pickwick

The BBC Chose Transphobia over Science Transcript: Over the holidays, there was some news out of the UK that I wanted to highlight, lest it be lost in the news black hole that is Christmas and New Year: the British Broadcasting Corporat…

I will probably get told off for sharing this - but it does give some perspective on why I was under so much pressure to leave Monkey Cage - I accept my career is dead so….

skepchick.org/2026/01/the-...

"average New Labour minister causes 3 scandals" factoid actualy just statistical error. average minister causes 0 scandals. Scandals Peter, who lives in cave & causes over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

I have better things to do than listen to it, but I expect so!

He's a principleless authoritarian by nature but is also very bad at politics and easily influenced by the media, the spooks and his grand vizier.

Basically Starmer threw too many minority groups under the bus, forgetting that if you add up lots of different minorities and the people who love them, you get a majority

Every centrist outlet is obliged to do a "why is Starmer so unpopular" piece and ignore all the answers

Rachel Reeves: "It is not right that people who don't go to university bear the cost for others to." I don't use local leisure centres and I don't drive, so will I be made exempt for taxation that pays for all that stuff? Or is it only education we'll be going after

I haven't! I'm usually quite good at dodging them

I like how it says scrapping the two-child benefit cap is a centrepiece of Labour's anti-poverty policy as if they didn't have to be massively bullied into it

As long as you're not Palestinian or brown or queer or a protestor or a woman or a privacy advocate or an older person, Labour's great!

Must have been an absolute nightmare for her - "your friend is a monster and also your current job just got a lot less popular"

But I just can't love Good Omens like I used to

No

I'd back this - it's super hard to have an ongoing story in a multiverse that has any stakes at all. And Marvel has been very bad for undermining the stakes of its own stories anyway!

Anyway I bought Queer As Folklore so money goes to a queer person screwed over by Unbound

Like do you take money away from the illustrator, Colleen Doran, plus Pratchett's family, plus the bookshop owner, in order to keep Gaiman properly cancelled?

Tangentially related, I saw the illustrated Good Omens in an indie book store today and had a chat with the owner about how they'd ordered the bookshop tier way before the Gaiman news came out, and then it's hard

Ewww. I was happy thinking about lovely Brenda Fricker!

UGH apparently those fake crochet clothes are still in this year

Gonna get some stickers printed like FAKE GRANNY SQUARE

An older woman feeding pigeons out of carrier backs - at least a hundred of them crowding in on her

It's all gone a bit Home Alone 2

A wooden bench with about eight pigeons sitting on it, mostly on the back rest but one on the seat and one on each arm

The pigeons are grateful to @glasgowcc.bsky.social for the street furniture

Even though I'm an atheist I was APPALLED years ago to discover that Notre Dame had an actual shop within the actual cathedral where they flogged tea lights to tourists for three quid a pop!

Yeah, I guess they must be quite used to people disagreeing with them - I'd rather this lot than the ones with microphones ranting about how we're all going to burn, anyway!

"I'd rather take photo portraits of pigeons, frankly"

Hah, yeah, that'd be him!

Very polite American boy just came up and asked if I wanted to go to church on Sundays, I was fairly polite when I told him I was alright, thanks

Bit of a Glasgow tour: this is our Too Many Pigeons. Love the odd-coloured one in the middle though.

Just came across a big fancy vending machine in St Enochs that only sells fancy £5 wax melts? This must be some kind of criminal scam surely

Looking directly up at the railway arch

Old stone steps taking you under an arch

Broken drainpipe against brick wall

Trees and arch reflected in the river

A walk in Oxhey Park #photography #nature #railway station

‘Rage knitting’ against the machine: the hobbyists putting anti-ICE messages into crafts Makers take a stand through ‘Melt the ICE’ red knit caps and sparkly nails – all while raising funds for those affected by immigration raids

“Rage knitting”

They get to pressure you to use AI *and* harvest all your data at the same time! Possibly they even get to keep track of who is too cynical about AI and/or government!

I will not be doing this lol