I think people just look at anything women and girls like as frivolous.

She watches me leave every day 😿

Me, quoting Larkin: Sexual intercourse began in 1963...between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. Son, 17: What's an LP? Me: [dissolves in a shower of dust, blows away]

I keep saying it, and I know it won’t fix everything, but a left wing government serious about stopping the right would force some basic how-the-economy-works civics onto the national curriculum and run ads debunking the “household budget” fallacy.

Status: skimming the indices of the history books, looking for "Emperors who forgot to pay their mercenaries, life expectancy of".

UNICEF: 37 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the ceasefire. Imagine if this was Israeli children - would we call it a ceasefire?

My son sent me this recently, which has strong echos.

👇 it was stupid enough when Apple did it

Attention:

One of the easiest ways to shoot down the idea that "AI" is an expert is to show how it deals with something people know about. Younger readers may not get this as most appliances come pre-wired, but anyone 35+ can see these are chaotic fire hazards. From Mastodon, AI asked how to wire a plug:

It's an expert in all the things you don't know shit about, but doesn't know shit about the things you're an expert in! That exact combination! Wild!

Case in point: the made up, potentially hazardous plug diagrams in the OP. Not my area, but even I can see they're nonsense. Why would you trust that tech to communicate on your behalf? It can't wire a plug, what makes you think it can write an e-mail?

it's okay guys, the removal of the scheming vizier is going to solve all of our country's problems

McSweeney is gone, Blue Labour going to go into overdrive now to save itself If the Labour party has ANY chance to survive it needs to apologise for the last two years and actually be a party of "the Left" The "Right" was resoundingly rejected last election, so why did we get a RW gov for 2 yrs?

I left Substack over 2 yrs ago, when this FIRST CAME OUT and have been on a nonprofit (Ghost) since. So join me! For ancient prophetic wisdom, healing, & essential organizing tools for this moment— Sign up for free or MORE, & support this work— Help keep it sustainable— And fuck enabling Nazis

I always buy "3-6 months" clothing as gifts for newborns, for just this reason. Someone's baby has to be the one to make the midwife say "we've never seen that femur length on a baby of this gestation."

Freedom of movement is a key aspect of the Single Market. It is only available for members of the Single Market. The UK left the Single Market when it left the EU. Ergo the UK left freedom of movement. The EU didn't withdraw it.

Ireland has 4 competitors at the Winter Olympics, all in skiing. which is awesome because Ireland has no snow or mountains. our main winter sports are drinking, singing Fairytale of New York & spreading respiratory illnesses.

The entire right wing relies on the British public not understanding: 1) Tax brackets 2) Inheritance tax 3) Inflation And it works. Every time.

Something I learned as I became progressively more disabled is that the worse off you are, in any regard, the less likely people are to have compassion for you. Unhoused neighbors know this better than anybody. They deserve shelter and care. We all do.

Another plus point in the ‘olivia colman is cool’ column

I do wonder whether Lindsay Vonn should have had more people around her saying "you must not do this". I'm sure there must have been some (and probably multiple doctors).

Interesting aspect - kinda spurned by argument with a local bore in the neighbourhood Facebook group. I'll start 🧵w. seemingly unrelated Q, but bear w. me: If an alcohol-serving business is a focal community hang-out point where you're likely to just turn up & run into ppl you know, is it a pub?

The whole reason I won’t vote for Labour this May is because I don’t like what Labour is doing, because half of what they’re doing is pandering to reform! Why would I vote for Labour to avoid reform getting in when Labour is also reform

There's a strange bright spot in the clouds

every time I do a thread like this about a good election result I get a whole lot of “don’t get ahead of yourself, we still gotta make sure people are motivated for November” replies/quotes and while I understand the sentiment you know what gets people motivated? winning! let yourself get excited!

Call it what it is, @nbcnews.com. Concentration camp. Every time. The OED defines a concentration camp as “a camp in which large numbers of people, esp. political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities.” 👀

I am so tired of rich people refusing to build anything new and just burning everything that exists as a public good to the ground instead. They have decimated journalism this way. Remember when they used to be scared enough to build public libraries and parks?

