PumpkinSpider

Just a wee reminder that some of those undelivered letters will be second class post notification of hospital appointments: the patients will then be blamed in the statistics for wasting the NHS's time by not turning up when really they're probably desperate to be seen.

For the avoidance of doubt, I *never* use generative AI to do *any* of my writing. I type it all out myself with my own twelve fingers.

Kind of wonder if the media feels compelled to pretend JD Vance is a viable president just because they assume he will be at some point in the next two years.

On a day with so much awfulness just taking a moment to note with admiration a dignified leader

Watching the men’s luge on the sofa in the exact position that they do the luge. #winterolympics #somuchsliding

I'm not sure many people are aware of this but those horrendous splitscreen adverts during ITV's #SixNationsRugby game coverage are a trial ahead of doing the same during the football #WorldCup2026 .
If they think the reaction to them is bad now, they ain't seen nothing yet...

Welcome to Bluesky, X: The Everything App Leavers. We don't do AI here - we don't need it, because this is where the human artists went x

There are now officially zero MTV channels in the UK that play actual music.

YouTube video by VintageLynx Stanley Baxter's Christmas Hamper 1985

Some teatime festive viewing after today's sad news.

youtu.be/7q_NLFxg9CE?...

Bronze plaque saying "A Letter to the Future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. August 2019. 415ppm CO2"

TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

15 million Americans are going to lose their health care.

“The message from Caerphilly is very clear to me: One-third of the vote is not enough to get Reform elected, if the other two-thirds get their act together.”

A man called Jeff invented this, and he has a whole story behind the 'inspiration' for this notepad, sorry productivity system, which involves a fisherman and banker

How do you not feel embarrassed that you've just reinvented a notepad?

YouTube video by maxinebendix Kitty 3 - with Patricia Routledge - BBC

All these tributes to the wonderful Patricia Routledge and not one mention of the wonderful Kitty, as seen on the wonderful Victoria Wood show.

youtu.be/bSYZSFiLKJY?...

Dear @apnews.com

The republicans control congress. Democrats did not vote down anything. If the GOP wanted to fund the government, they could have changed the rules to pass a CR with a simple majority like they did 11 days ago to approve 48 trump appointees at once.

Fix your headline.

Medieval London church is balanced 45 feet above ground in 'never before seen feat of engineering'... as skyscraper is built

Glasgow: 'Hold my beer...'

I can’t remember who said it but “it’s bit like saying you don’t have to be a vegetarian to be in the Green Party and you don’t. But you do have to be comfortable hanging out with vegetarians.” Same here you may not be a racist but you sure are happy to hang out with them.

Bluesky isn’t perfect but at least its owner isn’t demanding violent insurrection in the UK from thousands of miles away

1) pic of Melissa and Mark Hortman 2) pic of Melissa Hortman and dog Gilbert

Remembering MN house speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their beloved dog Gilbert. Murdered in June at their home by a rightwing Trump-voting evangelist, who also shot another MN lawmaker and his wife at THEIR home, 9 and 8 times, respectively (miraculously, they survived).

Charlie Kirk was, amongst other things, extremely homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic and Islamophobic.

Assorted commentators "he had varied interests"

Charlie Kirk wanted to talk about Trump and Epstein

We should honour this guys wishes by talking more about Trump being on the Epstein list.

I remember being taught about good Germans and bad Germans, the brave few who resisted the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the masses who enabled it. Now I wonder if there weren’t a huge contingent desperate to stop it but without any sense of how to do that.

The BBC has always bent towards the status quo. But since Brexit it’s top journalists - who like Mason & Kuenssberg think they’re celebrities - have fawned over the protagonists of that ‘exciting story’: the rise of hard right populism. They’ve stopped being journalists & become celebrants.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Just to expand a little. Suddenly in the US there are a large number of people who find themselves with arbitrary power over many others but no experience or training in how to use that power. The results are cruelty, brutality and the demonisation of the vulnerable and marginalised.

Feeling seen by the Oxford Uni job portal

The absolute cream turnip of hypocrites.