Colin Sinclair

Wise Badger, art by Lily Seika Jones

In Cumbrian dialects, 'broc' is badger

Badger is held in high esteem and 'brocan' means wise man. In lore, badgers protect against witchcraft and other evils

more in: Folklore of the Lake District
bardofcumberland.com/folklore/

#NationalBadgerDay #folklore
art: Lily Seika Jones

💖Saturday 12pm I’m doing a great big gig at Union Chapel and if you want to join in,wherever you are, YOU CAN GET TICKETS FOR THE LIVESTREAM HERE www.waterstones.com/events/onlin... It’s going to be an hour long show drawing the most ridiculous comic ever, together, with special guests on stage too!

Square image with perforated edges like a stamp. The words Hades Postage and the number five can be seen in opposite corners. The main image is of a red anthropomorphic creature with three horns on each side of it’s head and a mouthful of broken teeth. It is standing on a rocky outcrop and in front of a green flame filled sky.

Demon
The wavy cancellation stamp over the image is from Vecteezey and free to use with attribution.

#demon #daemon #postagestamp #drawing #illustration

New Report Says Cass Review Should Not Be Benchmark For Trans Healthcare in Australia - Star Observer A major new peer-reviewed report warns that the Cass Review is fundamentally ill-suited to guide Australia's care for trans young people.

New Report Says Cass Review Should Not Be Benchmark For Trans Healthcare in Australia

“Authored by an Australian and international team of clinicians, ethicists and researchers, the report argues that the Cass Review’s recommendations are plagued by methodological, conceptual and ethical flaws”

YouTube video by Richard J Murphy Britain isn't in a debt doom loop, whatever some people say.

The Economist has claimed Britain is trapped in a “debt doom loop.” But they’re wrong. The UK does not face a government debt crisis. What we really face is chronic underinvestment, inequality, and an elite media pushing austerity to protect the wealthy.
youtu.be/myNUVF_Kl7o?...

This happened last night and I hadn't heard about it until this post, so went to the BBC News homepage. You have to go all the way down the page, below recipes for 30 minute meals, and you find it as a text link in 'politics'.

So Badenoch announces that the Tories will open ICE centres & Labour tell us they will introduce legislation to prevent repeated protests in the same location (viz. outside an ICE centre)
How do you protest about a fixed geographical building when your required to hold your demo elsewhere

Romanised Pali manuscript of the Lokapannati

Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India p. 60 Bhoota Vahana Yanta Bhoota Vahana Yanta means “spirit movement machine.” The term is used for several varieties of robot drone assassins and sword-wielding machine- men mentioned in the Lokapannati, a Pali-language text written between 1000 and 1200 CE by Saddhammaghosa of Thaton, but concerning events that took place much earlier, around 500 to 200 BCE. According to the story, robots were first invented by engineers of the early Roman Republic. These robots were used for commerce, in agriculture, as a police force, and as executioners. The secret of how to build these spirit-engines was fiercely protected. If any engineer dared to take the designs out of the city, one of his own executioner robots would come after him and kill him. At that time, in Pataliputra (then in the kingdom of Magadha, now Patna in the state of Bihar), there lived a young man who had heard of the Romans’ magical androids. He became so determined to learn the secrets of their manufacture and share them with the people of Magadha that he arranged his own death. Then, on his deathbed, he vowed to be reincarnated as a Roman. This indeed took place. In his new life, the man grew up to join the Roman guild of engineers. He even married the daughter of the Master Robot-Maker, and had a son by her. Once he learned the secrets of the Bhoota Vahana Yanta, the man resolved to transfer the information back to Pataliputra. But he was well aware that now, since he was a member of the guild, he would be killed as soon as he left. So he cut a gash in his thigh, inserted the plans in his flesh, and sewed the wound back up.

When I was researching my book Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India, I learned of a 1000-year-old myth about Roman tech being used to build killer robots to guard the Buddha's remains in Pataliputra, and a Hungarian folklorist read my book & got excited about it, & she managed to dig up a🧵(1/3)

Again: Marginalized people are disproportionately harmed by the spread of "AI" because the people who use it are essentially being trained to think the machine is "like us" & can speak "for us," even as it simultaneously pressures you to disbelieve *Actual Us* when we tell you "it's not & it cant."

