The story didn't even break through to any big legacy outlets from what I can tell. I domain searched the NYT, WaPo, NPR, PBS, Boston Globe, CBS, ABC, NBC, and MS Now for any mention of it. Only MS Now picked it up: www.ms.now/news/white-h...

Right (cracks knuckles), but you asked for it… bsky.app/profile/drbe...

My main one is that very few vehicles with Highway Maintenance markings are involved in highway maintenance - it's just tradies looking to get away with parking on pavements.

I love you all but if I see another Stevie Wonder conspiracy, I'm going to lose it It is casual ableism disguised as a joke. The visually impaired along with the ambulant disabled are sick of you going "oh hallelujah, it's a miracle" whenever we do something your narrow brains can't comprehend

gofund.me/320da323e I have been able to book conference participation now. Further donations go to hotel and travel costs etc. thank you so much for your generosity.

Have come down with something. Was horribly feverish yesterday afternoon and evening, was not but congested this morning but suspect something where the feverish bits come in waves.

Would also piss off both the Scouse and Mancunians and give us a capital partially in Wales

Am biased, obviously, but given the theory that it might have been intended as capital of Britannia, Deva Victrix/Chester/Caer should finally get a go at being capital.

the point is all the legal advice in the world is only given at a moment in time, given a set of laws and conditions. These then obviously change. The wider structural arguments for are strong I think; the policy and fiscal environment is *producing* the constant cuts. UCEA constantly admits it.

This was part of a dispute about how one pronounces the first two syllables of semiotics. (Because we were discussing the semiotics of hair in The Sopranos)

This, by the way, is how you get people to be capable of being good at things. You have to aim for genuine competence with the actual resources at hand.

As a former high school theater kid, I find the Jimmy Awards somewhat offensive. High school theater isn't supposed to be "good". High school theater is supposed to have one or two kids with passable talent and then whoever your high school choir teacher managed to drag out of the cafeteria.

Bit worried that we do currently have a load of people wandering around who have not mastered at all the art of the genuinely harmless/significantly beneficial lie or dissemble. Baffled, too, that many of them educated and employed etc.

"Because it's like an otic, but only half an otic"

My grandma and grandad went on the gameshow ‘Mr & Mrs’ in the late ‘70s. A question about teeth-cleaning saw them knocked out, whereupon my gran threatened to kill her husband on national TV. They received a candelabra as a consolation prize. It is proudly displayed in my living room.

Grandad had promised to buy her one new dress a week if she returned. I asked Grandma if Grandad did indeed buy her a new dress every week. “Did he knackers!” she replied. I was about 7 when she told me all this for the first time. It came up a few times.

My amazing grandma was born *100* years ago today. She once ran off with a postman but Grandad eventually convinced her to come home. The postman won a huge sum on the pools the next day. The. Next. Day. “Biggest win ever,” she’d tell me, between achingly deep drags on a B&H.

oh yeah and it's the DWP sooo... does this apply to those carers who were earning pennies over the allowed rate and are being made to pay back the full amount of carers allowance over the period rather than the difference? because... that'd be EXTREMELY fucking evil.

AND HOW IN THE FUCK WOULD A LOT OF THOSE PEOPLE REPAY THOSE DEBTS WHEN THEY CAN'T DRIVE A FUCKING CAR TO GET TO WORK YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD god, the way the government has recently been using the threat of driving bans for stuff like drug offences and the likes is just batshit and i hate it and them.

This is still going! Get yourself a cheap comic, why don't you, you could use a break.

We have some fucking wild parties here but the morning after can often be a sad and messy affair.

I feel like we are now at capacity with the "did you know how to stay cool during the heat, adult with the ability to read and parse knowledge who may have even lived in hot places" articles (They are useful public service journalism just also getting on my tits)

HMRC tried something innovative to reduce fraud and error in child benefit payments but didn't pay proper attention to risk management or the impact on claimants whose claims were incorrectly stopped. When doing high stakes innovation, governance and risk mgt are key! www.nao.org.uk/reports/hmrc...

When they ask in 5 years why nobody thinks university is worth it & why employers find recent grads lacking in critical and creative thought, in initiative and independence, point at the fucking Nous powerpoint. 'Efficiency' shouldn't be the main goal. It should be a means towards your purpose.

