Public Universal Friend

The BBC are accidentally running the subtitles to Mrs Marple over the Mercury Prize, and it’s rather wonderful. A few of lines could plausibly have been written by Jarvis.

Design Bridge and Partners unveil the first national railway timepiece in over 50 years Created in collaboration with Network Rail, RIBA and the Design Museum, the striking new clock debuts at London Bridge station as a new icon of British design, blending heritage, accessibility and...

Network Rail’s (and, one assumes, GBR’s) new standard station clock has been unveiled. Provided it’s installed in addition to heritage clocks at stations rather than accidentally replacing them, I’m all in. Very smart. www.creativeboom.com/news/design-...

I don't wish to be unkind, but this says more about business as a degree than it does about higher education more broadly.

If the Electoral Reform Society isn't using last night's episode of The Traitors to demonstrate the weaknesses of plurality voting systems, I'm not sure what they're doing.

My super modern regulatory plan is that any entity named for a thing from Tolkien has to publicly explain why Tolkien wouldn’t immediately throw it into Mount Doom

Flashbacks to the Year 8 supply French teacher who for some reason decided to tell us a dirty joke about two eggs in a put-on Eastern European accent. I didn't see him again after that.

E.T. Adventure poster, 1990. I still have one of these hanging in my childhood bedroom.

Star Wars Special edition triptych, 1997. I remember seeing all of these in the paper as each film was re-released and just felt a burst of energy those mornings.

Hook poster, 1991

Back to the Future poster, 1985

Heartbroken that, per his social media accounts, Drew Struzan has left us. His poster and album art was quite simply shorthand for imagination for countless young people.

Just seen a train pass by on the South East Mainline in Network SouthEast livery. Are we sure there isn't some kind of time portal in the vicinity of New Cross?

One of the most galling things about the Trump era is the insistence that they are 'restoring merit' (by replacing supposedly incompetent minorities), while also appointing people who are obviously wildly unqualified.

Britain is scattered with tiny, shit playgrounds like this which were built by developers as a condition of getting planning permission.

This but for every surviving Millennium Commission-funded project/monument/woodland/naff sundial.

Nadia from London has an idea that sounds such fun you'll be booking a day out asap. "I've always loved museums," she says, "but they can be overwhelming for children. For decades now, I've done something called 'playing postcards' We do the museum backwards, visiting the gift shop first. Each child gets to choose three postcards. Then they take it in turns to find that particular artwork in the museum and give us a little information about the piece from the details on the postcard, or from any gallery plaque. At the end of this treasure-hunt-style activity, we vote for our favourite in the cafe."

This is such a clever idea on taking kids to museums/galleries
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Although Breakfast in America was released in 1979, 21 years before the 9/11 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center, the album's cover became the basis for a 9/11 conspiracy theory due to the "UP" in "SUPERTRAMP" resembling "9 11" behind the twin towers if the cover is viewed in a mirror. The back cover photo, depicting the band members having breakfast while reading their respective hometown newspapers, was taken at a diner called Bert's Mad House.

What I love about dumb conspiracy theories are... if this were true, what are the implications? Is the suggestion that Supertramp were planning 9/11 all the way back in the late 1970s?

Indian Railways to achieve net zero targets in 2025 itself - 5 years ahead of 2030 goal - Times of India India Business News: Indian Railways is set to achieve net-zero targets by year-end, surpassing its 2030 goal through extensive electrification. Aiming for 95% electric tr

Not nearly enough is made of the incredibly impressive feat Indian Railways has made to electrify almost 100% of its 135,000km of track, while also growing renewable sourcing. Huge:

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/ind...

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

people are gonna have a real rough time when they start getting old and don't have the cash reserves to look like bradley cooper

adding a photo? read this first. we know you love your cat. so do we, but that doesn't mean a photo of your cat is a good choice for the article

huge notice that pops up if you try to edit the cat article

It's not widely known, but the people who listened to the Swift/Kanye beef on the radio actually thought that she'd won.

Sharing a planet with America has felt for the last decade like being tied to the mast of a ship while the mad captain scuttles it

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

bsky.app/profile/thev...

Also, I have increasingly little patience for 'x spoils the view from y!' In Oxford that manifested itself in worrying about preserving the view of the Dreaming Spires™ from Port Meadow, an area of flat land which always had much worse views than half a dozen other points across the city.

It was always pretty invidious to ask one of the UK's most deprived cities to choose between regenerating its urban core and WHS listing. But worse than that, UNESCO gave no credit for the preservation of the 19th century heritage (Albert Dock is just one example) that came from that regeneration.

'Give me 10 years of your life, and I'll trade in that puny flab for living muscle. Physique you desire! Shoulders to hold your shirt up. 5 years ago, I was a poor student at college; today I am two separate gorillas. No tiresome exercises, no tricks, no unpleasant bending. Wrestle poodles and win!'

The bees have discovered Brutalism

Millennials love to get mad at Baby Boomers, but it turns out they have something in common: a deep love for nostalgia.

I can't even be annoyed at this because '<<simulacrum of reality created by hyperconsumerism in 2002>> is way better than <<simulacrum of reality created by hyperconsumerism in 2025>>' is just too funny.

I wrote about this in "The Unaccountability Machine" - when you describe leveraged buyouts to ordinary people, half of them say that it should be illegal and the other half are often convinced that it already is.