Tom Nicholls
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tomnicholls.bsky.social
Tom Nicholls
@tomnicholls.bsky.social
1K followers 890 following 1.8K posts
Research Software Engineer, occasional photographer, amateur parent, taxi driver to developing humans. Opinions self-inflicted. Londoner cast adrift in the north west. From Choreography and Merriment. Lancaster, UK
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Reposted by Tom Nicholls
But I do suspect the differences in press attention, along with the lack of social media and rolling news, are why people forget how much worse and more prevalent violence was in the 1990s.

I don’t recall commentators freaking out that they were terrified to go to supermarkets.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
It’s fascinating comparing the front page coverage of the Huntingdon train attack (below) with how the British press treated another case 30 years ago.

I’m referring to the 1995 Netto supermarket attack in Birmingham in which a man stabbed 10 people, killing one of them.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
The thing that really gets me about the "it never used to be like this" is they have just forgotten the UK spent nearly four decades in civil conflict including hundreds of bombings in the capital.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
Having posts prioritised by algorithm is what they do on twitter and Facebook and is one of the reasons we left. If you foist it on us here, it will not be popular.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
Make AI slop entertaining (at least)
When I gave up my Crystal Palace season ticket in 2008 just before moving north, if you'd told me that Palace would beat Liverpool 3 times in the first 3 months of 2025, I would have asked you how many divisions Liverpool had been relegated.
I'm currently appealing a Delay Repay claim from *5 months ago*. Thank goodness for ontimetrains.co.uk, without which it would be difficult to remember exactly which hour/minute I made the multiple connections of the journey in question.
On Time Trains
Find out how often your train journey is on time, look up recent services eligible for delay repay claims and check your station rankings.
ontimetrains.co.uk
Do they really think their product will survive public scrutiny? So naive...
Yes, of course, ET was probably the watershed moment.
My 1970s memory of halloween is the occasional competition to draw a witch or a ghost etc, but nothing substantial. I think adults were slightly wary of any possible anti-christian connotation. I definitely didn't know what trick-or-treating was.

Guy Fawkes night was relatively huge though.
This is interesting to me because a lot of people of my mum's generation insist we didn't have Halloween in Britain in the 1970s.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: a Words And Pictures Halloween special, with a scary pumpkin and an equally scary Henry Woolf.
I've been thinking about what drives crime to become a prominent political issue and have concluded in a completely-without-evidence way that it must be correlated with the amount of true crime programming on the telly.

Your move, scientists.
But 15 mins is an incredibly low bar, I agree.
Yes, healthy people walk more. No surprises in this paper as far as I can see.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
Glad I wasn't due to fly to #Iceland today - most of the flights were cancelled with heavy early snows. Quite unusual. Hoping things will be back to normal for my flight in 72 hours' time (yes, I'm counting!) so I can go and look for some more weird & wonderful things like this :)
Super image - enjoy your next trip, Sophie!
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If I were running Labour comms I would commission an app called 'Will the Tories/Reform deport you?' then let the reactions on TikTok and Instagram do their work.
Reposted by Tom Nicholls
An extraordinary photograph!
Morning glory from Senja Island…
This is an extraordinary photograph, Armand! 😲