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James Billingham

@oolon.co.uk

IT person, Father of two amazing girls. All opinions are my own, blah, blah πŸ˜‡ #BlackLivesMatter Also @oolon on Twitter

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28.06.2023
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Latest posts by James Billingham @oolon.co.uk

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WIN: High Court throws out Β£8m lawsuit over tax avoidance investigation | Good Law Project We have successfully defended award-winning journalist Dan Neidle from an β€˜oppressive’ claim which tried to silence him – but the law still needs reform

We've won the UK's first ever SLAPP suit - acting for @danneidle.bsky.social - and made some really important law protecting the right to call out barristers whose misconduct facilitates aggressive tax avoidance.

11.03.2026 12:53 πŸ‘ 834 πŸ” 215 πŸ’¬ 43 πŸ“Œ 6
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Home - Not in our name Not In our Name: Women in support of the trans+community

More than 91,900 women have already signed to say that trans exclusion is not in our name.

We’re now aiming for 100,000 signatures, and it would be incredible to reach that mark by tonight with the help of everyone at the Trans Mission Live concert and everyone following along from home.

11.03.2026 12:03 πŸ‘ 67 πŸ” 39 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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McBea on X: "This is an abysmal, dehumanising comment to make to @ProfStephenW it really does show that Jackson is an woefully uninformed lesbian with an axe to grind against trans people. The fact she misgenders the Prof throughout her tweet is just pure nastiness. Terfs = Hate." / X This is an abysmal, dehumanising comment to make to @ProfStephenW it really does show that Jackson is an woefully uninformed lesbian with an axe to grind against trans people. The fact she misgenders the Prof throughout her tweet is just pure nastiness. Terfs = Hate.

@profstephenwhittle.bsky.social Did terfs get you suspended over at Twitter for your tweet about Kiera Bell? x.com/Mcbeath_on_s...

11.03.2026 13:58 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

This is an attack Gillick Competence, and without a doubt the beginnings of an assault on the supply of birth control to young people.

I was 17 when I started taking HRT. If you’re over 16, then by English law you can legally consent to your own healthcare.

08.03.2026 16:02 πŸ‘ 468 πŸ” 167 πŸ’¬ 6 πŸ“Œ 4
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a cartoon character from up is standing in a doorway and saying `` what 's that ? '' ALT: a cartoon character from up is standing in a doorway and saying `` what 's that ? ''
08.03.2026 17:19 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

On this note - my brother @oolon.co.uk has tomorrow off work for International Women's Day but my sister-in-law doesn't!

08.03.2026 11:07 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

The manufactured fear of autism is a for-profit industry that permanently injures and kills children, whether they're autistic or allistic. True believers like Kennedy are convenient and powerful rubes, but none of these are free treatments; it isn't just ignorance and ego that fuels them.

07.03.2026 21:23 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

-- so what does that mean about how people saw or experienced this process!? If anything you'd think it'd mean "doing something useless and painful seemingly for the person's own good" ... So I don't know how to process the "flattering" thing now \o/

07.03.2026 23:53 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

There'd be special equipment at the side of the Thames like there are floatation rings now! Ready for a quick butt puff if someone needed it... Thing is the phrase "blowing smoke up.." is about flattering someone, saying nice things about them for the purposes of deceiving --

07.03.2026 23:52 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Friend of mine is writing a book about boats/ships, and gave us a funny bit of trivia I didn't know. The phrase "blowing smoke up your arse" is literal, before CPR they'd literally blow tobacco smoke up your rectum to "revive" you if drown(ing/ed) and rescued not breathing!

07.03.2026 23:50 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

They say they reached "peak trans", or "peaked" as cult speak for being radicalised into hating trans people. Just makes them sound like perverts to me as "peaked" has a different connotation.

Peaky is fine though as others say = ill

07.03.2026 23:44 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Spoilers for Star Trek Academy -- when the Dr asked Voyagers computer for a practice holographic family to live with... you can't imagine how much Voyagers computer must have hated him! 800 years of trauma lol

04.03.2026 21:09 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
The level of misinformation spread by proponents of youth gender medicine, many of whom have a professional stake in it and many of whom have fancy letters and affiliations affixed to their names, is really demoralizing.
Jack Turban MD
@jack_turban
O ..β€’
This of course runs counter to the recommendations of all major medical and mental health organizations, as well as all existing

The level of misinformation spread by proponents of youth gender medicine, many of whom have a professional stake in it and many of whom have fancy letters and affiliations affixed to their names, is really demoralizing. Jack Turban MD @jack_turban O ..β€’ This of course runs counter to the recommendations of all major medical and mental health organizations, as well as all existing

Jesse Singal now appears to be siding with Ken Paxton on forced mental health conversion therapy for trans youth.

04.03.2026 15:45 πŸ‘ 2616 πŸ” 442 πŸ’¬ 172 πŸ“Œ 191
In Defense of Effeminate Boys
If anyone had suggested that I might really be a girl, I don’t know how I would have responded.

