thinking about the time a cool Instagram fashion account asked me to name my favorite products and i didn't know i was supposed to name fashion products, so i said pigeon food because i like feeding pigeons and their followers were like "why the fuck do i need pigeon food for my outfit?"

The Spanish translator for my second book reached out to me multiple times over meaning and nuance so her version would be faithful to mine. Why are we willingly giving up the human connections in our art?

“good news, we’ve created the playroom that tells kids whatever they want to hear and makes them not care about their parents from the seminal Ray Bradbury short story, Don’t Create the Playroom That Tells Kids Whatever They Want to Hear and Makes Them Not Care About Their Parents”

1/ I guess I’m ‘The Good Immigrant’:

Been here most of my life now, never claimed benefits, paid taxes, worked for the NHS, taught students, done research for public good, volunteered, spoke English fluently.

So why do I feel so alienated and hurt by the government’s anti- immigrant rhetoric?

"Abled, adapted COVID-safer living might include guidelines like masking in indoor public spaces, but unmasking for outdoor drinks, dining and gathering."

This is what I do. I mask when I go to the grocery store, yoga class, on public transport, medical facilities etc and I socialise outside

To become dependent on ChapGPT is to evacuate yourself from your own life.

YIKES, no thanks. I’m gonna be alive inside every damn thing I do, even and especially the ish I don’t wanna do.

We see this dynamic in immigration. When non-anti-immigrant parties move right to neutralize the issue, it legitimates the anti-immigrant right's core claim that "immigration is a serious problem." Granting the issue's legitimacy can only benefit the anti-immigrant party, because they own the issue.

side rant: when are newsrooms going to get over parents' ablest squick about their kids and start using identity first language?

"disabled person" not "person who is great!! except for this icky disability!!"

"autistic person" not "person with a lil' case of the autisms"

etc

This two-parter below is exactly why it's hard to make clothes in the United States.

Let's look at how much it costs to produce a button-up shirt in the US. 🧵

Be sure of this: many of the horrors the west allowed in Gaza will come closer to home

History shows the crimes of empire were later mirrored on European soil. Dehumanisation and militarised terror both seem normalised now
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Cake walk” was this for me once I realized (by reading 19th century newspapers) that it’s a term for coerced slave performances where “winners” received cake

The greatest difference we could make to our future generations is not…any of the shit we hear people saying about tech.

It is learning how to care for each other enough to create and hold a real, lasting peace.

6. There is no such thing as free violence. All violence harms the wielder.

Every time someone tries to sell you on the idea that there is something we can do, without cost, that harms other people, realize that they are lying to you.

“In other words,” the judge wrote, “counsel relied upon unvetted AI — in his telling, via inadequately supervised colleagues — to defend his use of unvetted AI.”

They always start with free speech. It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Free speech? And they can use it to shut down anyone who criticises them, because it’s all “free speech”

After “free speech” it’s “protecting women and girls”

And then it’s whatever they actually wanted.

"In a version of history reverse-engineered to justify and celebrate the present, Columbus can only have been a hero, a singular and unique character whose actions drove the story to where it always needed to go"

My favorite aspect of the Columbus legend is him getting rejected by the Portuguese gets spun as them not recognizing the genius of his idea. No - he went into a roomful of expert navigators and made basic math mistakes, they thought he was a moron, and they wouldn't fund his idea on that basis.

In relief beyond words that the bombardment has stopped and that those taken are reuniting with their loved ones, but there is something so deeply gross at the levels of self-congratulation global leaders are now partaking in.

Stopping a genocide two years in is not success.

Her coffee went everywhere.

Wait, I thought AI was going to solve climate change?

sometimes i delete a post because i've grown as a person in those 45 seconds

After a long pause, I've just done another England Covid & NHS update as we head into the autumn/winter season.

TLDR: we're in a significant Covid wave now, the NHS is stretched, get boosted if you're eligible.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/england-is...