A disgusting woman who pioneered "gross bigots pretending to be fun on reality TV" to launch an anti-abortion tour across the UK. Endorsed women prisoners giving birth while chained to beds. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Been writing a number of semi-serious essay titles for our kid to practice essay writing with (they need to be able to not freeze and leave a blank sheet behind them, so silly topics they know well will give them a chance to practice the things they freeze on, like ‘how to phrase my argument posh’).

Ô galera, e no Brasil? Não vai deixar que fique em ‘Conde da Cara de Lixeira’ não né? (tradução que acabo de ver) Deve ter melhor, o país tá cheio de jogos de palavra melhores

These are definitely constraints that make it much harder to answer (certainly for me, as SFF is what I particularly read); so does the constraint on it being living authors (though some of my fave auths are ones I read widely in while they were still alive).

‘It’s as bad as we feared." A Freedom of Information request on behalf of Save Our Museum has found that since the introduction of entry fees to the Museum of Oxford - footfall is down 70-80%* on 2024-25 - income is so far 61% lower than the council's projections*, or over £53,000 less.

People sleeping rough on the streets of London with an armed forces background is pretty low and thankfully falling UK nationals with an armed forces background is even lower - 107 Compared to the 920 new rough sleepers who became homeless as a direct result of gaining refugee status

I remember that in midsummer of the year 2000, there was a big millennium festival in Oxford's South Park. It started off with people zipping back and forth pulling sellotape behind them - rolls and rolls of it, sort of shimmering in the light. At that point it was at the end of the day but not yet

Literally no one, of any persuasion, even at their horniest or most unhinged, discusses genitals as much as the transphobic

fascinatingly* the French news is translating "Count Binface" as « le Compte Tête-de-Poubelle » rather than « Visage-de-Poubelle) which is, in fairness, more accurate (his entire head is a bin, not just his face) typical British media not asking the important underlying questions * ta gueule

Keep an eye out for Tour de France superfan Didi "El Diablo" Senft and his many home-made, unusual bicycles

All of this, but also please remember that Laura Ingalls Wilder was edited by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who is regarded as one of the three mothers of libertarianism and Ayn Rand's besties, and the books have been shaped to reflect her ideology.

An Oxford classics graduate has won cross-party endorsements in the upcoming Clacton by-election. Count Binface, who studied at Corpus Christi, was described as “maybe the people[’s candidate]” by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, while defence secretary Dan Jarvis said “good luck to him”.

Have dug out my long box of Lois Lane comics! Featuring gems such as this one, where Lois is stalked by a ghost from Victorian England (er…) brought over to Metropolis with an heirloom dagger (ok…?) and then it is Jack the Ripper and he takes Lois back to Victorian London and Supes has to rescue her

This thread! is A LOT

AI fraud nearly derailed our next anthology. Today we’re talking about what went down, the things we missed, and publishing the report we wish we’d had when it happened. Read all about it on our new blog, and download the full report:

Again, I beg MPs and the government to actually look at the policy they may or may not be implementing and think through both the human consequences and their willingness to have 1/6 of all care staff be deported.

This is amazing; 40 women’s organizations standing in support of trans people’s human rights against this government’s targeting of trans people against the EHRC transphobic code. Trans people and cis women’s rights are not in opposition.

The best edit I’ve seen in weeks, you absolutely have to turn the sound on for this one.

"She kept talking to my mother about these amazing books that she was reading and she had lots of questions," Dutfield said. "My mother, who wasn't interested in them at all, said 'Why don't you write to the author?' - so that's how that started." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Further work on this: today I went out to Warlands on Botley Road and had a good thorough test ride on a couple of bikes (not borrowing them for hours or overnight, but for longer than I tried on my previous two outings to other shops). I tried two Tern models and found one I particularly like

gm ☕️ 👂

If you didn’t know that I live in the same part of Bury where Victoria Wood grew up, you could guess it from a sentence issued by a woman I’ve just been chatting to down the park. “I once saw down here, and I’ll never forget it because it was the day my friend had both thumbs off, two kingfishers.”

After a report, published in 2010 by Oxford City Council, identified “loss of traditional stone boundary walls” as a particular vulnerability in Headington Quarry Conservation Area, Oxfordshire County Council has decided to take down a stone boundary wall and replace it with a metal railing.

Once more for the weekend long read crowd.

By me! www.theregister.com/public-secto...

So on the farm, IME, the most important part of handling heat stress is stopping it BEFORE your brain melts down. Once that happens, you're too fuzzy & clumsy to catch yourself. It's a spiral. And that means our big yellow flag for heat stress on the farm is what we call "The Heat Stupids."

