Oh my GOD I may spend the rest of my life down THIS rabbit hole: you can click on the names of the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels voters to see what they voted for. SO much more interesting than the somewhat bland main list: www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

Doug Wilson last week, Brendan Carr this: I’m really not enjoying the new Lunch with a FascisT feature in Saturday’s paper

Although there is a really obvious exception to the SF rule ;)

Well, I’ve read 40 of the Guardian’s top 100 novels published in English. E scored 51, but she has the unfair advantage of having done an English degree 😊 www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

It's so hard seeing someone else live your dream

God, when Larkin was good, he was *good*: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48410/...

Currently #reading The Message to the Planet by Iris Murdoch. Speed-running it before the third session of the course I’m doing, when we’ll be discussing this and The Philosopher’s Pupil. No Quakers in this one yet, but I’m only up to page 160… www.tumblr.com/considermyca...

That's right, folks. It's "Wild Honey Pie," off the White Album www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ek...

Ed! Ed! Ed! Ed! Ed!

In fairness to Keir Starmer, that’s sixteen minutes more than *I’d* want to spend talking to Wes Streeting

BREAKING Following an attempt by Mr Justice Johnson to prosecute Palestine Action barrister for “contempt of court” after his closing speech mentioned the legal principle known as “jury Equity”, Rajiv Menon has won his appeal. A short🧵

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

POV: You've received an email from the Fabians inviting you to join so you can vote in any Labour leadership election that might just happen to happen, and at first you think "hmm, that means I can vote against Wes!", and then you remember that the Fabians are the Wes Streeting Fan Club

Yeah, it does seem kind of odd that we’ve had two general elections in a row where disastrously inadequate PMs have been roared to power on some extremely ropey policy platforms. Probably just one of those weird things that sometimes happens, I guess

"I have a finite time on this earth that I mostly want to spend interacting with other human beings. I don’t want to be the person arguing with a robot, or wasting my time reading something that a real person couldn’t be bothered to write." @jasonkoebler.bsky.social on the LLMisation of… everything:

There's "gender", there's "very gender", and then there's this photograph of Iris Murdoch…

“I will prove doubters wrong” “Some people are frustrated with me” mate the problem isn’t that people “doubt” you and are “frustrated” with you, it’s that they *hate* you and they’re *sure* about it

"Imagine you were in Meeting and a Friend rose to deliver this…" Heather Robbins on the "Quakerish sensibility" of Iris Murdoch: irismurdochsociety.org.uk/2021/02/19/q...

THE GOD SQUAD a team of religiously themed superheroes, so you got a greek gods guy, norse god guy, chrisitan guy, jewish guy, muslim guy, hindu guy, and atheist guy who was empowered by the living embodiment of the scientific method

He’s got a “God calls me God!” (Yes, Prime Minister joke)

I say this with nothing but love in my heart but: fucking hell if that isn't peak Guardian

“Parents have the right to choose what their children are exposed to or have access to.”

this really does make me despair. this is a woman who has just got elected as a Reform councillor. she works for the NHS and wants to know “where the money is going”. it’s going on social care, babe

“I’m not owned! I’m not owned!”

evangelicals have finally created. the golden calf. from the classic bible story “don’t create a golden calf”

Buying toothpaste and setting off my “it repair… but it also protec” verbal stim

Me: (Smart, looking at the most devastating evidence imaginable that my smart plan is an incredible, historic disaster) I was even more right than I suspected

Oh do fuck OFF

Somehow, J.J. Abrams got a *lot* wrong in his Star Wars sequels, but he deserves credit for identifying in a film released in 2015 (and thus conceived and written years earlier) that the alt-right were (a) LARPers, and (b) nonetheless *incredibly* dangerous

Starting a @woodbrooke.bsky.social course on Iris Murdoch next week, and reading the introductions from other participants in the online forum, it's striking how many are coming as Murdoch fans rather than as Quakers. Should make for an interesting mix of perspectives.

This chart does highlight how weird and unstable FPTP is becoming in an era of five-party politics. While it's unlikely, on these figures it's not *impossible* that the Lib Dems could take our seat in a general election by hoovering up tactical votes from Green, Labour and anti-Reform Tory voters

“The basic strategy of all addictive technologies is very simple. They make you feel extra capable, they addict you, then they make you feel inadequate without them.” buttondown.com/monteiro/arc... buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

Many people are aware of at least one good reason to avoid Hogwarts Legacy. Fewer are aware that it’s a retelling of the antisemitic “blood libel” myth. Yes, really. The game’s central antagonist is a greedy, hook-nosed “goblin” trying to kidnap children and use their blood for a magic ritual.

Our 18yo voted for the first time today. Following in a hallowed family tradition: my first vote, too, was an utterly futile vote in a local election where (at that time) the Tory vote and (this time around, I suspect) the Reform vote was weighed rather than counted

Disappointed by the low-effort "HMRC" scam call I just received. An old-school robo-voice slowly reciting a generic script? Where's the terrifyingly well-targeted, authentic-sounding, AI-enabled scamming we've come to expect in 2026? I'll be marking them down for this in my TrustPilot review

As well as its myriad factual errors, the book claims: - We're wasting taxpayer dollars on abused children - Trauma is the cause of autoimmune disorders - Most fat people were sexually abused as children. It's stunningly, shockingly bad! People should not be reading or recommending it.

Both *can* be true but they aren't in this case! The text of "The Body Keeps The Score" is fundamentally unscientific and reactionary. If you've taken something good from it I'm happy for you, but that's despite the message of the book, not because of it.

I get a lot of AI slop book marketing emails, but this is the first time I have ever been . . . mistaken for Jane Austen.

I do think it sums up “the weird way the Internet shapes politics unnoticed” that “some chants that people should knock off but are mostly an ignorable part of an in-person march” are given more explanatory power than “the website that is full of antisemitism of every stripe that MPs hang out on”.

I've written some reflections on the recent Yearly Meeting of Quakers in Britain. What if the pain caused by our theological diversity never heals? Might it be a thorn in our flesh that keeps us dependent on God's grace? jollyquaker.com/2026/05/05/t... #Quaker #theology

It’s not even the Kodak Error, because at least Kodak sold camera films. Automakers don’t even sell gas

looking this uncool smoking cigarettes is genuinely impressive in its own way

No one could have predicted this. It’s as unexpected as, oh I dunno, age verification providers misusing data and/or getting hacked

Possibly the best, almost certainly the most important video @caelan.bsky.social has ever made, on what intrusive thoughts *really* are. (HINT: they’re *not* thinking, “I should cut my own bangs”) youtu.be/9RFtnrTjZwM

Today in contractual restrictions on competitors’ political expression.

Currently reading A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown (this one is sooooo good) www.tumblr.com/considermyca...

Currently reading I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by René Girard. (I See My iPad Screen Needs Cleaning, more like) www.tumblr.com/considermyca...