Abelian
LightNews LightNews
banner
abelian.bsky.social
Abelian
@abelian.bsky.social
87 followers 330 following 480 posts
Trying to commute less these days.

DMs turned off because of the UK censors.
Posts Replies Media Videos
abelian.bsky.social
You might not like them, but the voters made sure they got a non-Reform MP instead of wasting their votes on some no-hoper third party.
Caerphilly by-election results 2025.
November 25, 2025 at 8:51 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Somebody please tell the Times.
The Times: Shabana Mahmood says rights watchdog undermines UK case to stay in ECHR.
October 15, 2025 at 4:00 PM
abelian.bsky.social
Farage didn't have the power to deliver Brexit. He wasn't even an MP at the time. Who actually voted to deliver Brexit by triggering Article 50?
A section of the list of MPs who voted in favour of triggering Article 50 to exit the EU. Includes Redwood, Rees-Mogg and, er, Rachel Reeves.
October 12, 2025 at 8:27 AM
abelian.bsky.social
All Guardian journalists should be made to live in an undeveloped open field for a few years, until they understand that people on cold rainy islands live in houses for more pressing reasons than making the GDP statistics look good.
From the article: "The findings underline the tensions and economic trade-off between the environmental loss of natural capital from development and the economic gains of residential and industrial development and their subsequent value to GDP."
October 2, 2025 at 6:56 AM
abelian.bsky.social
It's not even the main point, but look at the state of this. You aren't Andrei Sakharov, you're a gobshite journalist who thinks they should control what medical treatment other people's kids are allowed.
When trans rights activists and allies talk about this issue as a “culture war", they imply that advocates for single-sex sports and spaces, or against treating children with puberty-blocking drugs, lack the legitimacy of other human rights campaigners.
September 12, 2025 at 11:58 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Senators: "Like this, but make it digital!"
A family uses a pedestrian crossing on a rural road. They are waving orange flags in a doomed attempt to persuade drivers to look up from their phones. This is the US model for child safety.
September 10, 2025 at 11:52 AM
abelian.bsky.social
I'm sure this is perfectly safe and can be fixed by banning floating bus stops.
A bus stop in Gillingham with a car embedded in it. There is an emergency ambulance parked behind the car. The RNIB and NFBUK are nowhere to be seen, because the crash didn't involve a scooter or a bicycle.
September 3, 2025 at 10:56 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Poo Sticks (The Cows at Poo Sauna, 1928)
August 22, 2025 at 5:58 AM
abelian.bsky.social
No thanks, I'm not that hungry.
Web page headline: "10 types of perineal plants that provide food all year long"
July 22, 2025 at 4:28 PM
abelian.bsky.social
Do the Lib Dems agree with Sarah Gayton of the NFBUK that cycling should be banned on main streets, and then completely halted?

www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/plea...
"We think there needs to be a lot more thought put into all of this. We need to get cyclists on quieter routes rather than main roads. "They think we have been given a win. They think they are saying the right things. But they need to put a complete halt to it."
July 14, 2025 at 7:08 PM
abelian.bsky.social
Mr Blobby leaning on a post, somewhere outside Turkmenistan.
July 12, 2025 at 3:25 PM
abelian.bsky.social
Advice for any young people who might inadvertently have strayed onto this site: if you find yourself using the phrase "floating island bus stop", you might have the munchies. Eat some chocolate, ignore whatever the dog is saying, and take a bit less next time.
A floating island dessert. Tastier and only slightly less nutritious than a bus stop (not shown).
June 29, 2025 at 7:59 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Some good news for once: guide dogs are getting much smarter. (Or their humans are getting much better hallucinogens. You decide.)
He said the guide dogs were resistant to going near the stops, saying: "When we say to them, 'Can you go on this floating island bus stop?', they say 'No.'
June 29, 2025 at 6:59 AM
abelian.bsky.social
OK, but that's just Labour being Labour. Maybe the public thinks the point of ID cards is to make life easier for immigrants?
