Ed Stern
@edstern.bsky.social
Basic Prog Brit Woke Remoaner Centrist Dad.
He/Him, Bi, ADHD, the usual.
Former Splash Damage game dev.
Full-Stack Narrative Designer/Game Writer available for hire:
https://www.sternword.co.uk/
He/Him, Bi, ADHD, the usual.
Former Splash Damage game dev.
Full-Stack Narrative Designer/Game Writer available for hire:
https://www.sternword.co.uk/
Reposted by Ed Stern
An absolute bloodbath, rivalling the Israeli massacre of Gaza, but the western left turned its eyes away from it.
⚡️Reports indicate Iran may have killed over 30,000 protesters.
Iran May Have Killed Over 30,000 Protesters in Just Two Days
Time magazine cites sources estimating up to 30,000 fatalities during Iran's January protests, as emergency services struggled with overwhelming casualties.
united24media.com
January 27, 2026 at 6:22 AM
An absolute bloodbath, rivalling the Israeli massacre of Gaza, but the western left turned its eyes away from it.
Reposted by Ed Stern
As public opinion turns, reports from within Mount Doom suggest Orc Lieutenant Gothmog is to be relieved of command and withdrawn from Gondor back to Minas Morgul where he is expected to soon retire.
Sauron hopes this ends the matter and the Fellowship will now go home and stop blowing whistles.
Sauron hopes this ends the matter and the Fellowship will now go home and stop blowing whistles.
January 27, 2026 at 9:54 AM
As public opinion turns, reports from within Mount Doom suggest Orc Lieutenant Gothmog is to be relieved of command and withdrawn from Gondor back to Minas Morgul where he is expected to soon retire.
Sauron hopes this ends the matter and the Fellowship will now go home and stop blowing whistles.
Sauron hopes this ends the matter and the Fellowship will now go home and stop blowing whistles.
Reposted by Ed Stern
Sure, let's ask the Trump regime's murderous masked thugs to come over to Europe and "help with security" - wtf?
🔴 BREAKING - ICE agents to help with security at Winter Olympics in Italy
ICE agents to help with security at Winter Olympics in Italy
Get the latest Breaking News Alerts from France 24 in real time on Facebook and Twitter: @BreakingF24
f24.my
January 27, 2026 at 8:27 AM
Sure, let's ask the Trump regime's murderous masked thugs to come over to Europe and "help with security" - wtf?
Reposted by Ed Stern
Kasamatsu Shirō (Japanese, 1898–1991)
"Into the Woods", 1955.
Woodblock Print, 42.6 × 28.6 cm.
Private Collection.
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt
"Into the Woods", 1955.
Woodblock Print, 42.6 × 28.6 cm.
Private Collection.
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt
January 27, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Kasamatsu Shirō (Japanese, 1898–1991)
"Into the Woods", 1955.
Woodblock Print, 42.6 × 28.6 cm.
Private Collection.
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt
"Into the Woods", 1955.
Woodblock Print, 42.6 × 28.6 cm.
Private Collection.
#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt
Worth clicking in the image.
Those offshore wind farms must be colossal.
Those offshore wind farms must be colossal.
China's vast offshore wind farms show up beautifully in this SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite image produced by Sentinel 1 satelite of the European Space Agency (ESA)
January 27, 2026 at 9:59 AM
Worth clicking in the image.
Those offshore wind farms must be colossal.
Those offshore wind farms must be colossal.
Reposted by Ed Stern
China has tonnes of wind farms, and of particular interest in maritime security, many at sea.
Suggest that the U.S. president isn’t skilled at research or OSINT?
Suggest that the U.S. president isn’t skilled at research or OSINT?
Trump: "There are windmills all over Europe. There are windmills all over the place. And they are losers. One thing I've noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses, and the worse that country is doing. I haven't been able to find any wind farms in China."
January 21, 2026 at 8:32 PM
China has tonnes of wind farms, and of particular interest in maritime security, many at sea.
Suggest that the U.S. president isn’t skilled at research or OSINT?
Suggest that the U.S. president isn’t skilled at research or OSINT?
Reposted by Ed Stern
Fascinating yet tragic story. The Coast Watchers should be better remembered, an impressive and very successful special unit in WW2
22 Jan 1943 // Stores carrier HMAS Patricia Cam, a former minesweeper, was bombed and sunk by a Japanese floatplane north of Drysdale Island off the coast of Arnhem Land while taking supplies, passengers, and new codebooks to coastwatchers based on Marchinbar Island. [1/6]
January 22, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Fascinating yet tragic story. The Coast Watchers should be better remembered, an impressive and very successful special unit in WW2
Reposted by Ed Stern
Wait are you trying to tell me the torment nexus factory makes the torment nexus?
Palantir employees are pressing company leadership over its work for ICE in internal company Slacks obtained by @wired.com
"In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this."
