Yesterday I filmed several baby birds walking across a street directly at my camera and asked Bluesky to suggest music
Several dozen folks did
Some even dubbed music over the original clip.
I haven't been able to get this out of my head.
So I give you
A Bluesky exclusive:
Reservoir Ducks
🐣 🪶
“There are as many as 400 water desalination plants across the Gulf, and if they come to be viewed as legitimate targets, a drinking water crisis of unimaginable proportions could face the region within days.”
Lovely photo 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
#HelloSpring 😍
‘It could be that everybody considered the interspecies matings as gross – or attractive,” he said. “But it seems that one direction was viewed as better, or less worse, than the other.”’ Isn’t there another explanation? I.e., rape? Or am I drawing the wrong conclusion here?
Yes, that’s what I was objecting to.
I might be sympathetic to a ‘play it how it was played’ direction and would accept ‘all male’ in that context. But if the point is historical they should be using boys (not men) to play the women. But it was the journalist’s language I also objected to. So sloppy and without regard to implications.
“Like the original … performances in which men played all the roles, the [RSC] is to stage a female-free As You Like It ...”
“Female-free”? Is this the best locution you could find? Do you consider the language you choose to use?
And btw, men didn’t “play all the roles”. Women were played by boys.
It’s a lovely blog about my very favourite book of all time. Thanks @gailmarshall.bsky.social
We all need such indicators of positive futures.
Vile vile vile vile vile
Managements applauded fees, welcomed marketisation. Now unis are bound by consumer legislation. Unis that exploited students may pay a price. But managements that drove those decisions have moved on, and the academics - whose fault it was decidedly not - will be those who must now carry the can. 2/2
Some unis (& almost all academics) moved mountains, supported students selflessly, helped them through. But some tried to fleece them in completely unjustifiable ways. I fought such a battle on behalf of a relative; I only won because I know the system. Joe Public wouldn’t have stood a chance. 1/2
I know! But having just moved and finding myself aghast at the amount of *stuff* I have I have decided to be ruthless. Everything I haven’t read or won’t read again has to go. But I *still* take things out of the Oxfam pile and put it surreptitiously back on the shelf.
I find it just helps me psychologically get rid of stuff. Wegovy for book hoarders.
I have a cut-off - 50p for smaller items and a couple of quid if they are heavier. Everything below that goes to charity and not worth wrapping anything for less than a tenner. Gnash my teeth if they end up giving me less than I promised (which they often do). 🤬
There’s also We Buy Books and Sell It Back. They often differ in the offers they make for items by a few quid, so worth scanning all three and selling to the highest bidder.
The cautionary precedent is a story about George Bernard Shaw who, browsing in a second-hand shop somewhere, found one of his own works, inscribed for a friend "with esteem, GBS". Naturally, he bought it and returned it to the same friend, "with renewed esteem"
Because of this story I can never give signed books to charity and if I buy one which turns out to have an inscription I feel bad for the signatory
‘Those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with, … that make you hesitate in the morning between trousers and a dress, that follow you or ignore you , … that are supposed to tell you who you are, what you’re worth, and then abandon you as you grow older.”
Yes, it is very sad. Much too young.
Deborah Cameron obituary: linguist, feminist and firebrand
www.thetimes.com/article/a042...
Just beyond parody at this point
‘“Plague on all their houses” cynicism has to be fought for another reason too: because it is the seedbed for Reform UK and Nigel Farage. The only way they can prevail is if the British electorate decides that all politics, and all politicians, are rotten to the core.’
On 1 May 1517, xenophobic mobs, riled up by preachers who were in turn pressured by wealthy broker John Lincoln, rioted in London. They claimed that foreigners were stealing their jobs and welfare. Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London, tried to stop the mob with an empassioned speech.
Now tell me again how much it's okay that English Lit has collapsed at A-Level and in our universities.
What Britons really think of student loans
‘Most people think the top rates of interest are too high, while 44 per cent think debts should be written off, new polling finds.’
#ForgiveStudentDebt
www.thetimes.com/article/8e22...
Marginal tax rates for graduates with student loans – add interest and another 6% for postgrads.
£25,000: 37%
£50,270: 51%
£100,000: 71%
Everyone should support this campaign as a start in righting the wrongs of the horrible student debt my generation has visted on the young www.rethinkrepayment.com
Or how about this headline — “American citizen arrested without cause after exercising his Constitutional rights.” Very important that government propaganda not become the default framing.
