As someone 5 foot 2 on a good day I hear you after the best part of a decade of tip toe night hugs ✊

BBC today correct Nigel Farage's false claim to Nick Robinson on Political Thinking (13th February 2026) that net migration was only down due to an "exodus" of people leaving the UK since 90% of net migration fall was a fall in immigration. After my 3rd complaint!
www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedb...

Flummoxed MAGA supporter struggles to comprehend the deepest of religious queries '*Is*the Pope a Catholic?'.

60 million visits to a "rape academy" website telling blokes how to be a bunch of pelicots & the British columnist class are clutching their pearls that Lily-Mae has pierced her nose, gone on an anti genocide demo with her mates and is voting green

The first question is "Why did Mandelson have to have the job at all costs?"

And the most serviceable answer is always "He gets what he wants when he wants from that flank of the Labour Party."

The next question then is "Why?" And that is the one which is about who holds the microphones.

Yale: "universities are undermining public trust"

Harvard: For example,

The imagination is “a vital resource in all social processes and projects, and needs to be seen as a quotidian energy”.

Love that. Quotidian energy. From Arjun Appadurai in The Future as Cultural Fact.

#everydayEducationalUtopias

I spent 7 years researching Bill Richmond, an extraordinary figure in British-American history who was born enslaved but became one of Britain’s earliest Black sporting celebrities — a blue plaque would be wonderful, so please donate if you can 👇

It’s hard not to see Vance’s criticism of the Pope’s theological bona fides as just silly hubris.

But I also see it as a stress test of sorts — can they manipulate sentiment against a pontiff. Not for Trump’s interests. More likely for Thiel’s.

I was thinking this weekend about how I miss the magazine section of the old Borders bookshop in Glasgow. I loved it there, they had the best selection Vogue international editions, design tomes, hobby stuff, proper film journalism and every music magazine you could think of. Fantastic place.

I study racism for a living and can still manage to be shocked by how institutionalized it is. What do you mean they were giving tax-breaks to white supremacists celebrating treason?

just a wild country

🚨New article🚨

What if the misguided construction of 'right-wing populism' has prevented us from holding the elite accountable and rejuvenate democracy?

This is what @alexyates2000.bsky.social and I explore in our new article: 'There is no such thing as ‘right-wing populism’'

1/
shorturl.at/jptiu

It's easy to lose the substantive win here in the Government's transphobic framing. Last summer, we expected the Code to be forced through without scrutiny. Instead, they have had to amend it and recognise they got their legal analysis wrong. It was our community's hard work that achieved this.

A Japanese researcher just interrupted me in the restroom and said, “are you David Ho?” He proceeded to tell me how much he enjoyed this piece I wrote in Nature. You should read it too. 😄

Some massive better-worlds-aren't-possible, and you're-just-envious-for-thinking-they-are, vibes in the public sphere at the moment.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's net worth exceeds the GDP of Belgium, and is set to exceed the GDP of Taiwan within the year.

✊

The situation where you are sounds awful. I’m so sorry you’re being treated this badly.

Desperate stuff from Scottish Labour, bigotry in lieu of policy. Deeply depressing, yet completely unsurprising. We're saddled with the most milquetoast political operatives, both sides of the border, at a time when we crying out for innovation and radical transformation. Pathetic doesn't cover it.

Imagine the scope of the *something* that would be needed to reverse that long-term trend - never mind what kind of something it would be.

Look at the offer from most political parties. How many orders of magnitude are they failing by?

Then think about climate mitigation, & the scope of that.

My uni’s marketing department: we won’t advertise your course. It’s not a ‘hero’ course.
Management: you haven’t recruited. We’re shutting you down.

Jude Law, or possibly an AI puppet Jude Law, advertising AI for lawyers…

Massive ad on the Guardian website. For shame. For shame.

BBC Breaking News now Viktor Orbán concedes Hungarian election to challenger Péter Magyar, ending his 16 years in power

First of these BBC news alerts I’ve welcomed in a good while

BBC Breaking News now Viktor Orbán concedes Hungarian election to challenger Péter Magyar, ending his 16 years in power

First of these BBC news alerts I’ve welcomed in a good while

The United States is destroying itself | Rebecca Solnit The daily news can’t adequately convey the administration’s sabotaging of our government, economy, alliances and environment

"At some point if the ship doesn’t turn around, maybe it will start taking on water or listing badly or hit an iceberg, or perhaps the iceberg has been there all along and is named Donald Trump."

Richard Tice tax row is 'minor administrative error', party claims A property company owned by the Reform UK deputy leader failed to pay £91,000 in tax on dividends, according to the Sunday Times.

To the extent that this cuts through, I doubt many Reform-curious voters will feel that £91k is minor.

HMG: We must boost growth! We must tackle the cost of living!

Also HMG: You there! Sole trader, is it? Why are you doing productive work? You're meant to be doing this extra bureaucracy we've invented. What d'you mean, you don't want to spend hundreds of pounds on the software? Why are you crying?

What did I just say? Sigh...

bsky.app/profile/aure...

Nearly 1 in 6 UK species are threatened with extinction.

We've lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since the 1930s.

We have 73 million fewer birds than in the 1970s - a decline of almost a third.

And yet some politicians still just see wildlife as a blocker to progress.

The cover of Rua M. Williams' book "Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI". The cover image is a spiral of yellowish orange leaves set against a red background.

Come join @civicsoftech.bsky.social's May book club on Wed, May 20, at 7pm ET. I'll be leading a discussion of @fractalecho.bsky.social's Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong About AI - and Dr. Williams is joining too!

Register at: www.civicsoftechnology.org/book-clubs

vance is so personally off putting that even foreign electorates want nothing to do with him