I like Edinburgh very much, as much as Torquay.
11.08.2025 08:16 — 👍 84 🔁 7 💬 3 📌 0@chandos64.bsky.social
Law, housing, leaseholds, property valuation, more law, and Oxford commas. Incompetent but enthusiastic linguist. European. Lagomorphs, bees, tea & cake.
I like Edinburgh very much, as much as Torquay.
11.08.2025 08:16 — 👍 84 🔁 7 💬 3 📌 0I think that hits the nail on the head rather squarely.
11.08.2025 08:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Biddy Baxter in the Blue Peter office.
We are sad to report that longtime Blue Peter Editor Biddy Baxter has died at the age of 92. We salute a true pioneer, who navigated changing times in the television industry with instinct, tenacity and style.
10.08.2025 19:51 — 👍 439 🔁 136 💬 4 📌 27@SkyNews: Prince Andrew has no public future - and lack of royal status 'annoys him', author claims.
🔗 Read more
A young male human was situated near the intersection of two supporting structural elements at right angles to each other: said subject was involved in ingesting a saccharine composition prepared in conjunction with the ritual observance of an annual fixed-day religious festival. Insertion into the saccharine composition of the opposable digit of his forelimb was followed by removal of a drupe of genus prune. Subsequently the subject made a declarative statement regarding the high quality of his character as a young male human.
If Scientists wrote nursery rhymes 4:
#Science 🧪
#iTeachPhysics
I take it you're not local?
10.08.2025 15:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0A happy book says: I'm so proud you chose me as your holiday read! I can't wait to start entertaining you! A smiling drink says: And I'm right here! Ready to keep you cool and refreshed while you read! A gleeful phone adds: Yay! So great! How about we kick things off with a load of the same old rubbish you always look at, plus some gloomy news and mavbe a few emails from work!! Hours later... The drink and book lie untouched. The phone is out of view but a bubble reads: Scroll Scroll Scroll Scroll Scroll The book says “I hate that guy.”
My cartoons for this week’s @theguardian.com books
#holiday #vacation #reading
10th August 1860, five people are executed by firing squad in Bronte (Sicily) following a popular uprising. Thread with special guest appearances by Horatio Nelson, Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Brontë sisters >> 1
10.08.2025 11:38 — 👍 38 🔁 13 💬 2 📌 1I think the shows I am doing in Edinburgh are my best yet - @standcomedyclub.bsky.social evening show usually full, afternoon show much quieter than usual - any spreading the word appreciated
www.edfringe.com/tickets/what...
I’m just being manipulated by Big Coffee
10.08.2025 12:14 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Invented the dog whistle?
Well quite.
Pure PG Wodehouse.
Hail Spode!
Living the dream!
09.08.2025 19:54 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Here is the column I wrote on the theme "What I Would have liked to Know About Germany Earlier," along with the additional reflections I provided at Zeit Magazin's request. -A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgement, is more dangerous than one with none at all. -A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. -A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. -Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. -At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power's legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgement–or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. -When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism. -When the majority believe they live in a free society, it is often a sign that the society is not free. Freedom is not a gift; it must be wrestled from the hands of banality and the quiet complicity with power. -When people sense that power is beyond challenge, they redirect their energy into trivial disputes. And those trivialities, collectively, are enough to erode a society's very foundations of justice. -When public events of great consequence–such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing–are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb. -Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe–against and again, in cycles. -When the media becomes a servant of public opinion, or avoids conflict to maintain favour with existing powers, it becomes an accomplice to authority. What we call lies are not always distortions of fact.
-Political leaders make decisions steeped in fallacy & failure. This reflects the broader political condition of a society in which most people have surrendered their awareness & even their basic agency–allowing such leaders to enact their mistakes on their behalf -When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion–it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes -Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong & inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished -In the surrounding atmosphere, one sees not culture, but self-congratulation; not art, but insularity & collective reverence for power. What is missing is sincerity–honesty of emotion & of intention. In such an environment, art that grapples with true human feeling or moral reckoning is nearly impossible to produce. -A place that routinely discards self-awareness & erases individual agency is one that lives under iron walls of authoritarianism -I have no family, no fatherland, never known what it is to belong. I belong only to myself. In the best of circumstances, that self should belong to everyone. I still do not know what art is. I only hope that what I make might touch its edges while it seems unrelated to anything. & in truth, in the best of circumstances it is unrelated to me, for the "I" already melts into everything -Those things found in galleries, museums, & collectors' living room–are they art? Who has declared them so? On what basis? Why do I always feel suspicion in their presence? -Works that evade reality, that shy away from argument, from controversy, from debate–be they text, painting, or performance–are worthless.
