Public Universal Friend
@jamesinlimbo.bsky.social
Do not fold, bend, mutilate, or spindle.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
ProTEct truSTed LocAL nEWS
This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.
This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.
Another datapoint for @jim.londoncentric.media's list of misleading Reach headlines:
"Alert for UK households buying Cathedral City cheese at M&S or Tesco"
The "alert" is that... other cheeses came out ahead in an independent taste test.
www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/sho...
"Alert for UK households buying Cathedral City cheese at M&S or Tesco"
The "alert" is that... other cheeses came out ahead in an independent taste test.
www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/sho...
Alert for UK households buying Cathedral City cheese at M&S or Tesco
A taste test has revealed Cathedral City is actually outscored by other varieties
www.birminghammail.co.uk
December 19, 2025 at 1:26 PM
ProTEct truSTed LocAL nEWS
This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.
This isn't even designed to wind people up and hope they share it. It's just an exploitation of Birmingham Live's privileged position on Google Discover/Apple News. The whole point is to deceive people into clicking. An industry built on total contempt for its audience.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
I read somewhere that the secret key to postwar British history is that in any incident, meeting, whatever, there’s a high chance that most participants are a bit tipsy and someone round the table is absolutely steaming drunk.
Happy 79th anniversary to this diary entry from Evelyn Waugh, in which he drinks enough to make you wonder how he lived for a further 19 years:
December 19, 2025 at 10:19 AM
I read somewhere that the secret key to postwar British history is that in any incident, meeting, whatever, there’s a high chance that most participants are a bit tipsy and someone round the table is absolutely steaming drunk.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
"Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres"
Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly #GothicAdvent
Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly #GothicAdvent
December 19, 2025 at 8:57 AM
"Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres"
Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly #GothicAdvent
Jerome K. Jerome, 1891 #PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly #GothicAdvent
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
This is going to be such a problem for academics of the future. I got so much good gear from the Conservative Party Archive in the Bod in Oxford. But there’ll be no such rich pickings going forward.
The Covid Inquiry revealed that there were ‘substantive discussions’ of important policy decisions via texts.
Frequent use of WhatsApp undermines transparency, and decreases the quality of decisions.
By @benworthy.bsky.social & @mrosenbaum.bsky.social
Frequent use of WhatsApp undermines transparency, and decreases the quality of decisions.
By @benworthy.bsky.social & @mrosenbaum.bsky.social
Government by WhatsApp? Covid, Transparency and Government by Text
The Covid Inquiry revealed that there were ‘substantive discussions’ of important policy decisions through texts and messages. Is this ever acceptable?
politicalquarterly.org.uk
December 17, 2025 at 4:33 PM
This is going to be such a problem for academics of the future. I got so much good gear from the Conservative Party Archive in the Bod in Oxford. But there’ll be no such rich pickings going forward.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
"Damn it all, I know he was in the Crimea, but he’s no idea what a real war’s like."
The great detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers died 17 December 1957.
thelionandunicorn.com/2020/04/04/i...
The great detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers died 17 December 1957.
thelionandunicorn.com/2020/04/04/i...
Imperial fiction: Golden Age detection 2
ALWYN TURNER reads some stories about Lord Peter Wimsey.
thelionandunicorn.com
December 17, 2025 at 8:25 AM
"Damn it all, I know he was in the Crimea, but he’s no idea what a real war’s like."
The great detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers died 17 December 1957.
thelionandunicorn.com/2020/04/04/i...
The great detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers died 17 December 1957.
thelionandunicorn.com/2020/04/04/i...
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
There's only problem. This has just gone out to news outlets from the police. Journalists make mistakes (I do!), a big lie is harder to spot... but it's hard to conclude British journalism aggregation isn't rotten to the core. I think what's really bleak is that *someone else* did die in the canal.
December 17, 2025 at 12:08 PM
There's only problem. This has just gone out to news outlets from the police. Journalists make mistakes (I do!), a big lie is harder to spot... but it's hard to conclude British journalism aggregation isn't rotten to the core. I think what's really bleak is that *someone else* did die in the canal.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
Cat 2 - 0 Christmas Tree
December 16, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Cat 2 - 0 Christmas Tree
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
RETVRN.
Today is the 55th anniversary of the official opening of the silliest pub the world ever saw, the Windsock in Dunstable
December 15, 2025 at 1:03 PM
RETVRN.
Not a Dad, but I did just have to tell my girlfriend that I'd come home with two new cheeses that I'd impulse bought in Asda (in addition to the three already in the Christmas order).
Overheard in the supermarket. Two teenagers.
1: 'Where's Dad?'
2 (with ineffable weariness): 'In the cheese aisle, having the time of his life.'
1: 'Where's Dad?'
2 (with ineffable weariness): 'In the cheese aisle, having the time of his life.'
December 15, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Not a Dad, but I did just have to tell my girlfriend that I'd come home with two new cheeses that I'd impulse bought in Asda (in addition to the three already in the Christmas order).
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
December 14, 2025 at 5:29 PM
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
old twitter was like a place in interwar berlin, paris, or shanghai people have romantic memories about in spite of witnessing knife fights between prostitutes daily and heroin junkies overdosing
My pleases-nobody sense of Return To Twitter Discourse is that the place can never return to what it was, and can never return to the idealized past version we imagine either, nor can that idealized past version be constructed anywhere else because it was always romantic self-regarding bullshit
December 15, 2025 at 5:16 AM
old twitter was like a place in interwar berlin, paris, or shanghai people have romantic memories about in spite of witnessing knife fights between prostitutes daily and heroin junkies overdosing
Much gratitude to Mr Thomas, my Year 6 teacher, thanks to whom the Flying Pickets and Jonah Lewie are core parts of the Christmas musical canon.
