Safe access zones have hugely reduced the number of anti-choice protests near hospitals. It is something that government should look at in relation to hotels. These protests are designed to spread fear. They don’t reflect the community that I represent. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politic...

Currently dorking out over this graph about child mortality with my brother. Just mind boggling to take in.

Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Just received a link to a Christmas charity raffle via a jpg of a QR code attached to a mass CC email. No clues as to what the URL might be. The only way to follow it is to display it on one device and scan it with a second.

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

Well this is fascinating in a car-crash, keep-you-awake-at-night and give-you-nightmares-for-weeks-afterwards kind of way.

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community, by Fran Lebowitz. For World AIDS Day. 1 of 2:

2025: A WordPress plug-in accidentally pushes something to live - the chair of a national institution resigns OpenAI intentionally release products to a mass market that includes errors, manipulations and stolen material - cool, cool Is this how it works? www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Your annual reminder that the most revealing difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is definitely in the words for December: Mí na Nollag (Month of Christmas) in Ireland, and An Dubhlachd (the Blackness) in Scotland. So once again may I wish you all a lovely Blackness.

Christweight Christmas = ______________ Christgravitational field strength

Just mucking around with some stats on the internet and found the stability of UK labour force participation remarkable given all the discussions / panics over many years www.ons.gov.uk/employmentan...

To begin with today, happy 117th anniversary to this entirely reasonable cat

The diplomatic "achievement" of the ceasefire was to recalibrate the tempo of the genocide sufficiently to get it off the front pages and the news bulletins, thus alleviating the political pressure on Israel's western accomplices. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

The "don't have an extra kid if you can't afford it" brigade get awfully upset when you suggest they don't stay in their £2m house if they can't afford it, don't they?

‘Unelected power’ of ultra-rich is reshaping British politics, report claims

Founders on LinkedIn still seem to be struggling with the difference between telling people about their humble beginnings and admitting to straight up committing fraud.

Dividends are taxed at marginal rates of 8.75%, 33.75%, and 39.35%, no national insurance is levied. Wages taxed at 20%-45% +NIC. Aligning taxation of dividends with wages could raise £6bn a year. Even higher if national insurance is also charged.

when people are like "x media is good but the dialogue is overwrought" i'm like dude my favorite show is Hannibal where in the first episode one guy asks another guy "what do you see me as" and he responds "i think you are the mongoose i want under the house when the snakes slither by"

Иigel Faяage would really hate it if you signed and shared this petition. I suspect ьoяis Johиsoи would too.

The principal of Edinburgh Uni earns around £420,000 a year. This week his staff were on strike over the threat of redundancies. It's time we got the pay of uni and college bosses back under control. MSPs can back my plans to do that on Wednesday. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politic...

"Sex is not determined by haircuts or makeup. It's determined by the smile. The magic of a lady's smile. This is obvious science."

We’re back to telling women to smile while being harassed, I see. There’s nothing polite about demanding a stranger reassure you about their genitals.

After you help your boss convert a doc to PDF

The worst thing about being a middling cook who improvs a bunch is every once in a while you make something transcendent but you know you will never be able to recreate it so the pleasure of the eating is tempered by the melancholy of knowing that you will never have this dish again.

"My father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine." Tallulah Bankhead

But if the government start taxing the likes of Starbucks & they leave, Are we seriously saying that Britain will stop drinking coffee? £3 billion in UK sales & they don't want to pay tax? It's time to get of the merry-go-round & use our smaller, local retailers who will pay their taxes.

The fae have an MIT license

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR), a day where we pause to remember those who we have lost around the world this year to transphobic violence.

No one in this ball pit is taking me seriously.

*sad trombone noise*

Happy birthday to the Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov who casually deciphered the Mayan script in 1952 and got pissed when editors removed his cat as co-author on papers or cropped her out of his author headshot (the only picture of himself he even liked)

Argonaut Books needs your help 📣 Waterstones are set to open a store less than 100m from the indie bookshop's front door. Full info on @argonautbooks.bsky.social's Insta: www.instagram.com/p/DRMULI1jCI...

Argonaut is my local, and is the best bookshop I've ever been near. They're lovely people who care about what they do, know the tastes of their regulars, and have been nothing but supportive of me and my work. Waterstones can fuck right off.

Waterstones to open about 100m from Argonaut, a particularly nice indie bookshop. Quote from Waterstones management makes it sound like they got Argonaut mixed up with the gaming café next door. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2562908...

Great explainer of small-press financing here. Note that at no point did the people doing the work of editing, production and publishing get paid.

Labour apparently got Snowpiercer mixed up with its ministerial training video

trans people exist. billionaires shouldn't.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan on why the Far Right lie about London crime: “They don’t want our modern, multicultural, progressive metropolis to succeed because they can’t stomach the truth. London is a place where people of every creed, colour and culture live together in peace and mutual respect.”

There is no difference in practice between removing rights of individuals and leaving the ECHR. The end outcome is still the same, people lose rights. If human rights are an obstacle to your policy it is not the rights which are the issue, it is your policy. Labour going full Reform at this stage.

Labour turning the dial that says "racism" and looking back towards the public like a contestant on the price is right only to discover every time they turn the dial the only thing that changes is Reform's increasing vote share. Your strategy of xenophobia has already failed. More won't help.

Attacks on VPNs are attacks on digital privacy and digital freedom. And that battle is being fought by people who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

To reiterate, this is about making life immeasurably more miserable and stressful for some of the most vulnerable people, in the almost certainly vain hope of winning over the votes of racists. Anything more shabby and shameful is difficult to envisage.

Computers were a skill. They were taught in classrooms as a skill. Skills give you power over your tools because you work them as an expert and that is leverage to multiply externally. And then computers became an A/B tested telemetry-based advertising conduit to brains for SaaS recurring revenue.

One of the best lions in the history of art. Detail of Saint Jerome Extracting a Thorn from a Lion's Paw by the Master of the Murano Gradual (Italian, active about 1430-1460), Tempera and gold leaf, Ms. 106 (2010.21), recto (J. Paul Getty Museum)

I’m sorry I just found out that in 1379, as in, 650 years ago, a baby girl was born in Yorkshire and named Diot Coke history is a fucking joke lmao