It's not appropriate for cis people to say that trans people are too alarmed, or that certain trans writers are irresponsibly causing trans people to think the sky is falling. I want to take some time in this 🧵 to write personally about how my skies have fallen.

Guess I'm as qualified to comment here as anyone, having made my "rep" on historical narrative. Not buying the accusation of plagiarism with which the prof and her allies are filling Bluesky, as I've detailed in other posts. But Tillie and D&Q made a few key mistakes that would have prevented this.

I regret to remind you that Mexico’s football song is a banger youtu.be/8KDSGq0w6eU?...

The Dead Queen Detectives Colouring Book has a full list of sources, artists and dates that I based every drawing on and it's barely a historically accurate comic by any stretch of the imagination. Sources, references and citations are absolutely essential for this kind of stuff.

This whole saga has very much reminded me that most readers (and apparently some fiction writers too!) believe that writing narrative non-fiction is stenography: you find out the facts and then you write them down in order. Whereas it is absolutely, 100% considered storytelling!

I had dealings with CARE lobbyists back in the early 2000s when I worked for an LGBT organisation. They (and their pal Jeremy Balfour of the Evangelical Alliance and later Tory MSP) did things like turning up for a meeting between LGBT+ groups and MSPs "because they had an interest in the issues".

England is divided into two newspaper regions. They are the Bicester Times, the Worcester Times.

OH MY GOD GUYS okay so priests who want back in have to find a bishop willing to vouch for them, swear fealty to Vatican II and then HAND-WRITE THE POPE AN APOLOGY LETTER (I gues so he knows they didn’t use AI? 😂) and are on probation for 1-3 years this is ten times spicier than I even thought

Made a little bot to try and surface archive stuff (10+ years) showing up on iPlayer.

FAO @mrphoenix.bsky.social

I have no data on the cause, but I do have anecdotes. I often receive reports from accountants telling me that they see widespread failure to pay tax by small businesses. Here’s a recent example (shared with the author’s kind permission):

Just to remind you all that Reading museum has a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry (amusingly I discovered recently the underwear was added by the people giving the women who made it a sketch of it, not by the women themselves) www.readingmuseum.org.uk/bayeux-tapes...

I think a big part of the Dicastery repeatedly hammering on the name Lefebvre here and framing the whole order as "the Lefebvrists" is to remind people for whom that's a familiar name (esp in Europe) that they are in fact not nearly so innocuous as "The Society of St. Pius X" makes them sound

Ad Rock: you can disagree with the current All: POPE MCA: but if you push his buttons then you’re a All: DOPE Mike D: ordain yourself a bishop and you’re All: SCHISMATIC Ad Rock: excommunication is All: AUTOMATIC

Findings so far on my quest: first is that Oxf (unsurprisingly) has a lot of choices available. Walton St Cycles and Reg Taylor are the two I’ve already had test cycles at, on two different kinds of bike: a Gazelle at WSC and an Estarli at RT. Next up will be: Warlands, Yarnton, and Decathlon.

Burnham is talking about reforming the government’s strategy on AI, but without mention of artists and creatives. This open letter needs your signature and now is the time.

Japan-Brazil: When Hiroo Onoda finally emerged from the jungle to surrender in 1974 he decided he didn't like living in Japan, moved to Brazil, and became a cattle rancher. A fitting choice for a famous holdout, because after the war a Japanese secret society in Brazil called Shindō Renmei (1/2)

Thread. Extremely relevant here that Walden-- unlike, say, Joe Sacco-- did *not* come up through nonfiction comics: all her prior work has been fiction or autobio. (On a Sunbeam might be my favorite 21st century work of any kind.) Please don't let this controversy destroy her career.

And! Academics and cartoonists gotta form a better understanding of each other’s publishing/creative culture. The risk of miscommunication is going to happen more as more historical genre comics get made. The thread below describes what I mean.

“What about Pride?” “You just had Pride.” “Well, what about Second Pride?” (Me as a disabled Hobbit, probably.) IT’S DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH, FOLKS! We have a flag too! Designed by Ann Magill, and updated to this version to prevent strobing issues while scrolling on devices! #DisabilityPride

H/T to @colinyeo.bsky.social for alerting me to this report. The Home Office had more than eight years to develop the system but did not include a feedback loop from asylum appeals, so case workers struggle to learn from them www.theregister.com/public-secto...

This is it lads. I can feel it. *This* is the little piece of ostentatious cruelty that finally kills off Reform. They're done for now, practically no point in them even running. More good work by the political geniuses of Blue Labour!

I am definitely in favour of this, but as it stands people park on pavements where there are double yellow lines and other things that already mean that vehicle is parking illegally. Enforcement needs to be a key part of anything done, and a mindset change (it’s so normalised).