Each uni has a consultancy in that tells them how to run a degree cheaply. They all simply say 'mega lectures' (LOL, infrastructure) & 'generic modules staff is interchangeable on'. It's pitched as rationalising, creating a 'sustainable' portfolio. But its destroying what university actually is.

threads is what people think bluesky is

Granted it’s Edinburgh, so not that hot, but my never knowingly warm flat is really coming into its own this week. Last night after a not uncomfortable evening walk, stepping into our common close was like walking into a fridge. #Scotland

Sports Commentary xkcd.com/3262/

I absolutely agree with this but also I would really like the return of normal looking people to so many things now reserved for hot people.

Me: well, and we did end up singing The Good Ship Venus... Partner: What's the good ship Venus? (A conversational wrangle for several minutes while I assume he is feigning innocence/prurience and he, in fact, has asked an entirely sincere question)

This is a Flashdance (1983, Adrian Lyne) appreciation thread.

The day of Brexit vote itself I was mostly very hungover, having had a big and intense night out in Soho with my best mate the night before.

Rwy'n gorwedd ar fy ngwely gyda ffan arnaf yn gwylio Flashdance. Mae'n glasur ac rwy'n credu, rywsut, y bydd y llun eiconig o ddŵr yn tasgu ar Ms. Beals/ei dwbl corff yn fy oeri.

Sharing for my friends & followers in #London: venues and outdoor spaces open to all where Londoners can take respite on hot days. apps.london.gov.uk/cool-spaces/

I am not anti AC by any means but I don’t think it will stop people from drowning during heatwaves

Fun fact: based on their native or national languages, for the majority of World Cup winners throughout history, there actually is an “I” in “team”

Just like Tice, these are people who just utterly crave being overt oligarchs who can just buy political power, and are convinced that anything less than this is some sort of conspiracy against them.

Reminder that Arron Banks' whole origin story is that he was a Tory donor who was infuriated that despite this William Hague still didn't know who he was.

I've worked on liturgical manuscripts for a long time. I'm not a musicologist, but I'm part-way to a liturgist. And so when I say that describing breviaries come close to breaking me...

My insomnia comes and goes in waves, and I measure it in archived episodes of In Our Time. Currently I'm in a 2-ep phase, usually around 1.30am. Knackered but my GOD educated.

Came home via the river. Stopped to take a look at an oddly shaped floating log; the oddly shaped floating log put its head up and looked back at me. Apparently the oddly shaped floating log was unimpressed by what it saw, because it turned onto its front and dived. Third urban otter of the year.

Once I stop sweating onto a table in the Line and Whistle in Crewe (iykyk) I should do the last leg of my journey home. Last two legs if you factor in having to get home from the station

AI can do a Michael Caine impression now? Is there really nothing that loads of people enjoy doing and can do fairly easily that these machines can’t automate the joy out of. NOBODY WANTED THE DRUDGERY OF DOING MICHAEL CAINE IMPRESSIONS TAKEN AWAY.

This may not work for you and that is good to remember with all advice. But: in fiction writing it is often very helpful to have thought about the ending before you start in earnest. The planner/pantser dichotomy is a somewhat silly one (everyone good is a bit of both) but know where you are going

More redundancies. Exeter this time and once more Arts and Hums targeted.

If an audience doesn’t like you it is very rarely personal. Don’t be like the guy I saw once who stormed back in to the gig after dying to ask the audience out for a fight Everyone there is out in some of their small free time spending hard earned money on being entertained. They deserve your best.

When you’re nervous you’ll be tempted to shift your weight from foot to foot, to the audience this looks like very nervous rocking and will make them uncomfortable out of empathy for you. Stand your ground at the front of the stage. Until you have 50+ gigs under your belt ALL your material is new

Some of the little stagecraft things that people don’t think about: Don’t look down after you do the punchline. Fight the urge to punctuate the gap between the punchline and the laugh going “Errr” (I sometimes still do this)

The audience has no idea how it’s supposed to go, they don’t know the order of your set, they only care if it’s funny or not. If you think it’s funny, it’s funny. If it doesn’t work you need to think of a better way to get across what you think is funny about it.