December 13, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Much gratitude to Mr Thomas, my Year 6 teacher, thanks to whom the Flying Pickets and Jonah Lewie are core parts of the Christmas musical canon.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
One of my big bugbears -- the way Spotify playlists have, in just a handful of years, replaced British Xmas music (leery boozed-up Brummies with ridiculous facial hair) with American Xmas music (cardigans and expensive dentistry).
The sudden cratering in value of Merry Xmas Everybody in place of smarmy Perry Como crap is seriously making the world worse
December 13, 2025 at 2:07 PM
One of my big bugbears -- the way Spotify playlists have, in just a handful of years, replaced British Xmas music (leery boozed-up Brummies with ridiculous facial hair) with American Xmas music (cardigans and expensive dentistry).
Courtesy of - where else - Facebook.
December 13, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Courtesy of - where else - Facebook.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
He's not, because the processing of Santa Claus's own "naughty or nice" data is necessary for the performance of a task carried out by Santa as a competent authority. (DPA 2018 s35(2))
he's making a list
he's checking it twice
gonna find out who's naughty or nice
santa claus is in contravention of the data protection act (2018)
he's checking it twice
gonna find out who's naughty or nice
santa claus is in contravention of the data protection act (2018)
December 13, 2025 at 8:57 AM
He's not, because the processing of Santa Claus's own "naughty or nice" data is necessary for the performance of a task carried out by Santa as a competent authority. (DPA 2018 s35(2))
Good for Ince - but it also demonstrates the foolishness of the BBC's policy of requiring non-news presenters to be 'impartial'. Genuinely interesting and creative people are going to have and express views on controversial topics!
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
December 13, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Good for Ince - but it also demonstrates the foolishness of the BBC's policy of requiring non-news presenters to be 'impartial'. Genuinely interesting and creative people are going to have and express views on controversial topics!
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified
At least 60,000 murdered in Sudanese city, which resembles ‘a slaughterhouse’
Satellite evidence shows extent of paramilitary massacre in El Fasher
www.irishtimes.com
December 13, 2025 at 3:50 AM
So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified
I also know someone who worked in the NHS who would frequently get The Handshake from drug reps. You don't have to believe in masonic conspiracy theories to think that murky stuff goes on at the fringes!
Occurs to me that one aspect of British culture that’s not obvious to outsiders is that in Britain “freemasonry” is mostly understood as a synonym for “police corruption“
Ooooh, this is an interesting bit of breaking London news! The Met police, as of today, will require all officers to declare if they're a member of the freemasons.
December 11, 2025 at 3:49 PM
I also know someone who worked in the NHS who would frequently get The Handshake from drug reps. You don't have to believe in masonic conspiracy theories to think that murky stuff goes on at the fringes!
At some point I will stop beating up on Olivia Nuzzi, but... every quote I see from her book is shockingly badly phrased from a *professional writer*. Ignore the mangled metaphors for a second, and just focus on the eccentric choice of prepositions (e.g. 'fall silent on myself'?)
“I do not wish to be understood, which no one seems to understand.”
This is what’s missing from the book. It is a 300-page meandering navel-gaze. A Joan Didion impression from someone with nothing to say, vaguely offended that readers would *expect* her to have something to say.
This is what’s missing from the book. It is a 300-page meandering navel-gaze. A Joan Didion impression from someone with nothing to say, vaguely offended that readers would *expect* her to have something to say.
December 8, 2025 at 3:38 PM
At some point I will stop beating up on Olivia Nuzzi, but... every quote I see from her book is shockingly badly phrased from a *professional writer*. Ignore the mangled metaphors for a second, and just focus on the eccentric choice of prepositions (e.g. 'fall silent on myself'?)
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
If only there were a cautionary tale about being too eager to accept the apparent time-saving capabilities of new technology.
Aardman Animations will ’embrace AI’ while also being ‘cautious’, says Nick Park
Aardman Animations will ’embrace AI’ while also being ‘cautious’, says Nick Park
Aardman Animations will ’embrace AI’ while also being ‘cautious’, says Nick Park
www.independent.co.uk
December 8, 2025 at 1:05 PM
If only there were a cautionary tale about being too eager to accept the apparent time-saving capabilities of new technology.
Reposted by Public Universal Friend
TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".
December 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque:
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".
"This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".
I wasn't alive in the 1970s, but apparently it was a time when you could have a Christmas song based on a totally gonzo theory of the existence of Jesus Christ.
December 7, 2025 at 3:29 AM
I wasn't alive in the 1970s, but apparently it was a time when you could have a Christmas song based on a totally gonzo theory of the existence of Jesus Christ.
Moral myopia aside, it's wild that a magazine editor can be this incoherent in response to a very obvious line of questioning.
@timmiller.bsky.social: "He's being nominated to HHS Secretary…You had information that you could have shared…and you didn't share anything about him. Why? Did you still love him?"
Olivia Nuzzi: "I don't know how to responsibly handle this on camera." lnk.thebulwark.com/4ozkaz8?utm_...
Olivia Nuzzi: "I don't know how to responsibly handle this on camera." lnk.thebulwark.com/4ozkaz8?utm_...
December 4, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Moral myopia aside, it's wild that a magazine editor can be this incoherent in response to a very obvious line of questioning.