I've just discovered Varena, a divine Lithuanian treat that's like cheesecake minus the biscuit base but coated with chocolate instead. Did I mention how delicious it is. So delicious that Tunnock's teacakes (even dark chocolate ones)? Pfft. And yes I am on a diet SHUT UP
“Everything we believe about our birdsong isn’t true. I love the fact that Donald Duck is actually a female – he quacks like a female. Most people don’t realise that the female mallards quack and the males don’t.”
🦆
sacrilège
Wondering if the California bear costume car insurance scam story is preamble for a Cocaine Bear sequel
"A rational and independent examination of the facts tells us that, with alternatives available—even UK ones—the case to terminate the Palantir contract is resounding," writes @kamranabbasi.bsky.social in this Editor's Choice
www.bmj.com/content/393/...
If Mandelson wasn't the ideal 'Trump whisperer' some people seem to believe, and Starmer did have to press Trump quite hard to accept him as the UK's ambassador, what was used as persuasive leverage? Because it can't have been Mandelson's spotless security vetting clearance
"Lord Mandelson was already a controversial pick for the role, with The Independent revealing that Donald Trump was minded to reject his credentials in January after the inauguration because of security concerns over his business links with Beijing. At the time, sources close to the US president suggested that he would struggle to share confidential information with the Labour peer because of the perceived problems. But after a massive diplomatic push, Sir Keir succeeded in getting President Trump to accept Lord Mandelson because he wanted the architect of New Labour, known by many as the “Prince of Darkness”, to be responsible for the UK’s most important diplomatic relationship." Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mandelson-epstein-starmer-us-ambassador-trump-b2824777.html
The Indy's Political editor David Maddox had some interesting things to say about this (link in the alt) ⤵️
👏
Oooh
Anna Jones' award winning vegetarian The Modern Cook's Year
Alan Murchison's book The Cycling Chef: Recipes for Getting Lean and Fuelling the Machine - so a bit diet themed, come on
Jackie Kearney's Vegan Street Food just looks so edible...
Latest charity shop finds! All are cookery books* this time and just £2 total for the lot 🥳
*I'm on a diet, shut up
It's been pretty obvious for quite a while. So what's really embarrassing is that Alzheimer’s Research UK (and others not quoted in the article) are having such difficulty digesting it?
Header image from Alistair's website showing his DoxBox trustbot from 2019, accompanied by a figure dressed as a puppet in a kimono.
Deeply saddened to hear of the passing of the artist Alistair Gentry. A true gent and a creative fighter for the marginalised. See examples of his work here alistairgentry.net and donate to help with funeral costs here www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding... RIP comrade ✊
Berklee College of Music students are petitioning for the school’s ‘AI music in songwriting’ class to be dropped.
“AI models like Chat GPT that are being promoted by the Berklee Songwriting Department steal the art of 10's of 1000's of artists and rot the essence of the industry…”
1/2
Are they still finger lickin' good tho
Mais according to the OED, oui
Don't blame us - it originates in Louisiana French
'Labour MP Stella Creasy said: “It’s frankly scandalous that while patients wait for operations, taxpayer money is leaking out to offshore tax havens and the pockets of private equity companies through these excessive profits.'
But why tackle the issue when you can hassle junior doctors instead
Dave Gahan wins
And I've just informed my partner about his curve of happiness
"But a Guardian investigation has shown the money isn’t necessarily real, the datacentres may not be new, the jobs are unaccounted for – and the supercomputer site 12 miles north of London is still a scaffolding yard."
“Is it sillier to ask someone to imaginatively inhabit the perspective of a different species for an hour, or to continue running governance systems that have driven a 70% collapse in wildlife populations in 50 years?”
[Also, take that Nagel 😉]
Image of Sam Altman (blue suit, red tie and backdrop) with trademark perplexed expression on his face and empty hands held before him. It's part of a screengrab, sitting above a caption saying the photo was made by Kylie Cooper for Reuters at "a US infrastructure summit in Washington DC" in March 2026, and a short paragraph from the article in illustrates, which says “But that hasn’t stopped ministers from jumping fully aboard the AI hype train,” said Hegarty. “In January 2025, then-tech secretary, Peter Kyle, said a new supercomputer in Essex would be ‘the largest UK sovereign AI datacentre’ by the end of 2026 and ‘a fresh start for our economy and for working people’. Instead, a year later the ‘supercomputer’ was still a scaffolding yard.”
Sam Altman: "Is this a phantom investment I see before me?"
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
“Big tech companies artificially inflate datacentres’ job creation and economic impact to please governments like the British one, which are desperate to claim they are making the economy grow.”
Not sure how I missed this news, or why it's not a massive scandal
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
"If students [are taught] about the complexities of contemp' genomics concepts [as means] of refuting genetic essentialism, [it helps them] understand that racial disparities are not unreal, unimportant, or the product of genes. Rather, they are socially constructed."
H/T @kris-inwood.bsky.social
It's not important, but if you find out by chance in the research process I'd love to know
