Ian

Come to our picnic. We've got a bubble machine.

On a quick visit to sign the contract today, what is in the entrance hall used by the pupils? Why, it's the bi and trans pride flags (and, not in the photo, including the pan, asexual, lesbian and a bunch of others...)

Thomas Tuchel began to regret selling his soul in exchange for the Devil guaranteeing that England would be in the 2026 World Cup longer than Germany and the Netherlands...

It's eight weeks to BiCon 2026! A 'by the community, for the community' gathering of people under the bi+ umbrella (attracted to more than one gender, whatever they call their sexual identity) and their friends. 21st-23rd August in Nottingham & online. Sliding scale, trans inclusive for decades.

No, Guardian, it is not possible call Quantum of Solace "underrated". If they'd just filmed the opera that's used as a location for villains to talk, it would have been a much better film.

But yeah, the idea that Grok - fucking Grok - is ever going to turn a profit is hilarious stupidity in a market where the prize for being the runner-up frontier model is losing $20bn and Grok isn't close to even being the runner-up.

Me: "I see Russel T Davies has a new 'gay life' series coming soon. I wonder if it will be another case of the direction, acting and cinematography being great, but the scripts being a pile of biphobic and bi-erasing shit, like Cucumber & It's A Sin..."

The economics of the Star Wars series are even worse than the absolutely terrible physics.

BiCon 2026 bookings now open! When: 21st-23rd August 2026 Where: Nottingham, UK Why: because it's a wonderful weekend of talking and socialising. It's the UK's longest continually running annual LGBTQ+ event for a reason... How: 2026.bicon.org.uk Who: you?

This year's is also in Nottingham: 21st-23rd August. It's non-residential, so you will have to outrage other cleaners though. 2026.bicon.org.uk

The current argument of the British right is that Muslims turned out in "blocs" with "family voting" to cast their ballots for a party led by a gay Jewish man, and this shows that multiculturalism has failed, voting is "sectarian" and we are in a crisis. Hmmmmmm.

A reminder that white nationalism isn't just abhorrent, it's stupid.

Nazi supporting paper says what?

Well, this will be another easy to remember birthday for Andrew, and without having to go to a Pizza Express too.

"Eins, zwei, drei, vier Fünf, sechs, sieben, acht One, two" More meaning than the whole of Bob Dylan's output, and the song is why I can count to four in Japanese.

Today's discovery - Firefox's British English dictionary doesn't know the word 'carabiner'.

I'm trying a new "see how well AI image gen is" test. This time I'm going to ask it to draw a map of the world, and then zoom in to Europe, the UK, Yorkshire and York to see when things start to get hazy. All of these are with the free models using the smart/thinking variants. 1/n

Hey, I know a lot of you use Discord. You need to get on this survey and make it damn clear to them that this would be the absolute wrong direction. The last thing we need is the slop-spewing environment-chewing plagiarism bots invading there, too. discord.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...?

@artcrimeprof.bsky.social Have you seen this - www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

As well as the failed attempt to make it more interesting by adding a fan game show, whoever picks the games it will show has no clue. Final weekend of the regular season: "Let's have a game with no playoff implications whatsoever, where one side will be resting key players..."

Not what everyone else has done with this, but given Keith Moon and John Entwhistle of The Who have both died, I did think that the drummer and bass player in The Beatles are still with us, and the results of Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney joining would be *interesting* either way...

"you're a man" ad hominem "you were born a boy" sunk cost fallacy "you're amab" false dichotomy "you have xy chromosomes" false equivalence "trans people are mentally ill" non sequitur "changing your sex isn't possible" skill issue

NEW BLOGPOST Abolishing trial by jury: why is the government overlooking the obvious? thesecretbarrister.com/2025/12/02/a...

Opportunities to transform nature don’t get much bigger than this! We have the opportunity to conserve 340 acres (138 hectares) of biodiverse countryside surrounding the Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset.

Was the NFT showing of Stalker that had an audience member complaining about the bum ache that resulted during the talk afterwards just in my imagination? Some stunning work, but could do with a fast forward button, eg the driving sequences of Solaris.

My name is Harry Smith. Richer than Percy Bysshe Shelley, I outlived him by decades. He called me the "only truly generous" wealthy person he ever knew. But it's his version of Ozymandias you all know, not mine. At least it now has its own Wikipedia page.

There is a serious business opportunity renting children to people in the passport checking queue for people arriving at London Luton. Rejoin the EU, join Schengen.

Applause - this shit needs stomping out, quickly. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In a decent country, Starmer or the King would have visited an asylum hostel by now.

Favourite film seen in a cinema on opening day (& first showing): Terminator 2. Never seen in a cinema: Tar. I wish there was a DVD with director's & actors' commentaries. Bonus 'seen at film festival before release': tie between Re-Animator, This is Spinal Tap, & Mishima.

Chatting to a (very good) magician after a show, he talked about "chance" in relation to one bit of a most impressive trick. I am still laughing at that: none of the bits were "chance", they were loads of practice and lots of skill.

16% of the UK population was born overseas (21/22 census) 12% of UK prisoners were born overseas Therefore people born overseas are less likely to be in jail than people born in the UK. That should be the headline.

Guess which is getting more money from the govt: * Reducing child poverty spread over a decade * Enabling drivers on the A46 to possibly go around Newark about five minutes faster at a few times a week It's the second one, of course, getting over £650m rather than £500m.