"are you SURE you can communicate with your british spouse? are the three tests we already make you do and the life in the uk test reaaaally proving anything?" - the stupidest person in the home office, which may well be all of them

a note of caution for people claiming there is no real difference between a B1 test and a B2: there is *quite* a lot added in a full B2 in terms of length and additional tasks to complete. it will almost certainly be more expensive. and they eventually intend to make these changes to family routes

This compares unfavorably with the prose of Kevin J Anderson, the first author I encountered whose prose was so painful to read I quit on the book's second page.

What's your totally ordinary opinion about books that you nonetheless find compelled to share when asked on a social media site such as this one for your most extreme/unhinged/hottest takes?

I'll go first: manga is popular among young people because manga often features young people.

Look, I'm not going to do my Ian McEwan bit all over again for the second night in a row.

("I really dislike Ian McEwan's work" is probably simultaneously my most deranged and my most normal opinion on literature.)

Physical books taste better.

Surprised, tbh, given the extent to which my former schoolfriend has been in the headlines, that people are just talking about the Kremlin bribes as if it was the only interesting thing about him. There's actually enough material in the back pages to give Jed Mercurio two or three seasons' worth.

Headlines going to the English requirements but I'd completely missed this part of the plans, yet another act of idiotic self harm. Completely incompatible with the government's stated aims on housebuilding, growth, etc.

I know it isn't the important point and I know it's tedious to repeat this but really - the Welsh language has equal status in Wales and government press offices should regularly get this right.

In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very unhappy and was widely regarded as a bad move.

(Douglas Adams)

Final point on this, incidentally: notable that the idea Constantine converted for cynical *political* reasons is totally absent in antiquity, largely because it would have made absolutely no sense as an explanation to anyone before the early modern era when it starts to get aired

Yeah the nice thing about Columbus is he neatly sidesteps debates about historical relativism by just being bad relative to every time. Superbad, but in the analytic philosophy way not the cool way.

Don't get me started on Ian McEwan, an author so terrible that I dislike his work without having actually read any of it. It exudes "DDOwen will hate this" middlebrow vibes.

you could do a great game based on James White's SECTOR GENERAL books, about a sci-fi hospital. be easy to hack together with GUMSHOE, I think, replacing the traditional mysteries with medical ones.

Once again: this is also happening in DC. Still.

It feels like we’ve been forgotten, maybe because there aren’t huge confrontations to run photos of. But our neighbors are still being taken every day. Routine traffic stops are now done by 12+ feds alongside local police.

Please talk about us too.

and I think this is a big part of the story bsky.app/profile/ryan...

And people are still on X?

one drawback to the saturation of the term “genocide” in our world is a seeming association with the term as a totalizing end, as a black screen finish to reality. that’s just not true, and in fact hides one of the most essential, fraught, and contested phases: post-genocide.

Really important reminder of how Reform aren’t just Little Englanders, but part of an international far-right network which wants to take away fundamental rights we all take for granted - and wants to use “free speech” as a lever

Yet another example of how the far right want to assert their rights in the name of our principles, in order to deny us ours in the name of theirs

Excellent Guardian piece on Aadhar, India's digital ID system, that captures the dilemma extremely well. Digital-by-default methods create huge convenience for some, double-down on social exclusion for others, and it is easy for their scope to rapidly expand www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

(I can keep going all night but probably shouldn't; new job means getting up early.)