Elaine

Scottish friends! I'm looking for a voice actor (roughly 30-40 years old, female) for an unannounced game✨

You definitely don't need to be an established actor, but you must be UK based with your own recording equipment.

This is a paid role, DM for brief! #voiceacting

> Aragorn son of Arathorn, who is certainly masculine, but is neither stupid nor wantonly destructive. We may ask ourselves: would Aragorn do this?

I shall call it the Strider Decider

If anyone out there in Scottish education uses the excellent Scholar e-resources platform (based at HW), please know that it's under threat and they're collecting notes of endorsement:

heriotwatt.web.ucu.org.uk

Please help them if you can.

To pretend all disability accommodations are like performance enhancing drugs, that will advantage all able bodied, neurotypical people, is an outright lie. I say this as a neurodivergent, chronically ill/ physically disabled teacher who has worked with disabled students for 15 years.

Help us challenge the Supreme Court’s judgment on trans rights | Good Law Project

You want there to be a legal challenge to this? Support the one that's already in progress that, if successful, will remove the risk of legal action against Guides and WI, or other organisations, for being trans inclusive goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/...

I think this Advent I am going to spend a fair amount of time contemplating the rather bleak truth that it's easy to do the right thing until it costs you something.

And attempting to hold that mirror up to myself, of course.

Mind you, with enough organisation you could put together a very good programme of carols for a counter protest, many of them familiar, in their original non-English language. Infant Holy in the original Polish. Stille Nacht. The Angel Gabriel in Basque. Etc.

apropos of absolutely nothing, no matter how suboptimal your union is, being a union member is better than not being a union member

It's official: 400 redundancies and a campus closure. At-risk staff will get a letter next week. Absolutely no serious consideration of any of the union's counterproposals.

Please share widely.

chart of child mortality in history, roughly 48% for all societies across the globe…until the 20th century, where it plummets to 4%

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

I once started a conference paper about the number of churches in the medieval City of London with a quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Giles: "forty-three churches in Sunnydale . . . seems a little obsessive"
Willow: It’s the extra evil vibe from the Hellmouth. Makes some people pray harder"

The Good Old Days   Pity the poor children of today, with their calendars stuffed with chocolates,   never to know the thrill of opening a small cardboard door and discovering behind it   a picture of a bell. Brian Bilston

This poem is dedicated to anyone making a start on their advent calendar today.

Me on a candlelit vigil for AIDS in 1987.

Me last week. Looking pretty healthy for 58 (28 years living with HIV).

I was diagnosed with #HIV in 1998, when I was 30.
Many of my friends had died of AIDS. I did not expect to live to 50.
I’m 58 now.
HIV treatment works.
Treatment also makes it impossible for me to pass HIV on during sex.
Ensure HIV treatment for all.
End HIV stigma.
#WorldAIDSDay

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.

God, in His wisdom, made the Void so we would have something to scream into.

If you think that the current state of trans healthcare in the UK is because of concern or caution, I'd encourage you to think again.

It's not medically informed, it's a reactionary response to transphobic bigotry whipped up into a frenzy over the past few years.

And it costs lives.

But Badenoch is *totally* wrong, as the idea that the poor deserved special care and attention was essentially a Christian idea, adopted by the state after Constantine’s conversion.

I disagree very profoundly with Mrs Thatcher, as did many of the members of the General Assembly, but she had actually thought her position out (and she was speaking from her own, genuine, faith, rather than rather oddly denouncing things as “unchristian” when you don’t believe in God).

A graphic advertising the Day of Prayer on 29 November, 10.30am-12.30pm. There is a photo of a table covered in Bibles and a person sitting with their hands open in prayer. The logo of the Church of Scotland and the Meadowbank & Willowbrae Church of Scotland are also included in the image.

🙏 We will be opening our building from 10.30am-12.30pm on Saturday 29 November for the national Day of Prayer for the Church of Scotland.

There is more information on the Church of Scotland website at www.churchofscotland.org.uk/worship/pray...

🙏 All are welcome to come and pray 🙏

FFS. I know everyone was talking about this on Wednesday, but the lifting of the two-child limit framed as solely about appeasing Labour bankbenchers by a commentator on PM just now, not about TAKING HALF A MILLION KIDS OUT OF POVERTY WHICH IS A GOOD THING IN AND OF ITSELF, just had me screaming

Graphic displaying a photograph of Patrick Harvie MSP, alongside text that repeats the information from the post.

In his Members' Business today, Patrick Harvie MSP will lead a debate on the unacceptable waiting times for accessing gender identity clinics.

📑 Full motion: https://ow.ly/tIUJ50XwYom

📺 Watch live from 5:10pm: https://ow.ly/6jjW50XwYn3

Don't forget our Children's Come and Sing Carols at St Mary's! Sat 6th December, 9:30am-12pm, free. If your child loves singing, this is Christmas event for them: fun songs and a short performance at the end for the family.

www.cathedral.net/whats-on/christmas

@dioceseofedinburgh.bsky.social

All are very welcome to our service for World AIDS Day, on Monday 1st December. Whatever your faith or background, join us to remember those who have passed away, and those who are still living with this condition.

Happy World Linguistics Day! ⭐🎉🎊

If you are eligible for the mobility component of PIP and you want to spend *your own money on top of that* on having a nicer modified car, why shouldn't you? Should screen readers only work on Chromebooks?

Even God Is Worried About ChatGPT Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.

This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺

Sometimes wonder if what the UK needs is a thinktank that doesn't do any new research, it just repeats obviously true statements that people try to ignore because they're inconvenient.

International students cross-subsidise home students. Your pension is paid for out of general taxation.

Burnley Express headline: "County celebrates arrival in post of new Archdeacon of Blackburn"

"County celebrates arrival in post of new Archdeacon of Blackburn". No one was in though, so she got left behind the bins.

Congratulations! 🎉🎉🎉