Scoop from @makenakelly.bsky.social
"In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this."
Scoop from @makenakelly.bsky.social
Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti
“In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.
www.wired.com
January 27, 2026 at 7:10 AM
Wait are you trying to tell me the torment nexus factory makes the torment nexus?
Reposted by Ed Stern
It's a cold dark heart that does not laugh at how suddenly everyone's on the dEbAsEmEnT trade, silver has gone batshit, gold is on fire and bitcoin is like
January 26, 2026 at 5:31 PM
It's a cold dark heart that does not laugh at how suddenly everyone's on the dEbAsEmEnT trade, silver has gone batshit, gold is on fire and bitcoin is like
Reposted by Ed Stern
We do know for sure that genAI and LLMs can’t feel. They are a “yes and?” machine designed to be sycophants, the fact that it keeps generating programming behaviours that are beyond the ability to fix of its creators isn’t proof of life. It’s proof the people making it aren’t as smart as they think
January 26, 2026 at 8:37 AM
We do know for sure that genAI and LLMs can’t feel. They are a “yes and?” machine designed to be sycophants, the fact that it keeps generating programming behaviours that are beyond the ability to fix of its creators isn’t proof of life. It’s proof the people making it aren’t as smart as they think
Reposted by Ed Stern
January 24, 2026 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Ed Stern
there are precisely five kinds of posts on bluesky – i'm so smart, i'm so dumb, i'm so mad, i'm so horny, and look at my cute pet – and 4 of them should be banned
January 25, 2026 at 7:40 AM
there are precisely five kinds of posts on bluesky – i'm so smart, i'm so dumb, i'm so mad, i'm so horny, and look at my cute pet – and 4 of them should be banned
Reposted by Ed Stern
Salutary reading for those who persist in claiming that Britain did more than any other nation to free Africans from slavery. 1. Most “Liberated Africans” - 700,000 - were forced into state-supervised indenture. 2. Portugal & France “freed” more Africans in this way than Britain.
From the current issue: “Conceptualizing ‘Liberated Africans’ and Slave Trade Abolition: Government Schemes to Indenture Enslaved People Captured from Slavery, 1800–1920”
by Henry B. Lovejoy (@colorado.edu)
doi.org/10.1093/past...
by Henry B. Lovejoy (@colorado.edu)
doi.org/10.1093/past...
Conceptualizing ‘Liberated Africans’ and Slave Trade Abolition: Government Schemes to Indenture Enslaved People Captured from Slavery, 1800–1920*
Abstract. A new survey of ‘Liberated Africans’ exposes how global calculations of involuntary African indentured labour after 1800 have been significantly
doi.org
January 27, 2026 at 8:11 AM
Salutary reading for those who persist in claiming that Britain did more than any other nation to free Africans from slavery. 1. Most “Liberated Africans” - 700,000 - were forced into state-supervised indenture. 2. Portugal & France “freed” more Africans in this way than Britain.
Reposted by Ed Stern
a lot of commentary on the purge of Zhang Youxia has remarked on how Xi Jinping ruthlessly moved against someone he's literally known since childhood, but have we considered that maybe Zhang was a dick to him as kids and this is just a very long revenge arc?
January 27, 2026 at 4:51 AM
a lot of commentary on the purge of Zhang Youxia has remarked on how Xi Jinping ruthlessly moved against someone he's literally known since childhood, but have we considered that maybe Zhang was a dick to him as kids and this is just a very long revenge arc?
Reposted by Ed Stern
Like, duh. Averaging is what it does.
Researchers found that a text-to-image generator, when linked up with an image-to-text system and instructed to iterate over and over again, eventually converges on “very generic-looking images” they dubbed “visual elevator music.”
futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com/artificial-i...
AI Is Causing Cultural Stagnation, Researchers Find
Generative AI may already be inducing a state of "cultural stagnation," leading to a convergence of generic ideas, a new study has shown.
futurism.com
January 27, 2026 at 8:25 AM
Like, duh. Averaging is what it does.
Reposted by Ed Stern
The south and west of Britain are getting battered, and yet again the film crews of the BBC go to York because a) it looks impressive to those who don't know tris is basically nothing, and b) the large number of warm, and more importantly DRY, pubs just out of shot
January 27, 2026 at 9:00 AM
The south and west of Britain are getting battered, and yet again the film crews of the BBC go to York because a) it looks impressive to those who don't know tris is basically nothing, and b) the large number of warm, and more importantly DRY, pubs just out of shot
Reposted by Ed Stern
Several generations' worth of focusing on the idea that education is something an individual uses to "escape" from a baseline condition of ignorant squalor, rather than something society mobilises for the abolition of ignorant squalor in its entirety, coming home to roost.
Same in the UK, probably getting worse with the disappearance of ‘intellectual’ Tories & Reform’s glorification of pig ignorance. I never know how to articulate this without making the problem worse! (As demonstrated above.)
