Alix Mortimer

The greatest cat in the world on a book shelf.

It would seem I am not allowed to put any more books on the shelf.

CD racks ooh what fun! Huge respect for how ikea never stopped doing that mini Billy CD/DVD unit, it’s like they knew

General cultural warning: I am now making plans to take all my curation and collecting and recording, from music to images to period tracking, back offline and into carbon, and I am generally kind of a last in line early adopter or first in line mainstream weathervane person

I’m going (back) that way myself, streaming is getting too complicated and uncertain, owning a CD now feels like a solid choice of curation. The young are naturally ahead of us.

That New York Times story lots of people are sharing today about Farage's ties to US anti-abortion groups was first reported by @mc00.bsky.social on Byline Times a year ago bylinetimes.com/2024/11/29/n...

Half the humour on social media comes from its convention being spoken word written down rather than written word pffft

Increasingly, politics in West Europe is a mirror of East Europe, with a large radical right party against a rag-tag of centrist/liberal, centre-left, green and radical left parties and a rapidly declining centre right. The challenge is to coordinate the progressive opposition to the radical right.

Kent police apologise to protester threatened with arrest for holding Palestine flag Force agrees to pay damages to Laura Murton, 43, who also had sign saying ‘Israel is committing genocide’

A protester who was threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act for holding a Palestine flag and signs saying “free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide” has received an apology from police, including for “unlawful false imprisonment”.

And damages.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

That’s better, but doesn’t solve the past tense “I’d have gone crazy” which maybe is the real problem? Because from the pov of past me that’s a future possibility and yet I can’t seem to express it in the future. Evidently we need more future tenses, Turkish or something can probably do this fine

A sentence I wrote here earlier today:

““If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d believe that [thing] I’d be worried I had gone crazy.”

I’m pretty sure it’s correct and it’s melting my brain why. Why am I using a present conditional modifying a past historic to express my putative feelings in the past?

Do the frogs in Portland know "We All Stand Together"? If not, there's a rather beautiful wee anthem just waiting for them to pick up.

I’ll wager they won’t be happy with this 20 minute thing

Right, I mean I literally do more or less think a sinister cabal is trying to destroy the world, or hasten its destruction, so they can pick over the wreckage?? If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d believe that I’d be worried *I* had gone crazy. But that’s not bad/weird enough for these people.

They Helped Topple Roe v. Wade. Now Their Sights Are Set on Britain.

As this detailed report shows Reform is a Trojan Horse for the US Christian right to secretly reshape British politics along Trumpian lines. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

And of course I was frustrated with him in exactly the same way except substitute evil tech billionaires and fascists. Which weirdly seem to be of only consequential interest to him.

I had a weird insight moment when he apologised for being cross and said he was just worried for the future, his child etc and from his point of view I’m “refusing” to see the problem about Jews or chemtrails or whatever the thing was in that conversation. So it’s fear, fundamentally.

Reading Thiel, Yarvin, Peterson et al. makes you realise what passes for intellectual iconoclasm these days is all absolute bollocks. Why anyone gives any of these people the time of day let alone credibility is baffling.

Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever - Reactor Witches teach us how to push back — and raise hell — in the face of authoritarianism.

Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever
reactormag.com/rebellion-ac...

Lost viola bow on the way from Honor Oak Station to Heathrow Terminal 2. The bow slid from its bow case somewhere along the way, possibly on the train. TFL contacted already. It weighs 68.2 grams and has got a stamped DODD next to the frog. If any info on this, please pm me.

My friend Sascha is a professional musician and he's lost a viola bow on the way to Heathrow. Please signal boost to help him get it back.

I can’t, but tbf I also can’t adequately explain how the aeroplane stays up

Ah well there’s some actual news behind that however mangled, I thought we were on the chemtrails thing where people insist clouds are different

Do we know what the weather thing is actually about? Like visually. Clouds and aeroplane trails look much the same to me as 40 years ago, but I did grow up in an area where there have always been aeroplanes and maybe that’s it?

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Lot of talk about the flagrant misreading but actually I think this is active psychosis. Nobody in their right mind makes everything about the antichrist

I know someone like this and I’ve worked around it, but the sad thing is he’s also getting more aggressive about it, and I’m wondering if workarounds are even an option much longer. If that progressive aggression is inherent, these people are, very sadly, dangerous.

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

I thought the latter as well. Or even more than “fine for adults” maybe “you’re strong, you can take it”.

Reorganise departments into schools

<sequel ten years on>

Reorganise schools into departments

Ah right so my associations are posey student politics because that’s how it manifests in the UK but this term has an actual history

Absolutely. And religion is a good wayfinder for this, but perhaps we also have to interrogate the idea that it’s not natural to our way of thinking. At the very least that is variable across any population so it must be *more* natural to some of us.