Adam Gripton

This is, at least I hope it is, referring to A-Level standard in a foreign language as native speakers would refer to A-Level French or German. The problem is that this qualification simply does not exist; the headline is disingenuous, and perhaps purposely misleading.

I don't know much about these things but surely that sort of instruction kind of defeats the object of a press release? It's a bit like a supermarket asking you to let them know before eating its bananas so they can check it was one of the safe ones.

is it just me or

Um. There’s a woman presenting this too.

this is like a @soren.bsky.social fever dream made into reality

Ugh I hate this. Learn the damn words before you allow yourself to feel ready to play to actual people

THE SALAD BAR, PEOPLE, THE SALAD BAR!!

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 mean, this is really desperate shit, isn’t it? I am a great deal more woke-sceptic than pretty much all of Bluesky but I honestly can’t be bothered to care about the National Trust putting vegan tampons in the men’s toilets and neither should you

Yokel here from deep in District 12. What in the urban shit is going on here, can someone who uses public transport more than once a week please explain?

Finally, a genuinely useful application for national ID cards 👍

You'll get the Nobel next year on this trajectory

the people who built the trolley are never on the tracks. literally never

*sigh* St Andrews could be a much more pleasant place to walk around if the number of cars was slashed to, say, half of what it is now.

What was the old station is now a great big car park, and it shows.

Buses don't cut it with fairweather users and tourists. They never have and they never will.

North Korean hackers stealing record sums, researchers say Analysts estimate cyber-criminals linked to Pyongyang have taken more than $2bn so far in 2025.

Hacking crypto bros out of their Bitcoin now accounts for 13% of North Korea's entire GDP.

LOL.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

lonely old Chathill

by my calculations this leaves poor old Chathill as the *only* station on the whole ECML between Kings Cross and Edinburgh which you need to double back from one direction to access

RTT screenshot showing the 2D84 0741 Dunbar to Edinburgh departing on 15th December 2025, calling at all intermediate stations including Drem

so, are you just a regular vanilla train nerd, or are you a "gets irrationally excited that one train per day will start calling at both Drem and Dunbar from December onwards" level nerd?

I don't use cafés to work, but I still absolutely use this logic. Which means two things: I'll absolutely pay a premium for a café with nice ambience; but also I often balk at the prices of takeaway coffees: in general they have no right to be anywhere near that of a sit-in. ☕

Still from Monty Python's Life of Brain PFJ meeting scene

"So let's stop gabbing on about it, it's completely pointless, and it's getting us nowhere!"

East Linton grid showing service to Newcastle doubling from 4tpd to 8tpd from December

Reston grid showing services to Newcastle going from 6tpd to 9tpd from December

Blimey. Hadn't noticed this before but East Linton and Reston are getting a proper glow-up of service patterns in December. Exciting for train nerrrrds like myself

source: ecmltimetable.info

"Take a breath; try these for size: 'I don't know'; 'I've changed my mind'." - Frank Turner (Get It Right)

TIL that Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon are, in fact, different people. They were stored on the same bit of RAM in my brain heretofore

YouTube video by How Money Works Oracle is Genuinely Far Scarier Than Blackrock

youtu.be/V64TdrkhTqo?...

[9:32] "I have to give a warning that this next part involves looking at the world's most punchable face. Although nothing I can say can truly prepare you."

Very cool. Will be excellent for the West Midlands.

Sue, you're shouting at tea.

Stock picture of the BakerLoop bus between Waterloo and Lewisham, shadowing the proposed route of the Bakerloo line extension

tfl.gov.uk/info-for/med...

It bewilders me why this isn't done more routinely across the country/world to gauge interest for light rail extensions.

e.g. if there was a fully-integrated regular shuttle bus from Newbridge to Ingliston P&R, I'd be all over it!

One thing I've learned from the Internet is that a lie needs 0% proof to be believed, but the truth requires thousands of pages of proof and still won't be believed.

YouTube video by smtm: Entertainment Harry and Paul's Story of the Twos - 26/05/2014

Reminiscent of this (43:32 in, in case the link time doesn't work):

youtu.be/pOlSHw_y0Lw?...

That's surprising. From a British perspective, to start with it seemed like it was *only* Brits on here, then US accounts have started showing up recently. So maybe that tells us something about mutual visibility of networks.

"Put your own mask on before helping others" is actually quite excellent life advice.