By Ben Appel

In Defense of Effeminate Boys If anyone had suggested that I might really be a girl, I don’t know how I would have responded. By Ben Appel

If medical authorities have a rigorous way of distinguishing effeminate boys from transgender kidsβ€”or of distinguishing transgender kids from proto-gay kidsβ€”they aren’t saying. I have met a number of detransitioned gay men who tried to live as women for a time because they and their families were so averse to homosexuality. According to a 2019 report in The Times of London, staffers at Britain’s foremost gender-identity clinic joked darkly that, as a result of the facility’s work, β€œthere would be no gay people left.” A statement last month by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that there is no validated way to assess whether a child’s gender distress will persist over time or disappear without medical intervention. A lack of good research and recordkeeping means that we may never know how many patients who would have been considered effeminate gay boys not so long ago have undergone medical treatments for gender dysphoria.

If medical authorities have a rigorous way of distinguishing effeminate boys from transgender kidsβ€”or of distinguishing transgender kids from proto-gay kidsβ€”they aren’t saying. I have met a number of detransitioned gay men who tried to live as women for a time because they and their families were so averse to homosexuality. According to a 2019 report in The Times of London, staffers at Britain’s foremost gender-identity clinic joked darkly that, as a result of the facility’s work, β€œthere would be no gay people left.” A statement last month by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons noted that there is no validated way to assess whether a child’s gender distress will persist over time or disappear without medical intervention. A lack of good research and recordkeeping means that we may never know how many patients who would have been considered effeminate gay boys not so long ago have undergone medical treatments for gender dysphoria.

Absolute trash. The author did not speak to a single medical professional and the article does not contain a shred of evidence that effeminate gay boys are being bamboozled into thinking they're trans.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

03.03.2026 21:08 πŸ‘ 4647 πŸ” 762 πŸ’¬ 161 πŸ“Œ 188
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@zackpolanski.bsky.social : "Once again Reform are spreading misinformation & smears, and the press & the media seem to repeat them.. its really important that the media.. take responsibility so when Reform or Farage says something they don't just keep repeating it"πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘

27.02.2026 09:19 πŸ‘ 3307 πŸ” 1058 πŸ’¬ 213 πŸ“Œ 225

Will be an interesting year for us, I think for a while we need to do a lot of enabling AI -- need MCP interfaces to our various products etc. But then we can give the users access to that to deploy demos that we'd create before. I think it can probably do it right from the AI now/soon!

26.02.2026 22:25 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I didn't think it would be able to do obscure debugging tasks like that :O

I do need to know what to ask it, and an understanding of kubernetes, deployments etc. But I won't have to do any coding / config anymore - so how do new people get the skills needed to use it properly!?

26.02.2026 21:37 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

It had been doing the restart wrong and I told it that - the persistent volume meant a rollout restart couldn't work. This time it did it right after learning from me!

I'm flabbergasted, that was hours of debug and reading for me to work out what was wrong in ~5 mins execution!

26.02.2026 21:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

- was wrong (Would have taken me all next week if at all, as I didn't know what these config files it changed even do!) ... Fixed it for me (Not a fan of it changing things without asking, but hey) .. and restarted the deployment.

26.02.2026 21:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

in kubernetes. Had a very weird obscure issue in a poorly documented installable module in a product of ours (Not that well known in itself)... Just told opencode/Claude what the issue was and it went off and read the config from my kubernetes deployment. Worked out what -

26.02.2026 21:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

OMG, I know everyone hates AI, and I don't like the whole plagiarism thing... but shit. For work I've been assessing opencode + Claude and it passed with flying colours to say the least!

I had a bit of work to apply a deprecated feature of one of our products to a deployment -

26.02.2026 21:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Just when you think you've seen the most brain-dead hysterical media reporting on nonsensical anti-renewables "fears" whipped up on deranged Facebook groups, along comes the epic nonsense below:

24.02.2026 11:29 πŸ‘ 482 πŸ” 144 πŸ’¬ 28 πŸ“Œ 47

Its actually so infuriating and patronising and degrading to be told a conversion therapy ban is coming all the while Labour is actually actively implementing conversion onto trans youth across healthcare and education

16.02.2026 10:48 πŸ‘ 354 πŸ” 89 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

"if they socially transition too early we think they can get locked onto a trajectory that may not have been the correct natural trajectory for them"

Direct quote.

16.02.2026 13:51 πŸ‘ 1263 πŸ” 96 πŸ’¬ 33 πŸ“Œ 92

Hilary Cass here arguing for children to be prevented from being known by a preferred name or getting a haircut in case it encourages them to continue later in life to transition.

Hilary Cass acts like gender variant children should have the transness hazed out of them.

16.02.2026 13:49 πŸ‘ 2748 πŸ” 613 πŸ’¬ 61 πŸ“Œ 69
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Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!

"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

13.02.2026 22:08 πŸ‘ 6781 πŸ” 2198 πŸ’¬ 99 πŸ“Œ 186

He's been doing that for ages now

13.02.2026 11:49 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Doesn't feel particularly radical to suggest that the taxpayer should not subsidise organisations whose entire purpose seems to be to hound an incredibly marginalised group out of public life.

29.01.2026 23:43 πŸ‘ 425 πŸ” 95 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2

The discord between trans activists and disabled activists was often mutual - disability rights activists didn't want to be stained by the stigma of transsexualism and many trans activists in turn didn't want their identities perceived as an "illness." Great read on where we stand today

29.01.2026 13:31 πŸ‘ 120 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1