Brett Gray

Re-listening to Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. Not one of his famous ones, but as deep cuts go it's a beaut.

My anger at LLF being kicked into touch is not fading. It is growing. Our church asks women and queer folk to accept a lesser status, it asks them to continue to make sacrifices for the sake of unity. It does so with platitudes, but it still asks.
The whole thing is morally repellant.

Update on Living in Love and Faith, October 2025 | The Church of England The House of Bishops has made a series of key decisions in principle on the future direction of the Living in Love and Faith process, which explores questions of relationships, sexuality and marriage.

If I am reading this right, it's not good. A 2/3rds majority for 'bespoke' services and clergy marriage is basically a 'never'. The can is kicked farther down the road. Crushing cowardice.
www.churchofengland.org/media/press-...

To be fair, I find the Rabbit terrifying.

This virus has, on day six, moved from ‘I hate this and it’s annoying’ to ‘this is some bullshit!’. Covid tests negative. Sending texts to the offspring charging them with burning my journals avenging me on my enemies.

While whatever I caught in Fresher's Week is nasty, it's done that fun thing to my voice where I start popping out some urban New England diphthongs. A liturgical voice that can make a blessing sound like a proposition you can't refuse?

The lesson I should have taken from my youth was to take Rage Against the Machine a little more seriously.

The truth about Trump and his lackeys is that they actually hate America, and Americans. They can't stand who we actually are, and so they are trying to erase it and replace it with a white bread nostalgic America which never actually was.

He is the anti-patriot.

Guy who is zip-tying American children and shooting pastors on the head with pepper balls wants Peace Prize.

MIT rejects "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.
MIT prez wrote: it "would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution" and "is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

ME: Now Mom, just remember, there's a lot of disinformation and AI in your social feed and your friends' Facebook.
MOM: I know! My friend sent me this crazy post where someone used AI to make an image of a giant frog fighting Army troops!
ME: ... okay, no, that one's ... goddamit, Portland.

It’s so extremely Southern that Dolly basically got put on a prayer list and days later had to do an “I’m not dead yet!” to let the international news know that she was not on death’s door

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows "exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation," with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty." Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down." The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote. Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

Everyone who advocates for turning the UK into the UAE assumes they'll be the one with a marina penthouse rather than the guy working on a building site in 50c heat

Giving away Betts was just such a profoundly bad move by Boston...

Thinking about it a few days on, 'One Battle After Another' is one of the strangest, most wondrous, intriguing, and just plain great films I've seen in a long time. It's a definite must see.

Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc

Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)

that's not a very nice way to refer to London museums

Democratically elected leaders don't put their faces on currency. That's what monarchies and autocrats do.

Bracing for the coming revelations of institutionalised misogyny in the Church of England.

Thinking of my mom, who got involved as a lay woman in the campaign for women's ordination. She lived to see women ordained priests. She'd be tickled by a woman as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Teachers say trans pupils 'limiting food and drink' to avoid school toilets The new guidance said students will be asked to use toilet facilities which correspond to their biological sex.

Teachers say trans pupils 'limiting food and drink' to avoid school toilets

My hopes for the new Archbishop? That they will, without qualification, dissimulation, or prevarication, recognise the full humanity and holiness of all God’s children, and that they will have the courage and wisdom to oppose the cooption of Christianity by populist nationalism and nascent fascism.

More Ta-Nehisi Coates than Ezra Klein.

First porridge of the autumn. Hit it with a little salt and maple syrup, compliment it with some good black coffee, and you can take on the world.

UK businesses fear new EHRC guidance on toilets will be ‘unworkable’ Exclusive: Stonewall writes to ministers and warns cost of compliance could be ‘significant’ for struggling companies

It was never meant to be workable. It was meant to push trans folk to the margins of society.

Man detained in Cato ICE raid wrongfully deported, separated from his family Body camera footage released from the raid shows agents referring to immigrants as 'animals.'

“They’re, they’re animals anyway. That’s what I would tell my kids all the time,” said the ICE agent, according to body cam footage. spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-...

reminder:

If Labour try and win against Reform on technocratic and competency grounds, they will lose like Remain lost in 2016. Farage knows this. They need to come out swinging on values and decency. They need to grow moral and ideological spines.