I think that’s a good thread and thought and I wonder if myself. I see it in a degree. Not Epstein of course, but there really is a Bsky bubble online and also my religious affiliation. At the same time I think it’s also like the Dunning-Kruger. To be aware of it doesn’t mean you can’t fall into it

Followinf the women deacons thing, I wrote this two part article about how not ordaining women leaves the church with a much more difficult choice than is commonly recognised. Part 1 is here, part 2 is below rainbowcatholics.org/no-women-cle...

The Future, when I was a kid: Going to Mars! Personal jetpacks! Robot housekeepers! The Actual Future: Dismantling packaging to separate the bits that can be recycled from the bits that can't be recycled.

In my experience, talent is a *detriment* to learning. I didn't have to practice early on so I *didn't know how*. I didn't start to learn how to practice until my 30s! (When much of my life was taken up with parenting, so I didn't have time!) I didn't start to improve as a musician until my 40s!

First, one of the two Welsh words for owl is gwdihŵ [ɡʊdiˈhuː]. Second, there's a moment in WTP when Owl says, "Oh you are, are you?" I was delighted to realise that this can be translated into Welsh as "O wyt, wyt?" [oː uːɨtuːɨt]! I think it might have been a little lost on my kids though.

“Renee was not the first person killed, and she was not the last,” Becca Good said. “You know my wife’s name and you know Alex’s name, but there are many others in this city being harmed that you don’t know — their families are hurting just like mine, even if they don’t look like mine.”

i would like to unsubscribe from the thing in my brain that makes me put off things till the day they're due, while still stressing increasingly hard about them in the meantime.

one of the greatest human triumphs of my lifetime is the relentless, unceasing, heroic effort by DECADES' worth of doctors and scientists to find a cure for a disease much of the world didn't take seriously for years because it predominantly affected a community they thought kinda deserved it

Still sending it through that bit of the Irish Sea where we used to dump all our unexploded ordnance I note.

A bunch of “greedy dumb-dogs”, men who “never have enough, and love greeting in the marketplaces … and the upper seats at feasts, and to be called … masters; they are filthy brute beasts” - Hester Biddle’s account of powerful men in the 1660s. How very little things have changed #earlymodern

General Synod starts on Monday. @ruthh.bsky.social writes on what apologies from the church don’t, but should, mean viamedia.news/2026/02/07/s...

Choosing to believe that Chris Williamson lost some kind of bet which is why he has been forced to propose this:

Theology PSA: The New Testament never envisions a Christian nation-state or nationalism. But it does envision a servant "kingdom" of peace, justice, and love where the poor are blessed, the powerful are brought low, and there is no longer "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female."

Just one or two boys in a class channelling these attitudes can ruin the learning environment.

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 712: Male writers: if you're uncomfortable writing women characters, then write them as men, and flip them in edit. Too many otherwise excellent male writers seem distracted by boobs, and forget that women have exactly the same range of character types as men do.

So familiar. Young women deemed to be somehow more responsible for not stopping an older man’s crimes/poor behaviour than all the other older men who both knew and participated in aforementioned.

There isn't some magic formula where you go to bed at 17 and wake up on your 18th birthday the next morning a fully formed and worldly adult. 19 is so so young. They may have been legal adults, but they were teenagers and they are victims here. Those poor girls.

Buses should have windscreen wipers for the top deck so that if you're pretending to drive from the front right you can see where you're going...

From consulting the panel near where I saw them I think this might be a Turnstone

From consulting the panel near where I saw them I think this might be a Turnstone

On retreat at @csmv-wantage.bsky.social this week, highly recommended. #CofEPeeps

It's factually correct to treat all right-wingers as bad-faith actors at all times, including all of history back to the time the words "conservative" and "right-wing" were invented. Conservatives act to conserve privilege and oppression. That's what the term means. It's not new, it's eternal.