grouchomerckx.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

This is fighting the last battle. The BBC has always operated as an arm of the state and imperialism, but from 2010 it was comprehensively captured by the right-wing both within and beyond the state, and now serves to stamp right-wing propaganda with the imprimatur of objectivity. It’s already lost.

submitted 13 hours ago • 1 comment

assistance please something has gone wrong here

submitted 12 hours ago • 6 comments

Louisiana lawmakers move to ban something that doesn’t exist. Yay, go Louisiana lawmakers.

submitted 5 hours ago • 7 comments

Whatever it is, this is my favourite sport.

submitted 6 hours ago • 181 comments

[space coven] Robert Heinlein: people, i'm afraid that the situation on earth is hopeless Heinlein: elon musk has been ejected from the government and with him dies the dream of a utopian libertarian outpost on Mars free from the tyranny of age of consent laws

submitted 4 hours ago • 6 comments

Ceefax covers the launch of the Spectrum +2.... www.teletextarchive.com/Pages/Detail... #zxspectrum #retrogaming

submitted 6 hours ago • 0 comments

⚒️🧪 Thick black goop pouring from the earth is a horror often seen in TV shows or movies. Fortunately this is an amazing geological feature, and not a malevolent monster! This 1956 pic is of a natural bitumen or asphalt seep pouring into a mine shaft in Lettomanoppello, Italy. 🧵 Pic: Cazzini (2018)

submitted 21 hours ago • 37 comments

submitted 10 hours ago • 11 comments

One of the few genuinely amusing parts of the whole Unbound/Boundless saga is that they had an active policy of trying to secure books written by authors wiith strong social media presences. Which is a group you DEFINITELY don't want to screw over while then trying to sell a new grift.

submitted 10 hours ago • 6 comments

Remember this picture, & others like it, every time you hear someone in your city say "we're not Amsterdam." This was #Amsterdam in the 1970s. Many of the cities we admire made better choices regarding cars in the past. and are still making better choices today. Better choices instead of excuses.

submitted 1 day ago • 8 comments

Summer 1974 and the ferry from Burtonport Co. Donegal to Bran Island has made room for a “precariously perched car”. According to photographer Frank Bodson, the whole caboodle “excited no interest” among those on-board. (Observer magazine, 1/9/74.)

submitted 10 hours ago • 10 comments

AQUABOB [ai•kwu'bob] sb. An icicle.

submitted 11 hours ago • 0 comments

Remember during GE2019 when the BBC edited footage of Johnson at least a couple of times (changing boos to appluase when he was on QT etc) and everyone prominent in the British media just declared it was clearly an accident and anyone who saw something sinister was stupid?

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

Yet another incident where someone deliberately drives a car into pedestrians leaving several injured. Do we need a specific law of using a vehicle as a weapon with suitable punishment? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 14 hours ago • 11 comments

The “tragedy of the commons” is that self-managing rural communities were powerless in the face of a ruthless, centuries-long alliance of capitalism and state power, determined to render their way of life impossible, by changing the entire legal basis of collective existence.

submitted 16 hours ago • 0 comments

XII.XII.MMXXV on Netflix. More to come…

submitted 23 hours ago • 63 comments

All glory to the fighters, I stand up equivocally with Subcommandante Insurgente Dench and her north yorkshire revolutionaries

submitted 1 day ago • 10 comments

Oh, to hell with it. Who wants my Unbound incompetence story! Yay!

submitted 1 day ago • 16 comments

Yesterday, at 87, my dad & former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, stood for an hour by the road in his old riding. As a Jewish elder, he stood against genocide embodying the values he has always championed. I am so proud to see him on the right side of history – as always. ❤️

submitted 2 days ago • 29 comments

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

Later generations were taught that streetcar service declined because passengers preferred to drive. Transportation experts have patiently explained this cause to me. But primary sources reveal that a small minority of motorists degraded the transit modes that the vast majority relied upon.

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

Holy shit this is disgraceful. The amount owed to authors obviously but also the hit to editors, freelancers, and website customers who backed books in good faith. On the bright side they also seem to owe a lot of money to HMRC, and that rarely goes well.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

HIGGLER [hig•lur] sb. A middleman who goes round the country and buys up eggs, poultry, &c., to sell again. So called, because he higgles or haggles over his bargains.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Years of cycle touring ftw smstone0.github.io/#/uk-map

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Chat, j'ai pété

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

SPROLLUCKS [sprol•uks] sb. One who sprawls out his feet.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

MAN OF KENT, phr. A title claimed by the inhabitants of the Weald as their peculiar designation; all others they regard as Kentish men.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Recipe for an unsuccessful school street: volunteers putting out temporary plastic barriers twice a day while dealing with entitled drivers until they can't do it anymore. Recipe for a successful school street: a little infrastructure, imagination, and political will.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

I…I have ADHD. You can’t take one of English’s bare handful of universally-recognized typographical digression-signals from me. I will physically die.

submitted 4 days ago • 15 comments

Finally got around to watching ‘Travelling for a Living’, a wonderful documentary first broadcast in 1966 about The Watersons and traditional folk music in the British Isles. Available for free on the BFI website. Thanks to @thameschoral.bsky.social for sharing. 🙌 player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Rayner and Miliband would be more popular and would do more useful things IMO, but the suicide attacks from the party’s right would start on day one and would never let up, and half of the press would treat them like the tyrannical rule of communist death camps Islamic Jihad.

submitted 4 days ago • 12 comments

Male Blackbird collecting suet in the daisies. 😍 Hungry babies to feed! 😁 Taken yesterday through my cat-flap. 😁🐦 #Birds🪶

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

Open AI’s valuation is at $400 billion. They used about 190,000 books to train their plagiarism bot. Randomly saying 25% of their value comes from that stolen dataset, I think they owe the authors about $526,000 per stolen book.

submitted 5 days ago • 60 comments

I'm using accessible toilets more often of late, as they are often also the baby change. Please spread the message: 🚨THE RED PULL CORD ALARM NEEDS TO BE ACCESSIBLE FROM THE FUCKING FLOOR 🚨 I've untied/ untucked 4 of them this weekend alone which were way too high off the ground. So, so dangerous.

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

Astérix et Ozempix

submitted 5 days ago • 20 comments

Today I learned that giant chains breathe. Due to the oxidation in rooms with these babies, you can die in about 24 hours in an enclosed space with a ship's giant chain. Put that in your novel.

submitted 7 days ago • 29 comments

Sad news that the South London Press has closed. It was a great local newspaper. It also ran one of the greatest local newspaper stories ever*, "Squirrels on crack".

submitted 5 days ago • 16 comments

my friend once spent a good few seconds staring hard at a street sign, a deep thought clearly percolating, before announcing he doesn't know why it's called Hull Road when it's going away from Hull.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

customer query of the day is the nice gent who midway down the staircase calls back up to ask if it leads to another floor. the staircase would have been a poor investment if it didn't

submitted 17 days ago • 13 comments