I am so furious about the toilet BS, which creates a totally bizarre environment in which nosey people can stop anyone from having a wee. What sort of govt feels good about creating the means to stop people having a wee? We need more free public toilets, not ways to make it harder to go to the loo

Settling in for this one

There is far too much pressure to live your best life these days. Leave me alone and let me live my most middling life in peace, with the colourful miscellany of highs and lows that naturally entails.

I am genuinely baffled why this situation is not causing more uproar - unbelievable harm being caused to our most vulnerable children Feels like it sits at the exact centre of the Venn diagram of "how is local government not fit for purpose"

The "out of the way swine" comic is great but this is the best comic strip of all time

An unbelievable crisis. We have shown compassion to regular people, not just the people who we have agreed to medically pity.

Just absolutely not - if your job role is dysfunctional, "might as well encourage drinking alcohol during it" is the opposite of the correct answer. I would absolutely allow remote/proxy voting though.

Reminder that none of this is some organic issue, fired off by a mass rash of bathroom or dressing room attacks. This entire movement was workshopped as a wedge issue by right-wing organizations. They found a thing that weirds out lots of people, found that hysteria about it got clicks & made money

Welcome Home

I do wish we could've tidied the place up a bit more while they were away #ArtemisII

OH. MY. GOD. THIS IS THE MILKY WAY SHOT BY THE ARTEMIS II CREW. LOOK AT ALL THOSE STARS!!!!

Felt surprisingly emotional watching the Artemis II record moment - something so undeniably hopeful about us nudging just a little further than ever before, raising our heads again #artemis

there was a young man from cork who got limericks and haikus confused

Here’s the thing: We all need to help customize the social media we want to use. And in that spirit: Who’s got a list to share of subject matter experts for the Iran war?

At the Times podcast, the lads are discussing Britain’s disastrously fucked domestic and international state. Former foreign correspondent Michael Binyon, who appears to be authentically deranged, identifies the true culprit.

I see Farage is off to Mar-a-Lago to talk down Britain and suck up to Trump. There's nothing patriotic about cheering on a foreign leader whose illegal war is sending British families’ energy bills through the roof.

In case anyone wants a little break, here are a few of my favorite facts that I learned in 2025, in no particular order. Some trees benefit from, and may even encourage, getting struck by lightning because it kills their nearby competitors nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Italian voice actor Carlo Bononi was the voice of all of the characters on Pingu. A trained clown by trade, he used a theater technique called grammelot, which consists of "speaking" in a mix of babbled gibberish noises. He improvised all the voices live and unscripted.

The main story on BBC 6 Music News this morning is that a ‘boat carrying migrants is on its way to France’ Delivered in the same upbeat tone as England winning the women’s Euros. The migration ‘debate’ in this country is unmoored from reality, and the media-political complex is feeding it

What a deranged country. Are we gonna have this as the number one headline for each *person* we remove? A cruelty spectacle.

The hysterical reporting of the deportation of two (TWO!!) undocumented migrants is just what we need. I feel the mood becoming more sensible already. Well done everyone.

He's one of Britain's richest men. So why does Asif Aziz's property company keep leasing London gift shops to overseas students based in abandoned offices or flytipped car parks — before vanishing without paying millions of pounds in taxes? www.londoncentric.media/p/asf-aziz-l...

Most of UK stranded in 'junk bond' territory as London dominates, research says www.reuters.com/world/uk/mos...

from apnews.com/article/cali...

Please don’t ignore this the next time you’re told “it’s either these guys or Reform” coz this is also what Reform would do and you should rail against it no matter what colour the tie is.

I really love gardening as ecosystem engineering

Yvette Cooper repeatedly refused to give a straight answer just now on Today to straight Q “Will councils get more money to pay care workers more?” She repeatedly committed to higher carer pay but wouldn’t commit to money so councils can fund it. Think that speaks volumes about the mess we are in.

Some thoughts sparked by a great event in Leeds yesterday on neighbourhood health and the UK government's Test, Learn and Grow intiative. How do we make neighbourhoods engines of change? medium.com/@jamestplunk...

I’m glad to see this article but it’s after 24 hours of unchallenged corporate guff dominating the news cycle. Tony Blair is a tech lobbyist who is literally writing naive, venal & dangerous policy for Starmer’s government. Call it out. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

So basically there's a cabal of billionaire broligarchs, far right propagandists, and reactionary centrist journalists all on group chats radicalizing together and exerting coordinated narratives and influence on media and politics www.semafor.com/article/04/2...

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine

🧵NOT BY ME, this is a post from someone who wants to remain anonymous but works extensively with trans people pre-transition. They were asked by someone “why do you think that’s so much [coverage of trans people] in the news at the moment?” This was their response:

STOP what you are doing, find some headphones or a secluded location, and watch this. I am crying with laughter and admiration at an idea seen through to its (nearly) bitter end. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD3Q... Sound--as they say--on.

Their strategy is “improve the NHS, don’t raise the headline rate of income tax or national insurance, get business to do social policy for us” and to sacrifice everything else on those altars.

There’s been a lot of debate over whether Trump means this as a threat or it’s a troll. But the actual answer is it’s both. He dropped it as a throwaway line but his clinical narcissism does not allow him to believe any idea of his is less than perfect and brilliant, so he’s become committed to it

Some thoughts on the European response to the chaos now emanating from the White House - on Ukraine and more broadly, based on chats with senior European policymakers directly or indirectly involved in formulating the bloc's response 1/

Huge win! Government announces plans to open up the Land Registry. If delivered, will finally reveal more about who owns land in England and Wales. Read my blog post for more details & how you can write to the Minister to make sure this now happens: whoownsengland.org/2025/03/06/h... 🧵1/

Jack Kirby, forty-nine years ago:

This.

Would be good, IMV, if instead of 'some MRPs that are, at this point, basically entrails', there was a lot more talk about their quite radical plans for schools, or whether their local government reorganisation is the right size, or etc. etc.

There’s an aspect to AI which I think is under considered: It’s not the ethical issue. It’s not the sustainability issue. These are equally troubling - it’s the investor dollar issue. Investors are pushing the market towards AI to inflate their investments in every aspect.

Rachel de Souza makes the key point here: in the current legislative regime, children have fewer rights than adults. Hitting another adult is assault. But in England, hitting your child is fine, as long as it comprises 'reasonable punishment': which can include hitting that leaves a mark or bruise.

"Butterfly Effect" is by far my favorite piece I've ever drawn. I know I keep sharing it, but I just hope it brings joy when people see it. (Plus I don't have a whole lot of new art to share.) #paleoart #sciart

Is this really as blatant as it looks?? Surely there can't be a justification for this kind of "creative accounting"

Extraordinary story from BBC Panorama, which claims Severn Trent Water has invented a £1.68bn “asset”, and is paying out more in dividends than it’s making in profit… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I passed my genetic engineering exam with flying koalas.

help we found this abandoned on the side of the road at 3am last night and now the cat is obsessed with it

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." - Glamorizes hustle culture - Speciest - Was taught to you in elementary school "Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow." - Metal as fuck - Implies that you are a wizard - No one will know you are testing out a font