PumpkinSpider
banner
pumpkinspider.bsky.social
PumpkinSpider
@pumpkinspider.bsky.social
My opinions are my own. Lots of sharing content because others are way more clever and funny and interesting than me.
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
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".
December 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
15 million Americans are going to lose their health care.
October 31, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
“The message from Caerphilly is very clear to me: One-third of the vote is not enough to get Reform elected, if the other two-thirds get their act together.”
🗡️ NEW Sunday School: Well Plaid!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Caerphilly result - what it means; what it doesn't
🌹 Lucy Powell is elected deputy Labour leader
☠️ Celebrity Traitors; or Why Clever Folks Can Be Total Idiots
😂 Kenny & Alex get the giggles.

🍊 open.spotify.com/episode/6A0r...

🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/q...
Sunday School: Well Plaid
Podcast Episode · Quiet Riot · 26/10/2025 · 58m
podcasts.apple.com
October 26, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
A man called Jeff invented this, and he has a whole story behind the 'inspiration' for this notepad, sorry productivity system, which involves a fisherman and banker

How do you not feel embarrassed that you've just reinvented a notepad?
October 17, 2025 at 8:38 AM
All these tributes to the wonderful Patricia Routledge and not one mention of the wonderful Kitty, as seen on the wonderful Victoria Wood show.

youtu.be/bSYZSFiLKJY?...
Kitty 3 - with Patricia Routledge - BBC
YouTube video by maxinebendix
youtu.be
October 3, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Dear @apnews.com

The republicans control congress. Democrats did not vote down anything. If the GOP wanted to fund the government, they could have changed the rules to pass a CR with a simple majority like they did 11 days ago to approve 48 trump appointees at once.

Fix your headline.
October 1, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Medieval London church is balanced 45 feet above ground in 'never before seen feat of engineering'... as skyscraper is built

Glasgow: 'Hold my beer...'
September 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
I can’t remember who said it but “it’s bit like saying you don’t have to be a vegetarian to be in the Green Party and you don’t. But you do have to be comfortable hanging out with vegetarians.” Same here you may not be a racist but you sure are happy to hang out with them.
September 16, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Bluesky isn’t perfect but at least its owner isn’t demanding violent insurrection in the UK from thousands of miles away
September 14, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Remembering MN house speaker Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their beloved dog Gilbert. Murdered in June at their home by a rightwing Trump-voting evangelist, who also shot another MN lawmaker and his wife at THEIR home, 9 and 8 times, respectively (miraculously, they survived).
September 11, 2025 at 5:50 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Charlie Kirk was, amongst other things, extremely homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic and Islamophobic.

Assorted commentators "he had varied interests"
September 10, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
I don't think it is callous of me to observe that it is weird to see the PM of the UK, the leader of the Opposition of the UK, and the ex UK PM all putting out solemn and devastated tweets about the death of a podcaster who is only a big name if you're constantly on Twitter
September 10, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
We should honour this guys wishes by talking more about Trump being on the Epstein list.
September 11, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
I remember being taught about good Germans and bad Germans, the brave few who resisted the rise of fascism in the 1930s and the masses who enabled it. Now I wonder if there weren’t a huge contingent desperate to stop it but without any sense of how to do that.
September 7, 2025 at 5:20 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
The BBC has always bent towards the status quo. But since Brexit it’s top journalists - who like Mason & Kuenssberg think they’re celebrities - have fawned over the protagonists of that ‘exciting story’: the rise of hard right populism. They’ve stopped being journalists & become celebrants.
I have never been so disappointed in a BBC piece. Breathless admiration is, as far as I knew, not the role of the BBC’s political editor when describing a party political conference. Description+detail yes, rigorous examination of the conference content, yes. This, absolutely no, in my opinion.
Chris Mason: Reform conference shows party's growing ambition like never before
The conference feels like that of a big party - but retains the insurgency vibe that the party is seeking to channel.
www.bbc.co.uk
September 7, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
www.theatlantic.com
September 6, 2025 at 6:31 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Just to expand a little. Suddenly in the US there are a large number of people who find themselves with arbitrary power over many others but no experience or training in how to use that power. The results are cruelty, brutality and the demonisation of the vulnerable and marginalised.
Had this nagging feeling that what’s going on in the US had a familiar tone. I think I’ve got it. The entire US has been turned into a colossal version of Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanfor...
Stanford prison experiment - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
September 4, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Feeling seen by the Oxford Uni job portal
September 4, 2025 at 9:14 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
August 20, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
The absolute cream turnip of hypocrites.
August 18, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
😂
August 11, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Shoutout to the individual I saw on the way to friends tonight who was driving an impeccable wine-red convertible with the top down and a goose in the passenger seat wearing a colour-coordinated bow tie. I hope you had a great night.
August 6, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
Many more insightful and thoughtful things have already been said about the Online Safety Act, but one thing that strikes me as particularly weird is the government, within a very short space of time, telling 16-17 year olds “You’re old enough to vote, but not old enough to look at boobs online.”
August 2, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by PumpkinSpider
We are very far over the cliff here folks
August 1, 2025 at 2:02 AM