Great White Egret reflected. 😍 Taken recently at RSPB Ham Wall in Somerset. 😊🐦

A Painted Lady butterfly on fleabane on the south west coast path, Lansallos to Lantic Bay

"Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, recently appointed to the role by the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, meets Secretary of State Rubio in Washington" is one of those lines that would sound perfectly plausible to anyone in 2015, but explaining the intervening period would give them an aneurysm.

In my dad’s lifetime around 70,000 people died because of bombs dropped on the UK in 1939-45. In my lifetime 3,000 died as a result of civil conflict over the borders of the UK. I think a few boats of impoverished and desperate people who want a better life isn’t quite in the same league.

The borders of the U.K. have been in place since 1922.

Pascal Jacquemain@jacquep.bsky.social · yesterday

Rosindell is mad as a box of frogfaces.

Leaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.

No excuses at all not to make the banks pay more - a lot more These parasites use our hard-earned cash to make themselves richer, and to shower obscene amounts of money on their CEOs and shareholders www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Calls for UK bank tax to fund cost of living help as HSBC profits hit £7.5bn

Levy could raise £19bn to help pay for Andy Burnham’s support for those struggling with bills, say campaigners

theguardian.com

As bad as things are now, they're about to get a lot worse.

Prof. Eliot Jacobson@climatecasino.net · 4h ago

Breaking News! Code: Bonkers! El Nino continues to spike towards an all-time record high anomaly, with the Nino 3.4 sea surface temperature more than 2.6°C above the 1991-2020 baseline as of August 4th, and more than 1.0C° above the previous August 4th record set in 1997.

Breaking News! Code: Bonkers! El Nino continues to spike towards an all-time record high anomaly, with the Nino 3.4 sea surface temperature more than 2.6°C above the 1991-2020 baseline as of August 4th, and more than 1.0C° above the previous August 4th record set in 1997.

I recently had my hip replaced by a trans woman surgeon. I would defend her right to use whatever toilet she bloody well liked.

A terrible day for trans people in Britain and a shameful one for the EHRC and government

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 11h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

Somewhat disgusting to hear Nick Robinson on Today talk about "trans rights" versus "women's right to safe spaces". That ain't it Nick

Zuckerberg was evil well before Musk even got involved in social media. Exhibit 94.

Matt Burgess (WIRED)@mattburgess1.bsky.social · 3h ago

NEW: Over the last few months, Meta has run dozens of paid ads that included AI-generated CSAM. The ads, some of which were linking out to “nudify” apps, targeted men in the US, UK, and a dozen European countries. Some were running in the last few days

Meta has made it repeatedly clear that one of their growth strategies is sexualizing kids. Mark Zuckerberg and his leadership team deserve to face personal liability for this, and the company deserves sanctions up to and including corporate dissolution

WIRED@wired.com · 3h ago

Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared with WIRED.

What a repulsive man. I had eye problems. Everything from routine cataract surgery and laser work for retinopathy in both eyes, to a vitrectomy. Some of the surgeons and nurses didn't have flawless English. But as they were busy saving my eyesight, it would have seemed churlish to whine about it...

This highlights a profound impact of Trump — the further normalization of violence against women. Trump got elected in spite of his long history of violence against women. He is not held accountable when he continues to abuse women. 1/2

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6h ago

Max Miller on why he's staying in the race: "When we go back to 2015 and 2016, & people in the media looked at President Trump, & everyone came out with allegations. Dozens of women, dozens of crazy allegations, dozens of nasty criminal misconduct. And you know what he did? He stayed in the fight."

holy shit -- Schiff ties Trump's judicial nominees in knots by asking them who won the 2016 before *before* asking them who won in 2020, which results in them sounding like election deniers about Trump's victories!

Somehow they keep finding new ways to fuck shit up. Truly amazing.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6h ago

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on rockets crashing into the moon: "It's not a big deal right now. The moon has clearly seen better days."

This is just rank Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, based on the bigoted idea that there is something inherently scary about a president with the last name "El-Sayed." It is incumbent on all of us to call it out.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 5h ago

JD Vance: "We don't want the next administration, whoever -- god forbid you're gonna have President El-Sayed in three years ... "

This controlling and abusive man, Syed Ahmad, killed his wife Anam Rafay – with her own knife in her own home – after she said she wanted a divorce. But then waited until the third day of his trial – six months later – to change his plea to guilty. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Murderer stabbed his wife 40 times after she tried to leave him

Syed Ahmad is jailed for murder after he chased and stabbed his wife 40 times at their Manchester home.

bbc.com

I did a PhD on aerial perspectives of landscape, with a lot of attention paid to drone warfare and the geopolitics of world picturing. Here’s an abbreviated reading list to help parse stories like the one below and understand where things are heading. 🧵1/10

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 4h ago

The experience of being chased by a murderous kamikaze drone, a flying machine that behaves as if it were alive, is not one that humans are equipped to understand: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Whenever I see videos of chefs chopping onions etc there’s always someone in the comments saying they want to be that fast and asking how, and I always want to say “a couple of 8 hour shifts just chopping onions should do it.”

This is pure extraction of wealth from one group of people to another We urgently need: Windfall tax on oil giants Windfall tax on banks Both are creaming money off us during a cost of living crisis Even Thatcher had the balls to tax the banks Will you @andyburnham?

Daaaamn. “AI is the asbestos we're shovelling into the walls of our technological society. Our descendants will spend generations digging it out again, and the longer the bubble goes on without popping, the longer it will take to repair the damage." www.thenerve.news/p/cory-docto...

Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying

It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our t...

thenerve.news

as noted yesterday, Trump has now come around to treating an Iranian toll system covering the Strait of Hormuz as a given. Hard to overstate the level of strategic failure. US started the war purely as a war of choice and ends up dramatically empowering Iran and given the Iranian govt big wins.

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social · 4h ago

Reuters: Iran wants fees of 5%-7% of the price of cargo from ships using the strait; Oman wants 3%. "Making fees voluntary, at least nominally, could be a way out of the impasse, although an implied threat of Iranian attacks could mean shippers would be ​unlikely to risk transit without paying."

DURBIN: You wrote an article in which you claimed 'Black inmates are most like to become sexual aggressors.' Why should people of color believe you've changed? CRONAN: I co-authored the article. I haven't re-read it in a long time. DURBIN: Do you believe it? CRONAN: I'm not in a position to opine

Let's not lose sight of how abnormal this is. Trump is demanding prosecutions over Reflecting Pool fiasco even though his own DOJ has shown conclusively it isn't supported by facts or law. On the pod, @barbmcquade.bsky.social is brilliant on the bigger stakes here: newrepublic.com/article/2139...

Trump’s Fury at Reflecting Pool Mess Darkens as Damning New Leaks Hit

As Trump’s effort to jail people over his failed renovation starts looking even worse, a former federal prosecutor explains why this corruption of DOJ is so dangerous—and how to fight back.

newrepublic.com

It's funny that Jeanine Pirro brought a box of evidence to WH to persuade Trump. He wants her to consciously *throw out* exculpatory facts and *knowingly* prosecute innocent people. So facts can't persuade him by definition. Me and @barbmcquade.bsky.social on this: newrepublic.com/article/2139...