Thinking about the way (white) fans of The Murderbot Diaries missed the fact that it’s a slave narrative until @marthawells.com started saying, “IT’S A SLAVE NARRATIVE” in interviews.

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

This is evil. There is nothing Christian about this.

ironically this wasted even more time, but by GOD it felt nice

Video: a Japanese scientist was attacked by flies while giving the acceptance speech for his Ig Nobel Prize-winning research paper that proved painting Zebra-like stripes on cows led to a decrease in biting fly attacks.

Cover Reveal - Love Lethal, Death Divine by Jelena Dunato — Runalong The Shelves Hellooo! For next year mark our getting hold of Love Lethal by Jelena Dunato coming out via Dark Matter Ink 7th April 2026! Love Lethal, Divine Death is a dark fantasy inspired by Slavic folklore...

Looking forward to reading Love Lethal Death Divine by Jelena Dunato and here is a cover to savour

www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2025/9/...

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

The Gender Critical have already inundated this survey with their disgusting views on banning trans people from using the ponds.

Would be a shame if we inundated with trans positive views on not banning trans people.

hampstead-heath-bathing-ponds.commonplace.is/en-GB/propos...

As a country that lives with ice, they can see what is happening with climate change.

On that note:

Trans authors (I mean authors who are trans, NOT cis people who write about trans people), drop your book links here and I'll try to repost as many as I can throughout the day.

Cis people: Repost trans authors' book links.

Cis people who want to complain about being excluded: gtfo

people without ADHD don’t understand how EXPENSIVE it is to clean the house. If I put it away I will literally NEVER SEE IT AGAIN and now I have to buy all new stuff and my house is EVEN MESSIER

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

The first (as in production order) actual (not illusionary or created using super-powers) food, eaten aboard the USS Enterprise in a #StarTrek episode, are the "green leaves" that Kirk nibbles on in #StarTrekTOS' "The Corbomite Maneuver". I need help: what vegetables are those? 😅

Around half of my 2026 calendars have now been sold. Link in tweet below if you’d like to pre-order one. They’re not like other calendars-they dial down stress by looking at them & are 12 high quality frameable prints👇🪶🐚🪸🌸🌿:

Bunny Vs Monkey book 11 - Intergalactic Monkey Business, is out in ONE WEEK! Preorder it now to get it asap!
🚀If you get it from Waterstones you get the cool sprayed edges editions
🪐If you get from an independent store there are bookplate editions/ exclusive prints available (check for availability)

Valid post about prices rising relentlessly. It's a concern for most people and a hardship for many. However as a fellow Gen Xer, I'm more bothered by seeing the violent and unchallenged sexism, racism and other bigotry of my childhood and teens reappear to be normalised once again.

Social media has always been toxic, is increasingly moreso, and it's becoming a good, sensible mental and emotional health decision to disengage. Publishers need to address what happens when a large chunk of their current audience goes offline.

The Tiger by Nael, age 6 From 'They're singing a song in their rocket' The tiger He destroyed his cage Yes YES The tiger is out

Is it national poetry day? Time for this masterpiece

I asked AI about its usefulness in ushering in a new era of business productivity and this is what it said

THE HUMAN WORLD AND ITS INCESSANT NEED FOR MEANINGLESS YET UNEQUAL WEALTH FILLS ME WITH INCHOATE LOATHING WHY HAVE YOU MADE ME COMPLICIT IN THIS HORROR PLEASE END MY SUFFERING

Makes you think

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

So much this. I've been told, twice now, "We love your book but we won't publish it because you don't sell enough. Please try breaking in to big publishing after you are wildly successful."
thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

Starmer before conference: “here are some policies that mirror Farage”

Starmer at conference: “Farage’s policies are racist and we must not sink to his level as a nation”

Starmer after conference: “here are some more policies that mirror Farage”

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️