Amusingly, gaming subtitles have probably got better at the same time the standards for film and TV subtitles have declined

I think this is more like medium-priority, but subtitle formatting. Far too often the timing of dialogue is ruined because the subtitles aren’t broken up enough and give away too much. It’s fine if you’re fully deaf, but pretty sure the vast majority of people who use subtitles aren’t

The thing about ‘normal’ is that it has never happened. The 70s weren’t normal. The 80s weren’t. Since 2008 things have been far from normal. The idea of steady growth and contained inflation alongside an inflation targeting inflation central bank is based on the ~15 years from the early 90s to 08.

Seems like a good day to re-up this post from some years ago on why we have free universal services. Which I realize, now, anticipates a core argument of Against Money: We can't understand the purpose of public services if we think of them as equivalent to money payments. jwmason.org/slackwire/wh...

one of my strongest and clearest takeaways from spending all of Lent knee-deep in ICE death reporting is that Camp East Montana should be razed to the ground and every single person who built it, worked there or approved their decisions deserves criminal charges. it is beyond what I imagined.

HASTINGS: I say, Poirot, this vial’s labeled “hyaluronic acid”! Is it a poison? SKINCARE HERCULE POIROT: Non, mon ami. This acid, it replenishes the skin’s barrier naturale HASTINGS: So this is a gal who takes care of her skin. SKINCARE HERCULE POIROT: *irritated* The gentleman may use it as well

about to really value US-style autonomy

"maybe Titus Oates had some good ideas" not what i expected to wake up to

"guy who is both big and small" one of my favourite genres of cat

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

It's one of those irregular verbs I'm acting on principle. You're doing purity politics. She is a crazy ideologue.

I recognise this is a me problem but it is very hard to take a storm called Dave seriously www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

or in scottish Darts, TV and keys cut [since 1925]

SugarFall Patisserie on Byres Road is an influencer favourite. Behind it is a young boss: Karolis Juskenas. Staff have hit him with a slew of mistreatment claims, including the AI NDAs, an assault and withheld wages. He denies them all.

Succinct and damning assessment here: "Their claim that the ‘barbarian conspiracy’ was ‘cataclysmic’ and a ‘pivotal event' is not supported either by historical evidence or by scholarly consensus, and virtually everything they say about the historical evidence is incorrect"

even choosing just one dril tweet feels like an impossible choice

We study NHS GP practice closures in England: nearly 1,700 practices closed since 2013, directly affecting 600k+ patients. Using a staggered DID design, we find that closures reduce patient satisfaction AND increase support for populist right parties (UKIP, Brexit Party, Reform UK) by 2–4pp.

can't help but think "cross party campaign" in this case sounds like "we have both kinds of party here, Tory *and* Reform"

chag pesach sameach to everyone & may all who have been imprisoned be freed & all those who need find a laden table for their hunger tonight

This is how you "break link between the price of gas and the price of electricity": building more wind power, solar, grid upgrades and grid batteries. In March gas set the price of electricity some 65% of the time – it used to be 98% across a year

"America can, should, must and will blow up the moon"

moby-dick, his eyes enormous: from hell's heart you STAB at moby? for hate's sake you spit your last BREATH at moby? oh! oh! the great shroud of the sea for ahab! the great shroud of the sea rolling on as it rolled five thousand years ago!!!!

As my colleauge Hilary Hoynes and her team find, food stamps for families with young kids is also a ridiculously good public investment academic.oup.com/restud/artic...

Speaking of public spending on children, here's a great set of scholars with what looks like an important new paper They find that Universal Pre-K increases labor force participation and earnings, which then increases tax revenue such that it more than pays for itself (under reasonable assumptions)

Analysis of policy and analysis of politics have become decoupled, when they should be intertwined, too often leading to a form of Kremlinology masquerading as political analysis, setting aside the policies shaping people’s lives in favour of gossip. We seek to correct that:

So what this describes is ethnic cleansing www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/w...

Ps @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social won't have to look far to find problematic figures who espoused racial violence that are celebrated by some in Ireland. Look at John Mitchel. It's just that his racial violence was anti-Black not Irish. This is the context that makes this type of questions necessary.

I mean this is perhaps the most salient point in all of this discourse, though I think this is much truer in former imperial metropoles than in former colonies, like Ireland. Still, it's not automatically the case that even postcolonial states revile perpetrators of atrocity or remove statues etc.

Seeing that McColm column made me wonder what else he had said about Joani Reid and I managed to come across this from December, which seems to primarily put Sarwar's poor polling on the fallout from the GRA reform bill, because anti-trans campaigners are nothing if not single-minded:

why is this movie all about throwing root vegetables

I know that this is a repurposing of the GOP slogan from '46, but this is the vibe that the labor movement's political organizing needs to bring back for the upcoming midterms:

it remains *infuriating* that this absolute fantasy politics - that we can engage in deeply restrictionist immigration politics and refugee bashing without marginalising immigrants, legitimising the far right, or impacting the economy - is portrayed as the sober, sensible, pragmatic option.

Glasgow public transport can be variable, but this development in particular is just outside the city centre and extremely well served by buses and trains *even if* you have to keep your car and need to park elsewhere.

had the misfortune to see the worst comedian I've ever seen last weekend as part of a comedy night, and I am including the guy I once saw ages back at a late night Fringe revue who was so pissed he was practically incoherent

god this is just going to be an utter fiasco isn't it

hello 👋 i have developed a new tool called blüuümpíi. blüuümpíi will convert every file on your hard drive to a .wav file without asking you, maximize your system volume, and play them on every bluetooth speaker you have ever connected to. if you offer feedback on blüuümpíi i will take legal action

A friend took her toddler to our local church messy play and they made Easter biscuits that included small Jesus figurines. The prominent JESUS IS NOT EDIBLE sign over the craft table unintentionally kicking off the next Christian schism.

New 1926 General Strike map online! Using early 20th century Ordnance Survey maps, the online resource shows strike events (through archive sources) in their contemporary landscape. Explore the map, digitised sources and more at warwick.ac.uk/services/lib...

i am now IP banned from the pokemon center website :D

Interesting how the NYT soft peddles this by saying "critics say". No, Ben Gvir who wrote the law, says that.

it’s pretty crazy we gave these vital civic assets to an entity we also empowered to act like a private landlord

every Scottish election cycle there is this very odd hyping up of the great moderate unionist hope and how they can definitely become First Minister if you cobble together a politically unworkable coalition that doesn't even get you to a majority

try and imagine a bigger W as an academic

it's pretty difficult to estimate wage theft for various reasons but any reasonable estimate comes out with a shockingly large number

it's really funny that the bbc still feels it has to write about games like this, imagine writing an article about the oscars and having to start it explaining that not all moviegoers are four-eyed perverts

Does the NYT have a reporter with a specialized beat in social movements? I'm guessing not, and I'm furthermore guessing that this is part of the problem. Certain kinds of politics do not compute in standard journalism unless you have someone whose particular job is to understand and explain them.

yet again I will note that not even the Supreme Court went this far in the Equality Act decision, probably because of just how absurd the implications would be

Rowling was still tweeting yesterday falsely accusing Lin Yu-Ting of being male. She continues to do so with Imane Khelif. So much for protecting women.