Edward Hirst

First day of the new year and I have two WD portable hard drives fail. Reminds me to always backup as the damn things are always destined to die at some point. 🙄

I hope that 2025 will bring peace and calm across the world. If we think of the most vulnerable people in society and treat everyone with kindness and respect, friends and strangers alike, then perhaps this year will be a kinder and gentler one.

Love to you all 🤗

(Picture Henry Ren - Unsplash)

Two big disappointments this week, two people we used to have great respect for, Rory Stewart after discovering he shoots small birds and supports fox hunting, and @stephenfry.bsky.social after his comments on trans people, Stonewall & politics. Never idolise anyone, they will disappoint you 😕

'Wes Streeting's Regressive Ban on Puberty Blockers is a Betrayal of Trans People' The Health Secretary claims to be led by the evidence but has merely furthered the fact-free anti-trans agenda pursued by the Conservatives, argues Helen Belcher

🔴‘Wes Streeting’s Regressive Ban on Puberty Blockers is a Betrayal of Trans People’

The Health Secretary claims to be led by the evidence but has merely furthered the fact-free anti-trans agenda pursued by the Conservatives, argues Helen Belcher

bylinetimes.com/2024/12/13/w...

Who volunteers to save me from weekend boredom? 😵‍💫😝

How to verify your Bluesky account - Bluesky Here's how to verify your Bluesky account by setting your website as your username.

12/12/24 @bsky.app blog update: “If you change your default Bluesky username to a website URL,… your most recent .bsky.social username is reserved for you, and this reservation does not expire.”

Did it. Took 2 minutes. And @scottxot.bsky.social still points here.

bsky.social/about/blog/4...

Interesting observation of the day… the #haptic feedback on iOS when pulling the page down to refresh on #Threads app feels like the friction from a rosin coated thread. This is a pretty elaborate use of haptic feedback which shows a degree of OCD from a programmer somewhere 🤓

The Agency (2024) 🍿 is a huge dilemma… I’m rewatching The Bureau (2015) (Le Bureau des Légendes) the French TV series on which is is based. The Agency is set in London (The Barbican features a lot) and is effectively a clone of The Bureau, The Agency is good, but The Bureau is of legendary quality.

Currently watching and enjoying The Day of the Jackal (2024) Well worth checking out. 🙂

A lot of things suck in this lifetime, but I remember when the thought of this was incomprehensible. This is beautiful.

Still have no Christmas plans 🙄 🎄 maybe I’ll just hide for a week…

Just discovered Mondelez have shrunk Galaxy chocolate bars by making them unsatisfyingly thinner… what fuckery is this? They are too thin and when you break a piece off the new size doesn’t sit comfortably in the mouth… meh… 🍫

The amount of hassle it is to refit a curtain pole three inches higher on the wall… yeah I know I could shorten the curtains but I think that would be more inconvenient hmm 🤔

Mature Meole oak tree 'illegally' felled by council - BBC News People in Meole, Shropshire are angry at the felling but the council say they did not break the law.

Pictured: Angry pointing at no trees

BBC live page entry: BBC listener 'overtaken on the M5 by a crisp packet' as winds rage

What flavour?

It says that is the wind speed in your living room 🌬️😝

For those on BlueSky unfamiliar with this modern British tradition:

During times of high winds, we all jump on YouTube and watch planes trying to land at Heathrow, with excited commentary from the UK's premier plane nerd channel.

Currently live here!

www.youtube.com/live/egvoBvc...

What Musk actually said was that Britain’s multi-ethnicity would lead to ‘inevitable’ civil war, and that we are a police state for prosecuting racist rioters.

Farage is thanking Musk for his racist agenda

Having to delete and repost a post because of a typo… 🙄

Also time to have a walk around my London neighbourhood looking for bikes, bins and random things that have fallen over to take photos of to illustrate the destructive power of #StormDarragh. 🙃

#Plex dilemma. Do I re-encode all my TV shows, movies and artistic content to H265 now that I’ve almost filled up the 32Tb RAID storage on my NAS? Or do I buy four new drives at insane cost? 🙄

Farage on Musk (reported in The Times): "I have neither solicited nor discussed [a donation] with Elon. He’s very supportive, he thinks Britain is going down the tubes. He thinks that Labour is leading us in a horrendous direction with the death of entrepreneurship and free speech"

The Netatmo smart weather sensors on my balcony in East London are suggesting wind gusts are up to 45 Km/h and are still rising. I don’t think we’re through the worst of #StormDarragh yet.

You know the "🔹AI Overview" you get on Google Search?

I discovered today that it's repeating as fact something I made up 7 years ago as a joke.

"Kyloren syndrome" is a fictional disease I invented as part of a sting operation to prove that you can publish any nonsense in predatory journals...

🤣🤣🤣

These mass blocking facilities are extremely dangerous to use. Some well known leading lights from X are on these lists just b/c someone decided they followed too many too quickly (due to using Starter Packs) when first arriving on BS & wanting to connect up with their old tribe from X.
☠️Beware‼️

It looks like some #blocklists here are blocking genuine accounts that have been using starter lists and migration tools to follow all. I always found block lists on the other place unreliable so I think here I’ll manually control who I follow and dispense with the automated blocklist bots. 🙂

Bluesky is THE environment for new media and 'public good' publications.

Lots of people have been saying it - but I can tell you from the publisher perspective - it's true. Unlike X or Threads, external news content thrives here.

So please follow & share my UK media for public good starter pack. 👇

Reports from Israel suggest:
- a TV address from Netanyahu at 20.00 local
- ceasefire with factions in Lebanon to enter force on Wednesday
- deal will likely apply for an initial 60 days, during which more permanent arrangements must be put in place

So clearly a huge number of people don’t like some of the things KS and the Labour government have done and are planning. Their solution? Another election… Great idea… Elect the Conservatives… 😵‍💫 Most of the things we hate about KS govt are because this Labour govt is behaving like Conservatives! 🤨