Nora Thurkle
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norathurkle.bsky.social
Nora Thurkle
@norathurkle.bsky.social
160 followers 270 following 41 posts
Teacher/writer. Work placed in Aurora, London Magazine, Galley Beggar and Bristol Short Story Prizes, and featured in Motherlore, Lunate, Liars' League etc. Catford Cat fan. 🏳️‍🌈 she/her
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theactualemma.bsky.social
Genuinely thought this was Ant from Ant and Dec
November 18, 2025 at 6:08 PM
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blipstress.bsky.social
A man?? winning the Booker prize????? Is that even possible? It hasn't happened since the far-flung days of 2023. Our legends say that a man also won it in the ancient, prehistoric era of 2021, but surely that is just an old wives tale meant to frighten MFA students before bed.
The Guardian view on the Booker prize winner: putting masculinity back at the centre of literary fiction | Editorial
Editorial: David Szalay’s Flesh breaks from a decade of female-centred interiors and reopens a genre many thought closed to men
www.theguardian.com
November 16, 2025 at 1:18 AM
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kthorjensen.bsky.social
Wife bought some scissors from a trusted brand
“Hnncugty” brand scissors
November 14, 2025 at 12:05 AM
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alistaircoleman.bsky.social
Happy Fenton Day to all who celebrate. Jesus Christ, fourteen years.

youtu.be/3GRSbr0EYYU
JESUS CHRIST IN RICHMOND PARK: ORIGINAL UPLOAD
YouTube video by JAGGL113
youtu.be
November 13, 2025 at 8:43 AM
norathurkle.bsky.social
This bastard is stopping me doing any MA work
nationalbooktokens.bsky.social National Book Tokens @nationalbooktokens.bsky.social · 6d
Booklovers, your favourite game is back! 📚🔎

Guess all 20 books in the #HiddenBooksGame and you could win a £500/€500 National Book Token to spend in your local bookshop (the best gift ever, in our opinion).

Play now: buff.ly/460M0aR
An illustration of this year's game. Text says: "Hidden Books Game is BACK! Play at nationalbooktokens.com" and "Win £500 to spend on books".
November 13, 2025 at 11:09 AM
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wardqnormal.bsky.social
Generative AI is ruining my motivation to teach. It is not a bold new era of information that I'm excited to see my students explore. It's a cheat that prevents them from thinking. It lets them avoid even a moment of confusion and struggle, necessary to process new ideas.
November 8, 2025 at 8:50 PM
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jcsalterego.bsky.social
bluesky branding refresh unveiled
"WEBSITE FOR 38 YEAR OLDS" in the style of Zohran Mamdani's campaign logo
November 8, 2025 at 9:18 PM
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adambecker.bsky.social
I get this a lot too. I don't use ChatGPT or any LLMs in my work because I want my writing to sound like me, not like the averaged-out voice of the internet. But also, writing is thinking, and thinking is a habit. I don't want to get out of that habit.
tressiemcphd.bsky.social Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 11d
A friend recently texted me the same thing. “Do you really not use ChatGPT?!” It was a sign of where we are culturally on this. People are compelled to use it but also starting to question the normalcy?
rostaylor.bsky.social Ros Taylor @rostaylor.bsky.social · 13d
Recently met someone who was very surprised to hear I didn’t use ChatGPT or any LLM.

I said my job depended on doing distinctive work. That was my selling point. If I started to sound like ChatGPT and turn out what it did, then how on earth could I justify doing it? What would that make me?
November 8, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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jordanpfot.bsky.social
Alan Carr........Best Actor Oscar. Nobel Prize. MacArthur Genius Grant. Ballon d’Or. Fields Medal. Legion of Honour. Victoria Cross. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Order of the British Empire. Key to the City. Grand Slam. Miss Universe.
October 29, 2025 at 9:37 PM
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jayzedbee.bsky.social
Alan carr winning the game and then winning psychologically by forcing the others to forgive him immediately....total superiority
November 6, 2025 at 10:08 PM
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danlehner.bsky.social
I think everybody has a “Wallace Shawn from Young Sheldon” — my first one would probably be “Vincent Price, the guy who did the voice of Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective”
November 3, 2025 at 1:33 AM
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nickkapur.bsky.social
Japan's "Mundane Halloween" costume contest is back!

