Hello, I haven't been on here much in 2025. I've been busy working on some new pronouns. Still a work in progress but I'm pretty happy with them so far. 🏳️‍⚧️

Archive front page of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle with the headline "Incredible Welcome for the President". Above the headline is the subhead "'Howay the Lads' he tells 20,000 cheering fans"

In honour of Jimmy Carter's passing let me be the Newcastle-aligned guy to remind everyone that they love him in Newcastle-upon-Tyne because he learned the local dialect to cheer on their team

This is an example of my overarching theory of social media interactions, which I summarize as "people be saying things". The point is not to be particularly insightful, but to say something, anything, to confirm their presence

My cynical take on this is people read only enough to justify blasting out their pre-loaded opinion on any given topic. If the caveats that make that opinion moot come after the trigger words, they may as well not exist for some people

This is super impressive. Will try and share with you some of my Timberborn stuff when I get the chance!

I am trying to think of an analog in America for Mr. blobby, and the closest I can get is "what if the Philadelphia Phanatic said "Philadelphia" and was on national television constantly, and had a hit number one Christmas song that was described as "the worst song of all time." That is a quote.

Did popular music taste really shift that much in just 3 years? Did they alienate old fans but pick up new ones? Were they just so big that fans lost all critical reflection? What was the deal there?

The idea that the people who loved "I love my baby I doo-oo-oo" are the same people going nuts for "there's a hippopotamus and he wants to invite you for crumpets *sitar solo*" is weird to me

Early 60s Beatles and late 60s Beatles are so different stylistically they may as well be a different band. And you sometimes see people talk about that shift in style, but nobody ever talks about how that impacted (or rather, didn't impact) their popularity

Related to this, there's something I really don't get about the Beatles

Well surely if it happened in your dream, it already is your own work?

It is crazy to me that a person I honestly believe may be the greatest songwriter alive only has 2,500 monthly listeners on Spotify (which is already double what he had the last 2 years!)

Screenshot from a 2022 Spotify wrapped that says: My top artist: Kiran Leonard Minutes listened: 7,959 Top 0.05% of listeners

Screenshot from a 2023 Spotify wrapped that says: Say hello to your top artist, Kiran Leonard You're a top 0.05% fan and you spent 5,237 minutes together

Screenshot from a 2024 Spotify wrapped that shows the Spotify profile image of Kiran Leonard and says: You're a top 0.05% fan and you spent 2,686 minutes together. You overachiever.

Three years in a row, despite gradually finding more and more other artists to listen to. If I can convince my followers here to try anything: please try listening to Kiran Leonard.

I'm not really a fan of calling them skeets but I might be convinced to change my mind if we call quote-skeets squeets

Fortunately as per the new Bluesky etiquette we're not following people just because it feels like we should. If you annoy me for even half a second you're out

The one downside of non-algorithmic feeds is it gives the relentless self-boosters a lot of power to take over your feed. Just had to unfollow Toderian after seeing a Toderian repost of a Toderian quote-post of a Toderian post.

We’re helping KLABU unlock access to sports for refugees! Our latest "flat-packed" sports clubhouse is built within a shipping container, designed to serve as a community space in refugee camps worldwide.🏅🌍