sabbir (@sabbyinthelab) i rather eat a whole bus tire than write a cover letter for a job

"Anyway, that's why they're so obedient. They're highly trained military professionals. They'll march if you order them to, and the one on the left will play The Last Post on the cornet. Lovely cats. Just don't give them tuna. Terrified of the stuff, for some reason."

"These two were being trained by the army as mine-sniffing cats before I rescued them. They were rubbish at it. Couldn't tell the difference between TNT and tuna. If I hadn't adopted them, they were going to be trained to use a parachute and used to deliver coded messages."

Advertising to the world that the US has a critical vulnerability to winter.

Nope. I don't think anyone noticed when I left Twitter, FB or Insta either.

In thirty years time every corner shop will have stickers on the tobacco cabinet saying "You must be over 48 to buy tobacco products. Challenge 60 - if we think you look under 60, we will ask for proof of age ID". 45 year olds will have spent their lives trying to get their dad to buy them fags.

Why do the Japanese like their buns askew (2026)

ME: [wincing, covering up Starmer's ears] sorry, do you mind not talking about politics around Keir? He doesn't know about scary things like nuclear war or poverty or Peter Mandelson and we'd like to maintain his innocence for a bit longer

KEIR: my father was a drill bit

ME: that's right Keir!

When we have an ongoing cost of living crisis, a housing crisis, a long-term economic crisis caused by the US war in Iran and a govt unable to fund basic public services, they want to sink half a billion on tech that, if it worked, is deliberately designed to cause mass unemployment.

If you step back, it is truly extraordinary that so many people went to such great lengths and broke so many conventions and risked their political careers and the only outcome of all these efforts and risks was appointing a washed-up old spinner to an ambassadorial post

Not for the first time, Starmer is emulating Boris Johnson. Previously, it was repeated u-turns on obviously unsustainable policies. This time, it's the pattern of: gross incompetence, then lying about it, then lying about lying about it.

What Starmer is asking us to believe is that the one person determined to push through Mandelson's appointment, against all advice, was actually Olly Robbins, while Starmer and Lammy were so disengaged that they never once even checked in on the process to see how it was going.

This is excellent

I fucking resent the idea that my life, as a disabled person, is considered a "cost", yet this bullshit is an "investment".

How many more people are going to have to resign for Keir Starmer's decision to ignore the advice of every single person who told him not to appoint Peter Mandelson?

The real scandal of the asylum system is the cruelty & incompetence which 1000s of people endure every day but which rarely gets spotlighted at the top of the BBC News site.

Dan here nails much of what makes me uncomfortable about the BBC’s “fake gay refugees” story but here’s a few more points 1/

"Couch-fucking imbecile attempts theological debate with the actual Pope" is yet another thing my degree in American History and Politics did not prepare me for.

Yeah, this looks like an offer of payment in exchange for work and if you don't want to do the work it's completely reasonable to turn down the offer. I see that writers are nominated in secret for this 'prize' so the first DeWitt would have known about it was when she was told she had won.

Legal advisers help migrants pose as gay to get asylum, undercover BBC investigation finds The BBC exposes a shadow industry charging migrants thousands of pounds to help them cheat the asylum system.

Disgusting reporting by BBC using a tiny number of cases to suggest widespread abuse of a system which routinely denies LGBTQIA+ individuals asylum and forces them back into environments of persecution. This article massively distorts the reality of the situation. 1/
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I'm curious to know: is the problem of shit couriers/delivery companies a particularly UK problem or does everywhere suffer them? (Just had a package dumped outside my front door for the second day in a row, and I won't be home for hours so there's a good chance it won't be there when I get back.)

Starting now - @nigella.bsky.social answers FT readers' questions about practical, easy, everyday cooking... for example, what to do with 500g of minke whale. as.ft.com/r/c97b3692-4...

Every reference to 'welfare' ever should have 'including pensions' or 'excluding pensions' in parentheses next to the word.

All interviewers/articles should clarify at first use whether the word includes or excludes. Interviews should be stopped if unclear.

Because frankly it's getting tedious.

I have similar conversations with myself on this (I'm just up the Link Road). I have concluded that it would, on balance, be a good thing to be close to a pen shop because I could just buy a bottle of ink without feeling the need to bump the order up to get free postage.

Guardian online headline: Middle East crisis live: US-sanctioned ships pass through strait of Hormuz with France and UK to chair talks on Friday

An annoying aspect of the English language is that "sanction" can mean 'approved' or it can mean 'penalised'. Thus, I have no way of knowing from this headline if ships are passing through Hormuz despite being US-sanctioned or because of it.

"How was your journey?"

"Not very sexy."

"Right. Well, I guess that's the small talk over. So... what makes you think you're the best candidate for this job?"

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.

Odd how the minor administrative errors always seem to produce the same results.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

of all the things Starmer did not do, proportional representation is at the top of my list