Jim Baxter

I hereby vow never to go to Shake Shack again. Just thought I'd better put that in writing because I think I've done this before.

yikes dude

On October 19, 2001, David Lynch's "MULHOLLAND DRIVE" had a wide theatrical release. Happy 25th anniversary! SILENCIO.

I said to my wife when this came out it sounds like the Tings Tings covering Carter USM. @jimbaxter.bsky.social separately pointed out that the Carter song in question is actually Suppose You Gave a Funeral and Nobody Came. I doubt anyone else noticed or cared tbf.

start your day right

My 9 albums #my9albums my9albums.org/s/d51051c58e9f

After the Green Party's "Zionism is Racism" vote, the Leader of Haringey Council, controlled by the Greens, wrote to some Synagogues in the borough to "reassure" them. I want to show you Highgate Synagogue's reply. I believe it is worth reading in its entirety. www.jewishnews.co.uk/synagogue-re...

Seems like it would be nice if the UK had a) a progressive, environmentally-focused party (non-racist) and b) a fiscally responsible centre-right party (non-insane). Too much to hope for, obviously.

re "Zionism is racism" - it's a cornerstone of British equality law that discrimination need not be intentional for it to be discriminatory I'm not making *legal* claims about the Green Party motion - but a policy that would render the vast majority of Jews as personae non gratae is flatly racist

Although it feels like I am shouting into the void about this sometimes, I want to share some further thoughts on the “Zionism is Racism” motion which the Green Party is due to debate in the next 16 hours. Just to address various points which I think people in general should know. A thread:

The pope says "normal island" every time something happens in Britain even if it is happening in loads of other countries as well

History is complicated. Last year, I learnt my grandmother's story. She was smuggled out of Berlin in 1936 as an unaccompanied teenager, to British Palestine. There was nowhere else for her to go. Six years later, both her parents were killed by the Nazis www.newstatesman.com/world/europe...

I need to write a thread about this. If you don't like it, feel free to block me. But I hope at least some of you will listen. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

‘This is playing into his hands’/‘this will allow him to play the martyr card’/‘this will help with his fundraising’ are all really bad takes. Criminals should be arrested and charged with crimes.

Obviously going to regret this when Claude starts a nuclear war on Monday.

The sausage was delivered safely.

Why are Gen Z more anxious and less workplace ready? It’s a mystery.

Recent discussions of "longtermism" remind me that the dissertation I never wrote for the PhD I never got in philosophy was going to defend the thesis that, to put it very simply, epistemic humility ought to be at the center of any naturalistic ethics.

My favourite thing to see on here (and unfortunately I need to stress I'm not being sarcastic or cynical) is when someone puts forward a view, someone else offers a counterargument, and the original person recalibrates their view in response. An advance has been made.

I created this slide, for our internal training on AI, on when it's fine to use it and when you should be worried. Sadly, a lot of the people I see using it still fall into the bottom row.

Both of you are correct.

Block me

New PISA data out England is now top ten in all three areas (reading, maths, science) and the second highest performing country outside of east Asia (after Estonia). This is a huge public policy success.

Take That might have struggled to take this version to number 3.

Well, Reacher is really in a jam here. I don’t see how he can get out of this one. I mean, all those guys are surrounding him with guns. How could he— … Ah yes. Punching everyone. Of course.

I'm sorry I left your poncho on Alderaan.

On the argument that Britain doing anything about climate change is futile because we're so small.

1/25

Happy birthday to Elizabeth Fraser. Here are Cocteau Twins appearing as This Mortal Coil to perform Song to the Siren on Loose Talk in 1983

A very happy 80th birthday to the Kraftwerk founder Ralf Hütter Born this day 20th Aug 1946

Chlorine is eating Sarah's hands.

So many people in this wretched affair are incapable of registering the idea that the black people involved are in fact real people, rather than being rhetorical props for whatever unrelated point they wish to make.

This website will never be bettered in terms of the ability of such a small userbase to become angry with you for so many different, contradictory reasons.

This is amazing to me. People putting their heart and soul into art and not even being allowed to know how many people have seen it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO RON! 🥳

16

an unfathomable amount of stuff has got better over the last 40 years - hell, even over the *last 15* - and anyone convinced it hasn't does not remember or know what things were like 15 or 40 years ago.

I wrote about how the young Andy Burnham's admiration for Philip Larkin was all part of his grand plan to rule the UK

This is a genuinely thoughtful critique of Burnham's speech from @jonathansimons.bsky.social jonathansimons.substack.com/p/what-i-did...

AB, a 🧵