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Alasdair Pettinger

@bulldozia.com

Words | history | sounds. Author, editor, archivist. Autistic. Latchy student of Gàidhlig, Cymraeg, Kreyòl & stringed instruments. Book: Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846. Researching revolutionary slogans. North Pembrokeshire. www.bulldozia.com

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Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · last wk.

Orwell reckoned that Britain needed the Empire to maintain its standard of living; without it 'England [would be] a cold & unimportant little island where we should all have to ... live mainly on herrings and potatoes'. Hugh MacDiarmid, writing from Shetland: 'Don't threaten me with a good time.'

'In *The Road to Wigan Pier*, Mr George Orwell twits anti-Imperialists and tells them that the British standard of living depends upon the retention of the Empire. "The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left-winger wants."'This book, however, is written by one who lives on a colder and far smaller and infinitely less important island than the United Kingdom would then be, and on just the fare Mr. Orwell indicates, and finds life very tolerable indeed (much more tolerable than he would find it almost anywhere else in Scotland or England), and who therefore views the possibility (or, as he regards it, the inevitability) of the reduction of Scotland and England to the condition indicated with complete equanimity, to say the least of it....'
Mar Hicks@histoftech.bsky.social · last wk.

For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town.

Plashing Vole@plashingvole.bsky.social · 2w ago

Private Eye tells me that How Green Was My Valley is one of Andy Burnham’s favourite books. Oh dear. I write a PhD on 1930s Welsh mining novels, including a whole chapter on Llewellyn’s work. I even read the terrible sequels. It really, really isn’t a story of working-class solidarity etc.

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 2w ago

They should make a film of Their Eyes Were Watching God. But set it in Brooklyn, and the main character has three boyfriends at the same time rather than sequentially. The director could even play one of them.

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 2w ago

The speed test: 'one of the officers raises the back wheel of the bike and spins the pedals, causing the bike’s computer and rear wheel sensor to purportedly record a speed of 47kph'. road.cc/ebiketips/ne...

Police to stop using “bogus” e-bike speed test as charges against delivery cyclist who had £6,000 cargo bike seized and destroyed are dropped | electric bike reviews, buying advice and news - ebiketip...

West Midlands Police is exploring alternative methods of spotting illegal e-motorbike use after the force apologised for seizing and destroying a legal e-cargo bike hired by a delivery cyclist as part...

road.cc

Anthony Barnett@anthonybarnett.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thread on Burnham. He has drawn a historic line on 40 years of Thatcherism, New Labour efforts to humanise it and Brexit’s lung at ‘Thatcherism in one country’. Political centralisation and economic privatisation as he put it in a neat phrase. It means that

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 3w ago

'This article follows the bicycle journeys of Fanny Bullock and William Hunter Workman as they cycled through the imperial spaces of Algeria, Sri Lanka, and India between 1894 and 1899': www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Empires Awheel: Fanny Bullock Workman, American Transimperial Travel, and Temporal Fantasies of European Empire | Modern American History | Cambridge Core

Empires Awheel: Fanny Bullock Workman, American Transimperial Travel, and Temporal Fantasies of European Empire

cambridge.org

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 3w ago

'Filming the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara amounted to "complicity with the illegal occupation of Western Sahara," .... [and] disregards international law and the rights of the Sahrawi people.' www.spsrasd.info/en/2026/07/0...

Calls to boycott Christopher Nolan's film over filming in occupied Dakhla | Sahara Press Service (SPS)

Paris (France), July 6, 2026 (SPS) – International media outlets from Europe and elsewhere have highlighted the controversy surrounding the filming of scenes from American director Christopher Nolan's...

spsrasd.info

Politics Theory Other@poltheoryother.bsky.social · 3w ago

The England fans are to blame. They were given a perfectly serviceable New Order song with some nice Italo piano and John Barnes rapping over the top. What do the estate agents dressed as crusaders choose to sing? Wonderwall and Three Lions.

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 3w ago

'Mikey Shulman, the CEO and founder of Suno, said on a podcast last year that he believes the “majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”'

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 3w ago

Scoop: The AI music generator Suno was hacked. Hacker shared source code that shows how the tool was made and part of the music and podcasts that were scraped to create it. Decades worth of music, lyrics, and podcasts from YouTube, Deezer, Genius & more www.404media.co/hack-reveals...

# youtube_nusic: ~l.5h runtine # 113,879 hours of youtube_rusic 12,287 hours of youtube_rusic_lyrics 16,843 hours of youtube_rusic_lyrics_for genius_hg: -1.3h runting 17,615 hours of genius_hq 41, 544 hours of genius_hq lyrics 17,387 hours of genius ha_lyrics_ foreign freesound: -B.2h runting 410 hours of freesound # insip: -B.2h runtine 19,514 hours of insip # jamendo: ~B.1h runtine 3,726 hours of janendo * ponds_music: ~1.1h runtine # 62,117 hours of ponds_music # deezer: -8. 5h runtine 12,287 hours of deezer 10,175 hours of deezer_lyrics 6,699 hours of deezer_lyrics_foreign * ytn_tagged: ~2h runtine # 152,162 hours of ytn_ tagged # musescore: -B.1h runtine 183 hours of nusescore_lyrics
LRB Bookshop@londonreviewbookshop.co.uk · last mo.

the gents were here all last month taking photographs of everything and measurements. nice lads but all patently hard as nails. they are even, in what i think is a lovely touch, retaining some of our errors in alphabetisation - so ian mcewan's "sweet tooth" will be shelved next to adam mars-jones

Association for Scottish Literature@asls.org.uk · last mo.

Colin Bramwell’s FOWER PESSOAS has won the 2025 Duas Leabhair na Gàidhealtacht / Highland Book Prize “Colin Bramwell puts all four of [Fernando] Pessoa’s heteronyms into a present-day Scots-language vernacular, & so creates a parochial Pessoa for our own times” www.highlandbookprize.org.uk/winner/

Winner - The Highland Book Prize | Duais Leabhair na Gàidhealtachd

‘Bold and Brilliant’, Fower Pessoas wins the 2025 Highland Book Prize Fower Pessoas by Colin Bramwell is the winner of the 2025 Highland Book Prize. Published by Carcanet, Fower Pessoas is a bold reim...

highlandbookprize.org.uk

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 2mo ago

In the Search Room at Manchester Central Library, scrolling through newspaper pages from 1792. It is quiet, cool, sprayed with dappled light from St Peter's Square. On the otherwise bare walls, a large black & white photograph of the Buzzcocks.

Alasdair Pettinger@bulldozia.com · 2mo ago

The article explains why people are angry about data centres. The picture, I guess, is there to suggest how you get rid of them. www.commonweal.scot/articles/mag...

Why you should Get to grips with data centre politics — Common Weal

The backlash against data centres is only just reaching the UK but it would be a big mistake to mistake this for ‘just more Nimbyism’. Unless you understand what is different about this backlash you w...

commonweal.scot