From the Labour Together report, the top six potential advantages of introducing a digital identity, according to their polling. Reducing the number who access public services that are not entitled to - 29% Deterring people from coming to the UK illegally to work - 29% Reducing benefits fraud - 17% Making it harder for people who are in the UK illegally to access housing - 15% Making it harder for employers to employ those who do not have the right to work in the UK - 13% Reducing exploitation of illegal migrants and modern slavery - 12%
June 17, 2025 at 8:06 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Maybe I'm reading too much into this massive red banner in the report, but it doesn't read like advocacy for helping immigrants access government services more easily:
Quote from an anonymous focus group member, printed prominently in large red text in the Labour Together report: "We have taken lots of immigrants. We are an island [and] it puts a strain on all the services. It comes to a point where you need to say enough is enough.”
June 17, 2025 at 7:50 AM
abelian.bsky.social
This is, um, not *exactly* what happened to the Baltic states after WWII.
"The western powers did the same after WW2. Lump together previously separated Baltic countries & call them Yugoslavia. Leading directly to the genocidal Balkan war during the 1990s."
May 28, 2025 at 6:45 AM
abelian.bsky.social
I don't know the area at all, but I suspect I wouldn't bother with that diversion either. Adds complexity to the route and takes you back to the towpath only a few hundred yards from where you started. Imagine a 5-10 mile commute made up of back street loops like that. You'd need a satnav.
Map of the area, showing the towpath as a smooth dashed curve and the diversion as a wiggly blue one.
March 30, 2025 at 4:22 PM
abelian.bsky.social
We were a bit vague about some of them at the time.
A probably apocryphal Second World War story records that one Intelligence Corps recruit told an interviewer that he knew 'Arabic, and Modern and Classical Greek. I can also read cuneiform and hieroglyphics.' 'What are hieroglyphics?' 'The language of the Pharaohs, sir.' He was duly posted to No. 319 Field Security Section in the Faroe Islands. (Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War By Geoffrey Elliott, Harold Shukman)
March 28, 2025 at 8:47 AM
abelian.bsky.social
I see that historians are still failing to acknowledge the role played in the spread of the Black Death by interrailing.
It has sparked fascination among many, but historian Dr Amy Boyington describes the medieval-themed video as "amateurish" and "evocative and sensational" rather than historically accurate. "It looks like something from a video game as it shows a world that is meant to look real but is actually fake." She points out inaccuracies like the depiction of houses with large glazed windows and a train track running through the town which wouldn't have existed in the 1300s.
February 23, 2025 at 1:29 PM
abelian.bsky.social
They're still at it. No, I don't want to unlock your editor's digestion. Have you tried the large prunes of Oxford?
More gibberish from a bot, offering to "unlock editor's digestion for free"
February 1, 2025 at 7:50 AM
abelian.bsky.social
The true purpose of the Northern leg of HS2 was always to provide a slush fund to be spent on fixing potholes in London. #POSIWID
A DfT poster boasting of the road improvements "made possible by rerouted HS2 funding".
January 30, 2025 at 12:22 PM
abelian.bsky.social
AI is my passion
AI-generated news site carrying a story about Rachel Reeves' new initiative relating to "large prunes of Oxford".
January 29, 2025 at 7:50 AM
abelian.bsky.social
So... Outlook and Teams?
A smoking-gun paragraph from the Guardian article: During the Gaza offensive, Microsoft's suite of communications and messaging systems were used by Ofek, an air force unit responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal strikes known as "target banks".
January 24, 2025 at 8:03 AM
abelian.bsky.social
I'm really not following the logic here, though:
She said the shape of the bottle was introduced in 1790 and its unevenness suggested it was hand-blown, adding that as moulds to make bottles were only introduced in 1840 it must have been made before that date.
January 23, 2025 at 8:43 AM
abelian.bsky.social
Spooky.
Rentaghost
December 16, 2024 at 3:53 PM