Arden @arden@computerfairi.es

If a waterfowl eats your knitting you could end up with all of your rows in a duck.

Esther McVey the Minister for Common Sense, has hit opposition to her new rule to ban rainbow lanyards in the civil service. 🏳️‍🌈 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/culture-war-rainbow-lanyard-ban-estger-mcvey-b2544061.html

The DfE has declared it will not follow the new guidance as it was not consulted, and their civil servents are now flooding the system with requests for the colourful lanyards.

#UKGovt #DfE #McVey #CultureWar

Esther McVey:

“I’m not prepared to see pointless job creation schemes for the politically correct.”

This ministerial appointment was brought to you by the Tory job creation scheme for the politically pointless.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/culture-war-rainbow-lanyard-ban-estger-mcvey-b2544061.html

So this is interesting. I've come think that the problem we have is not that people are too isolated, uninformed and silo-ed (which is the narrrative we're mostly working with at the moment ... those stupid people, if only they were better informed and read outside their bubble) but quite the opposite: we are more informed than ever and more exposed to differring viewpoints than ever - and we don't instinctively know how to cope with it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07229-y?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is read here in full by Douglas Adams himself. Adams sounds in places quite like Oliver Postgate narrating Ivor the Engine.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bxf-xpYKteo&si=26kHP4qzLNee14a0

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bxf-xpYKteo&si=CEyfK4oN68dQN54A

@e_urq

This is a very interesting article, not just because of the issue of JK Rowling- on that topic I wish you'd have presented more evidence, more people, more timeline, more depth to support your premise.

For me, it echoes the way in which Jews have been attacked and how the line of acceptable rhetoric is what moves, not the hate itself. That's why someone like Kanye West crosses the line of unacceptability non-Jews, but Mark Ruffalo does not, and why Roger Waters is at the center of that hate line.

The issue of tone in hate speech is often overlooked and it's clear that JK Rowling's tone, not her words, is what is making her fellow transphobes distance from her.

My mom and dad on their wedding day.

Will *always* re-share this!

79 years ago this Wednesday the Sunderland that my father’s RAF aircrew was assigned to got lost in a storm, flew a reciprocal bearing and three of Dad’s crew mates were killed. He himself sustained a broken leg and, being trapped upside down at first, he could have joined them but for having words with himself. I’m hugely indebted to the person who traced this squadron record of the events that day.

That's So Raven :)
4x6" linocut print. Ink on paper
#art #ink #linocut #linoprint #birdart #bird #ink #corvid

…You may think a British government wouldn’t do that to things cisgender people have had for sixty years but the right’s politics have shifted so dramatically that the possibility is now there. As we’ve told folks many times, they practice first on the trans people in the belief that nobody cares enough about us to step in.

Just a tip: If NHS England succeeds in shutting down alternative routes for trans people to buy cross sex hormones that are legal to buy over the counter in other countries then they will have completed a proof of concept of the means to shut down unofficial ways of buying oral contraceptives and morning after pills. They’ve already tested how to shut down a crucial one of its kind clinic by painting it as scary…

#weekendSewingClub

I find in-seam pockets really quite tricky, so I’m particularly pleased with how well this one has turned out. Time for a breather before I take on the challenge of the other side.

#dressmaking #sewing #ThanksItHasPockets

It's only since Cecilia Payne's PhD thesis in 1925, that we know what the stars - and our Sun - are made of: mostly hydrogen.

Her thesis was described as ""the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy" and it extremely readable: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT.........1P/abstract

Yet It took until 1956, 10 years before her retirement, for her to become full professor - because women were barred from becoming full professors at Harvard.

(Posted because she was born #OTD).

#astrodon #VicisArt #VicisAstro

Still have no idea how to car selfie. Anyway. Cleaned up and felt pretty, gonna take the kids to the parking lot carnival and then not cook dinner.

Posting this from my Surface Go 3 running Ubuntu 24.04. And it's fine.