Great Thrash Never Dies: The Return of Coroner The Swiss band's pioneering approach to thrash metal remains well-intact on their first album in over 30 years.

Swiss thrash pioneers Coroner are finally back after a 30-year-plus hiatus. We caught up with guitarist Tommy Vetterli to discuss their new album "Dissonance Theory," their legacy, and more.

Green deputy leader Mothin Ali defends comments on Leeds rabbi The Green Party is under pressure to remove Mothin Ali after he called Zecharia Deutsch an "animal" for serving with the IDF.

Green deputy leader defending right of indigenous people to "fight back" on October 8th was not about Hamas massacre on October 7th. Pull the other one, Mothin!
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Naked eye observed Saturn (mag. +0.6) low in southeast last night, aided by New Moon. Happy Autumnal Equinox!

Another warm, dry summer in 2025. Such summers just seem normal now; central England temperatures are ~2°C higher than they were in the late 20th century. www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadce...

Surprised to learn that Keir Starmer is only 5' 8" (same as Theresa May). Had assumed he was at least six feet tall, possibly due to often seeing him next to Rishi Sunak.

The Great Implicit Bias Bamboozle Where were you when you first learned about implicit bias?

Major new paper by finds implicit measures like the IAT are no better than asking people directly about their biases. After decades of avoiding self-reports, turns out our sophisticated replacement tools work no better than what we abandoned. New post!

Improving resident doctors' conditions would spread taxpayer benefit to patients more than further increasing salaries.

My recent experience of London nurses, neglecting to clean and feed elderly patients, suggests that focus should instead be on improving nurse pay and performance.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was also more the salmon-farming businessman than hellraiser.

Warwickshire school apologises to girl over culture day speech refusal Bilton School in Rugby apologised after preventing a pupil from making a speech at school while wearing a union jack dress.

I wasn't actually thinking of this story, but it illustrates each 'tribe' (asymmetric multiculturalism vs. love British) as protagonist (rather than one active and one passive): www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Only right-wingers get in moral panics and wage culture wars, right?

NSS backs open letter against ‘Islamophobia’ definition Letter signed by 10 groups says definition "risks fuelling division rather than fostering social cohesion" Read More »

We've signed an open letter urging the Government to abandon plans to adopt an 'Islamophobia' definition. As well as threatening free speech, the definition would risk fragmenting society further and undermining equal treatment.
www.secularism.org.uk/news/2025/07...

I can think of a few transgressive symbols that suit the Toyota Motor Corporation...

If Da Ed had implemented this scoring system, our lives would have been one HELLUVA lot easier. What about 8.5/10 though?

Bizarre that on 12 May two Lib Dem MPs rebelled to support the Conservative amendment to disapply the HRA/EHCR on immigration, asylum and border security matters. publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?d…

Wearing Cradle of Filth's "Jesus..." t-shirts: religiously aggravated breach of Public Order Act 1986. Playing Deicide's 'Kill the Christian': incitement under Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. Kneecap shouting "Up Hamas!": breach of Terrorism Act 2000. #freespeech

Stuck in thought: Temporal interplay between cognitive (and motivational!) building blocks of rumination. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Toyota customer service one-times table: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1.

UK academic pay (spine point 26, Associate Lecturer) has declined 18-20% in real terms (CPIH) since 2010, down 10% since 2019 [via ChatGPT].

reminder

Interesting point, but surely mistaken (and naive) to think that this is "the only way" that it would work (especially in toilets/sports context).

Trans people have the same protections in law as other groups but men cannot opt into legal protections reserved for women however they identify, and that is how it should be. The end.

The law on single-sex spaces is a mess. It needs fixing, not political point-scoring | Sonia Sodha Labour’s reaction to Kemi Badenoch’s plan to define sex is not only a hapless fudge, it’s legally illiterate

Tomorrow morning the Supreme Court will rule on what the protected characteristic of "sex" refers to in the Equality Act. Sounds technical, but it's immensely consequential. Here's a reminder of what's at stake.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Manchester Arena families in 'disbelief' Hashem Abedi was able to attack prison officers Families of five of Hashem Abedi's victims tell the government he should not be allowed any privileges in prison, in a letter seen by the BBC.

Lots of people should not be in prison. People like Abedi should be somewhere far worse.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Ha, no I don't know any.

TLoS was always Samoth, though cannot recall original source. Incidentally, can you think of any other BM pseudonyms that are anagrams of the musician's name?

Hearing some of the music they played them makes this even funnier. (Note that Faust was the true Lord of Silence in this encounter.) I recall the NME picking up on the death threat and calling Emperor "fascist donuts" or similar.

The "donuts" caption may have earned Jason Arnopp his death threat after Emperor visited the Kerrang! office in London 1993. HT Neil Sackman

Sussex University Free Speech Society circa 2000 was an ideologically diverse group of "extremists". Its communist leader Barry incited plenty of "hate speech" by spamming departmental emails with satirical takes on university silliness. In light of their OfS fine, clearly Sussex did not learn much!

REF reforms ‘could make it harder for axed staff to get new jobs’ Researchers could struggle to find alternative employment if their previous employers have REF submission rights on their work to date, English scholars warn

Universities will find it easier to submit outputs from sacked academics, in turn making it harder for these scholars to find new jobs, under changes to the Research Excellence Framework, warn @englishassociation.bsky.social @univeng.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ref-ref...

Touchdown zone markings newly painted on London Gatwick's runway 08L/26R to conform with RNP precision approaches to this runway. Have to paint them all over again if runway moves north!