Why did Tolkien call it The Red Book of Westmarch and not “Mordor, He Wrote”?

I love people who respond to stories about MPs dragging their feet in renovating the existing Parliament by saying "turn Parliament into a museum and build a new one", as if they'd get a 2-for-1 deal

well this is how I spent 5 minutes of my precious weekend

Quick quiz: In which year did the a report say: "The longer the essential work is left, the greater the risk becomes that the building might suffer a sudden, catastrophic failure, or that small, incremental failures might make the building uninhabitable."?

It remains funny that Canada bit the bullet and closed Centre Block seven years ago for renovation and it’s going to take another six years to finish it and somehow Parliamentary life has gone on and barely anyone notices or cares about it

It is 2014, MPs have postponed a decision on Parliament's restoration until after the election It is 2017, MPs have postponed a decision on Parliament's restoration until after the election It is 2024, MPs have postponed a decision on Parliament's restoration until after the election It is 2028, MPs

It's Friday night baby

Maybe it's belated revenge for John Lithgow being a better Churchill than most of the British attempts have been

We, the workers at Bethesda Games Studios, express our solidarity and support for the developers at Rockstar Games. Last month’s firings in the UK and Canada were a clear and disgusting case of union busting.

Charlie Brooker: I wrote “Be Right Back” as a cautionary tale 2wai: At long last, we have created the technology from the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back”

🥰

Ah this is the good stuff, love a good stolen valour story

Dunno mate, if you're earning that much I feel like you're probably enjoying life a lot more for getting up in the morning than someone who isn't paying that rate of tax.

Judge for yourself: did the dossier accusing the BBC of doctoring a Trump quote…doctor a Trump quote?

The Epstein files are clearly more damning than we assumed, which is saying something.

feel like a hack constantly beating the drum of like: this stuff is poisonous! our discourse has been poisoned. many of the most powerful brokers in silicon valley have been radicalized by their own algorithms & are funding moral decay. it's sad and...boring! but this is a lot of whats being built!

the decision to really just abandon moderation and let it rip suggests that this is what meta wants for its platform. this is the final, idealized form of the product

Entertaining myself with the definition of 'pet' being inserted by the Renters Rights Act 2025. Probably should add: '(e) Fear of retribution from the animal if otherwise' to cover most cats

Also it’s bizarre to report this as “Epstein alleging Trump knew of his conduct.” Seems like the more notable thing is that Trump was engaging in that conduct.

Trump only spent all that time with Epstein because he was trying to convince him to stop doing all that pedophile stuff. Because he’s a good friend. It took a lot of long visits because of how committed Epstein was to the pedophile lifestyle. Not the smoking gun you were hoping for, eh, Dems?

“In an email from January 2019, Mr. Epstein wrote to Mr. Wolff of Mr. Trump: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”” Starting to see why Mike Johnson kept the House shut down for weeks rather than allow the 218th signature to release the Epstein docs…

The thing to understand about this is that this catastrophe in the UK has redounded to the political benefit of the very same people and political movement that pushed for it! Extremely perverse.

If the Prescott memo is true, and there is a secret cabal of LGBTQ+ journalists stopping any negative stories about trans people being published or aired at BBC News, then, I have to say, they’re doing a really fucking shit job of that.

"Hi, my name is Pope Leo XIV and I'm in the Criterion Closet"

i think it's very bad that "agentic disinformation network, agentic nation-state level black hat, agentic revenge porn at scale" all occurred and were funded before "AI PowerPoint slide deck creation that actually looks nice" got solved

Ian Fleming killed off James Bond at the end of the fifth novel, From Russia With Love, and then starts the next one with “Phew, that last case was a bit much, I had to spend a few days in bed, anyway back to work…”

John Le Carre was right about the British establishment and how the alumni of the best schools will sell out their own country for status and money and in particular a desperate desire for American attention

It’s already started - the BBC allows Newsmax boss to opine about bias, suggest some of the Jan 6 mob were merely innocent tourists visiting Congress, without pushback

What's fascinating here is that as she rhymes off the list of gender critical people at Newsnight pursuing an explicitly gender critical agenda, in the context of a discussion of ideological capture at the BBC, she doesn't recognise that she was part of the ideological capture of the BBC by GCs.

there's a moment in PARADISE LOST where Satan arrives in Eden and realizes Hell isn't a place; it's a thing he carries within him and it'll follow him wherever he goes. and i think about that when i see these awful rich men whose monstrous wealth has enriched them not at all

The suspiciously long arm of the law

I think the problem is that you can throw a rock and get a different answer. My usual view is that it means people with money who aren't actual aristocracy. My mum's definition is literally that middle class people hold dinner parties 🤷‍♂️

Trump Threatens To Sue BBC Over Misleading Edit Of ‘The Vicar Of Dibley’ https://theonion.com/trump-threatens-to-sue-bbc-over-misleading-edit-of-the-vicar-of-dibley/

i don't think it's good that the UK media elite are currently getting into esoteric racism

Patriotic is not a word I would use to describe myself but the way that these people don’t appear to like anything about this country but still get to wrap themselves in the flag really grates.

Lucy is really going to let Charlie Brown kick the football this time. She really means it.

Let Avasarala be Avasarala

Average UK person on the BBC: I like Strictly and The Traitors but the licence fee is too much and there's too many repeats Average UK person on X on the BBC:

And / or a window

Usually dictators stick to silencing the media in their own countries

Objectivity, impartiality and balance are all *different things*, and the lazy tendency to treat them as synonyms, and to use partisan balance alone as a proxy for the others, is the root cause of a vast amount of nonsense.

"Trump pardons Biden era political prisoners who did no wrong" -the BBC, probably

BREAKING: Big Brother has forced the head of the Eurasian Broadcasting Corporation to step down for refusing to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

FUN FACT: Sir Charles Curran was forced to resign as Director-General after Pyramids of Mars implied Sutekh, god of violence, was bad.

She uses the word "impartiality" here, but what Sonia Sodha wants from the BBC Director General isn't impartiality at all.