Here’s hoping the rest of the world sees this and doesn’t hate us all.
January 27, 2026 at 8:56 AM
Several generations' worth of focusing on the idea that education is something an individual uses to "escape" from a baseline condition of ignorant squalor, rather than something society mobilises for the abolition of ignorant squalor in its entirety, coming home to roost.
Reposted by Ed Stern
Today in ‘random shit I just learned’:
January 23, 2026 at 9:14 AM
Today in ‘random shit I just learned’:
Reposted by Ed Stern
Everyone's getting in on the action!
You simply can't get better press coverage than "we've never heard of it until now", thanks Metro! 💜
(thanks @euclidianboxes.bsky.social!)
You simply can't get better press coverage than "we've never heard of it until now", thanks Metro! 💜
(thanks @euclidianboxes.bsky.social!)
January 27, 2026 at 9:28 AM
Everyone's getting in on the action!
You simply can't get better press coverage than "we've never heard of it until now", thanks Metro! 💜
(thanks @euclidianboxes.bsky.social!)
You simply can't get better press coverage than "we've never heard of it until now", thanks Metro! 💜
(thanks @euclidianboxes.bsky.social!)
Reposted by Ed Stern
"I am 5 years old"
Shut it all down. All of it. ICE, DHS, Border Patrol, the entire Republican Party, all the fascist billionaires, X, Tesla, Avelo, and every Democrat who supports them.
It's evil through and through.
Shut it all down. All of it. ICE, DHS, Border Patrol, the entire Republican Party, all the fascist billionaires, X, Tesla, Avelo, and every Democrat who supports them.
It's evil through and through.
January 27, 2026 at 5:46 AM
"I am 5 years old"
Shut it all down. All of it. ICE, DHS, Border Patrol, the entire Republican Party, all the fascist billionaires, X, Tesla, Avelo, and every Democrat who supports them.
It's evil through and through.
Shut it all down. All of it. ICE, DHS, Border Patrol, the entire Republican Party, all the fascist billionaires, X, Tesla, Avelo, and every Democrat who supports them.
It's evil through and through.
Reposted by Ed Stern
If Starmer delivers the UK to Reform this is not going to be good for the UKs fiscal health. Don’t see how the bond markets would like chaotic authoritarianism.
Spot on, as usual, from the FT. Labour MPs should think about what is best for the country, in a turbulent world, where bond markets are restive, Britain’s relative stability is one of its main assets.
Labour’s destructive infighting
Starmer’s move to block a rival will not avoid months of internal plotting
giftarticle.ft.com
January 27, 2026 at 6:46 AM
If Starmer delivers the UK to Reform this is not going to be good for the UKs fiscal health. Don’t see how the bond markets would like chaotic authoritarianism.
Reposted by Ed Stern
Some safety tips for the big storm! Be safe, everybody.
January 25, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Some safety tips for the big storm! Be safe, everybody.
Reposted by Ed Stern
Reminder that British journalists have a weird fetish for Harry Potter because it's a fantasy world where nobody mentions how fucking weird it is that everybody was privately educated in just five schools
January 27, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Reminder that British journalists have a weird fetish for Harry Potter because it's a fantasy world where nobody mentions how fucking weird it is that everybody was privately educated in just five schools
Reposted by Ed Stern
For those outside the UK who may not have seen, we had a reckoning on media regulation 15 years ago, and the media won a decisive victory against meaningful regulation. TL;DR, they were caught hacking the phone of a murdered child, there was an enquiry, but they avoided all the recommendations…
The fundamental problem is that we have no effective regulation of the media here, our public service broadcaster is just very obviously regime media and our major privately run news publications are all owned by billionaires with editorial agendas that distort reality and degrade human rights.
Reading about the rise of Reform while living in the self-immolating US feels like an out of body experience. That anyone outside the US could look at a country collapsing in on itself and say, “Yes, some of that for us please!” is just surreal.
January 27, 2026 at 9:33 AM
For those outside the UK who may not have seen, we had a reckoning on media regulation 15 years ago, and the media won a decisive victory against meaningful regulation. TL;DR, they were caught hacking the phone of a murdered child, there was an enquiry, but they avoided all the recommendations…
Reposted by Ed Stern
The fundamental problem is that we have no effective regulation of the media here, our public service broadcaster is just very obviously regime media and our major privately run news publications are all owned by billionaires with editorial agendas that distort reality and degrade human rights.
Reading about the rise of Reform while living in the self-immolating US feels like an out of body experience. That anyone outside the US could look at a country collapsing in on itself and say, “Yes, some of that for us please!” is just surreal.
January 27, 2026 at 8:50 AM
The fundamental problem is that we have no effective regulation of the media here, our public service broadcaster is just very obviously regime media and our major privately run news publications are all owned by billionaires with editorial agendas that distort reality and degrade human rights.