-I understand now: people crave power and tyranny as they crave sunshine and rain, for the burden of self-awareness feels like pain. at times, even like catastrophe. -Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call "art" because that choice makes everyone feel safe. Additional reflections -In Berlin, I encounter the ever-present Schweinshaxe and Schnitzel, and I can hardly believe that such a highly developed, industrialised country offers such a monotonous selection of ingredients. Even more baffling is the sudden proliferation of Chinese restaurants–most of them noodle-based, and operating at a culinary level that any Chinese person could easily achieve at home. The variety of food and cooking methods is so limited here that people form all over the world feel compelled to open restaurants: Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish–you name it. -But the truly horrifying part? The sheer number of Chinese restaurants. I can only assume they believe that no matter what ends up on the plate, German customers will come running. In front of some of these establishments, there are even long queues–yet the food they serve bears little resemblance to anything recognisably Chinese. My favourite food in Germany is the bread and sausage–you simply can't find ones with such distinctive character anywhere else. -I'm puzzled by why so many people would willingly cram themselves into a small bar just to have a long conversation. Since I don't speak the language, I can only imagine that the young people coming to Berlin would talk about clubbing. This sort of thing was all the rage in the U.S. back in the '70s and '80s. -The Germans might be the only people who are truly the furthest from a sense of humour. This could be the result of their deep reverence for rationality. Just look at Berlin Airport or the advertisements for Mercedes-Benz cars–you start to feel that their lack of humour has become a kind of immense humour in itself
Ai Weiwei was invited to contribute short reflections on “What I would have liked to know about Germany earlier" for an upcoming issue of Zeit Magazin. His submission was first shortened and edited, then immediately cancelled after a review by the Executive Editor. Ai shared his reflections anyway:
02.08.2025 08:21 — 👍 219 🔁 75 💬 10 📌 26Fewer tourists, lower prices and warm weather – these breaks make the most of shoulder season trib.al/O6hW5OB
09.08.2025 08:09 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0I'm on the horns of a dilemma as to which to choose..
09.08.2025 13:25 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Utter bargain.
09.08.2025 11:44 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Fr you could convince me Bush really was a 100 year old vampire named George VW Bxar
08.08.2025 19:22 — 👍 129 🔁 20 💬 15 📌 0Sorry to pollute the feed with technical financial terms, but this is all fxcking nuts
www.ft.com/content/8a16...
The pillocks spouting this plainly have no understanding of the huge damage they are causing to the USAs international reputation.
Or maybe they do and think they are being amusing?
Well, this is horrifying:
News just published in Science, entitled "Study reveals industrial-scale publishing fraud".
Link @science.org #science community article: www.science.org/content/arti...
Underlying research behind this news in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🧪 #ecology
When polio broke out in New York State in 2022 it caused paralysis in one individual. We used upstream sampling of wastewater to better understand the extent of the outbreak. We wrote up our lessons learned from upstream wastewater sampling here.
#EpiSky 🧪
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Our FIRST EVER August newsletter will arrive next week!
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I am horrified. If you use US material, download all old reports you use. The record will be erased. Even that might not save you: every report sourced from the US will now have to be suspected of politicised manipulation and will in the future the same credibility as Iran’s human rights reports
08.08.2025 08:37 — 👍 528 🔁 325 💬 27 📌 13I knows where you do live.
😉
The correct way to address an envelope is "Hello, envelope".
07.08.2025 19:30 — 👍 239 🔁 26 💬 6 📌 1What’s an acre foot then?
07.08.2025 14:46 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0Methane-powered Sea Spiders FTW!!!! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
#pycnogonida 🌍🧪🌊