Each year website DailyPortalZ holds a contest where people dress up as something super duper ordinary.

Here's a thread of some of my favorites from the 2025 contest!

#MundaneHalloween
November 2, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Nora Thurkle
athenakugblenu.bsky.social
If you want kids to read:

-Reopen the closed libraries
-Give them free books
-Sponsor author visits in schools with high % pupil premium or FSM students
-Work on adult literacy

Then Y8s will have a chance of passing this test

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Bridget Phillipson ‘ready to take on unions’ over year 8 reading tests
Education secretary says mandatory test needed to tackle ‘shocking outcomes’ for many working-class children
www.theguardian.com
November 1, 2025 at 4:28 PM
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glennyrodge.bsky.social
Spice Girls doing their thing in a video, with the words ‘Tonight is the night when two becomes one’, with the 2 and 1 replaced by clock emojis showing 2 O’clock and 1 O’clock, because the clocks are going back tonight, innit.
October 25, 2025 at 1:41 PM
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handle.invalid
The TES interview with Sami Timimi reeks of outdated eugenic paternalism dressed up as “critical thinking.” /🧵
autisticrealms.bsky.social Autistic Realms (Helen Edgar) @autisticrealms.bsky.social · Oct 18
Sami Timimi: Why ‘invented’ SEND labels are disabling pupils.....
"Diagnostic labels are medicalising young people for behaviours once considered ordinary and are contributing to unsustainable workload in schools"

Beyond harmful.

www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
Sami Timimi: Why ‘invented’ SEND labels are disabling pupils
Diagnostic labels are medicalising young people for behaviours once considered ordinary and are contributing to unsustainable workload in schools, argues psychiatrist Sami Timimi
www.tes.com
October 18, 2025 at 12:45 PM
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juniorhoncho.bsky.social
oh hey wassup Glen
a bunch of different dog pics labeled Rat terrier, Patterdale terrier, Welsh terrier, etc and then one of them just says Glen
October 18, 2025 at 3:33 AM
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scottygb.bsky.social
Tom Daley just posted this on TikTok #CelebrityTraitors
October 15, 2025 at 9:14 PM
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lutzfernandez.bsky.social
I've updated my document that tackles four of the common arguments used to encourage teachers to use AI.

I hope this will be helpful to those educators wanting to push back on AI mania.
Resisting School AI Mania Help Sheet
Help Sheet: Resisting AI Mania in Schools K-12 educators are under increasing pressure to use—and have students use—a wide range of AI tools. (The term “AI” is used loosely here, just as it is by man...
docs.google.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:23 PM
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seamas.bsky.social
These very true words from Steve Hely have given me tremendous comfort over the years.
Writing a novel— actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs— is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.
September 25, 2025 at 9:42 AM
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jamnpp.bsky.social
Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world,... I feel like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in.
October 11, 2025 at 2:27 PM
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ariadnereviews.bsky.social
I would immediately write down Stephen's name just because of this #CelebrityTraitors
October 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
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daniel-barker.bsky.social
Imagine you're at a writers' retreat with the lads and you're all showing off a draft after dinner and then your mate's girlfriend goes here is the novel Frankenstein which I just wrote
October 5, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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zapperfan7.bsky.social
John O'Connell

Hard to find a more accurate, succinct summary of the Reform Party.
October 5, 2025 at 11:46 AM
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meemalee.bsky.social
Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI
"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian
October 4, 2025 at 9:41 AM
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spryoldlorax.bsky.social
Some amazing gay history. Listen up kids.
I'm watching that documentary "Before Stonewall" about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting. The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one "known homosexual". The "known homosexual" is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson. So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there's nothing wrong with him mentally and he's never been arrested. When asked whether he'd take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he's gay, he says that they didn't up until tonight, but he guesses they're going to find out, and he'll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like ... why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says "I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself." 1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium. Despite the pseudonym, Dale's boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary. Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson's disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
September 24, 2025 at 11:00 PM