A writer goes in search of her most vicious online troll and finds a middle-class 74-year-old woman who has made more than 120,000 trolling comments on the Daily Mail alone, but sure, it's teenagers who need their online experiences surveilled and censored. Archive link. archive.ph/pPrha

Still a few Friday-only tickets left for this year's SDinGov conference in Edinburgh next month. sdingov.net/programme-20... 15% off for people employed by, or contracted as a freelancer to, a public organisation...

Programme 2026

SDinGov is the premier international community event dedicated to anyone involved in designing and commissioning public services.

sdingov.net

Me (complacently SNP): you know Infantino built his power base by pandering to small and insignificant football associations You (in disbelief):

It is the single worst deliberate change I have ever seen made to a product, and might be what stops me using Microsoft Office after…25+ years? Imbecilic product decision, but just one among *many*.

Heather Burns@heatherburnstech.bsky.social · yesterday

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

My first day at Bristol Yooni, near shat mesel

fesshole 🧻@fesshole.bsky.social · 2d ago

School trip to Bristol in 1986. A middle aged woman in a newsagents called me "my lover" and it made me feel all awkward because I was only 14 and didn't feel up to making love to a middle aged woman. I've never been back to Bristol in case she finds me and repeats her request.

Occasionally I pop into Twitter and I've noticed that the majority of tweets in my feed are these faux conversational ones - some shite reported conversation These are all generated AI slop aren't they? There are no real tweets there or back and forth

It always "War with France!" but we never seem to get any closer to war with France. Is France Farage's Iran?

Has ChatGPT let us down?

Shipwreck@shipwreck75.bsky.social · 2d ago

A senior officer in US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) intelligence branch emailed a broad group of military analysts seeking “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran.” A second source indicated a similar request went out the prior week.

My pendants points about The Odyssey Ones of the suitors is told his spurs are jingling - if he'd had spurs he'd have had stirrups and they wouldn't have used chariots The keelless ships can tack (!) and if they could tack they wouldn't have had to follow the southern winds to the Libyan coast

Before I started as a Research Fellow at Scottish Gov I spent a happy week reading government files at the National Archives and writing a draft constitutional convention that might be acceptable to SNP types (and the majority of No voters) voluntaryunion.com

Acrobat has offered to turn a PDF of an airport parking ticket into a podcast. Can’t imagine it would be a great listen.

After 9 days in London I come back to a cool Edinburgh and we watch Taxi Driver on the telly In conclusion, if Burnham and Khan want to win the next election, they should install NY fire hydrants in London and let the nurchins crack then in the summer

If the Germans send their destroyer The Panther to Agadir then I will start worrying about Ceuta

The only way to remove an authoritarian regime is via people not money

Politico@politico.com · 5d ago

More than half a dozen Democratic donors, bundlers and donor advisers said they’ve lost trust in the DNC. “It’s beyond embarrassing and it’s not going to get better until [Ken Martin] is gone,” one Democratic bundler told us.

That one where Patti finally works out whose sins Jesus died for Playing the long game...

Christopher Hale@christopherjhale.bsky.social · 5d ago

The godmother of punk Patti Smith met Pope Leo XIV this morning.

That one where Patti finally works out whose sins Jesus died for Playing the long game...

Christopher Hale@christopherjhale.bsky.social · 5d ago

The godmother of punk Patti Smith met Pope Leo XIV this morning.

We're near the ten-year anniversary of this interview, which was viewed as wildly controversial at the time. It led to hit pieces on me from liberal outlets like The New Republic as well as death threats. Now it's seen as conventional wisdom -- but it always was!

1/ Outsiders keep misreading Northern Ireland. They hear "border poll" and assume a united Ireland is on the horizon. This week's poll says the opposite: both the unionist and nationalist blocs are bleeding to voter apathy. Neither is going anywhere soon: an existential nettle, best grasped now.

It's weird that about a fortnight ago, many politics understanders were telling us Burnham has no ideas or plans for what he wants to do in government.

The UK gov Rewiring The State announcement is very much about rewiring the English State

Heading back game with a haul of records from that London

Only bollards can deliver this much happiness. #WorldBollardAssociation

It's a datapoint for how Farage projects are a personalist throwback to the far right populism of the 1990s and early 00s rather than the more professionally run and institutionalised far right parties that now operate in Spain, Italy and France. Farage as the last remnant of Haider-era Europe

Will Jennings📉🗳️@drjennings.bsky.social · 6d ago

Reform at 23% with FindOutNow is not a good number for them (they tended to do better with them than other polling firms). Could the funding scandal and backfiring by-election gambit be starting to really hurt?

Suddenly obsessed with this 70s folk rock version of a old Jacobite song Proper mad 70s listen-on-headphones arrangement open.spotify.com/track/0iRExa...

Cam Ye O'er Frae France - 2009 Remaster

Steeleye Span · Parcel of Rogues (2009 Remaster) · Song · 1973

open.spotify.com

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

But I would be a traitor to Scotland not to point out that it's not coming hame lads

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate.com · 6d ago

Everything Trump touches turns to shit - Coupe Mondiale edition I wonder if the big gold statue ends up in the White House Garden? He luvves a bit of tat, dunee?

When UEFA are the good guys, the bad guys.are very bad indeed.

Don't think Americans on this and the other site fully understand how far Trump's capture of FIFA has the potential to fuel further anti-Americanism in Europe

stackception