether they should be accessing single-sex services based on their physical appearance." No. not "trans people". ANYONE. This moral panic leads inexorably to the policing of women based on their appearance deemed to be "unfeminine". www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is a point I have been yelling about for years the 5 year forecast makes sense in terms of limitations, but the fiscal rules aligned to that period have locked us into short-termist thinking that is killing effective policy.

Exclusive: The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, nooses and the Confederate flag as hate symbols. The military service drafted a new policy that classifies them as “potentially divisive.”

When Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka. Tommy Robinson, aka. Tiny-Tommeh-Ten-Names) treats your policy announcement as a win, you must realise that things have gone sideways in a pretty significant way? Or is that just me? A post on the Hostile Environment 2.0 asking: Why is Labour doing this?

A life bookended by uniformed thugs

One of the most shameful incidents of WW2 was when the government and press scapegoated refugees, then decided to pack them off an a cramped ship, The HMT DUNERA and ship them to Australia. As they boarded the boat they were stripped of the valuables and robbed by the guards. Now government policy

Bold move to start with three countries which have massive human rights issues. When you claim to be a "progressive government" and then directly copy Trump I am definitely going to call bullshit on your "progressive" claims.

There were 93 homicides in London last year: population 9 million In New York - population 8.5 million - there were 391. London's homicide figure is 6 times lower than LA, 9 times lower than Miami, 17 times lower than Chicago. And it's falling year on year despite the population increasing

Fuck washing machines. 1h49 min for the cycle. My alarm goes off so I go to check it, 35 mins remaining. I get that it may take some extra time to heat the water if you don’t give it a hot water line. BUT THIS ONE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CHOICE TO PLUMB HOT WATER IN FFS

Increasingly likely that "all pain, no gain" will be the title of the post-mortem of this government.

You absolute fucking clowns.

I hate scientists who say this. Octopuses evolved before humans, and they STILL have not evolved intelligence and society even approaching early humans. If they could have, they would have.

The governments plans are going to collapse the public sector, and utterly undermine any attempts at promoting growth. www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/...

Anything going slow in government? Its because y'all cheered on cutting the civil service. Its going to get MUCH worse over the next few years