Owen Blacker
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owenblacker.bsky.social
Owen Blacker
@owenblacker.bsky.social
🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇵🇸♿⧖ he/him, cis.

Queer political geek; proud social justice warrior+trans ally. Queering Wikipedia (and chair of @wmlgbt.org), Open Rights Group, ex-mySociety. Dysgwr. My opinions, not my employer’s.

t.me/owenblacker
owen.blacker.me.uk
If you see this, post your getaway vehicle.

If I can't have the 1st, the 2nd will do.
November 24, 2025 at 3:24 PM
A niche problem, but ever since the latest the-cruelty-is-the-point bullshit from the Home Office, I keep glancing past tweets and headlines and wondering what that lovely Italian singer has just done.
November 18, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Just looking at @willhaycardiff.bsky.social’s latest newsletter and I didn’t realise there had been fascists on the steps of the Senedd.

And jfc, this first banner is not subtle! At least these scum still feel the need to hide their faces.

willhaywardwales.substack.com/p/the-zack-p...
November 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
I've become very fond of Bookerly and Literata, the fonts used by Amazon and Google for their e-readers, mainly for their legibility but I really want an excuse to buy Hoefler & Co's Inkwell family www.typography.com/fonts/inkwel...
November 16, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Surely one of the best pissing it down scenes in cinema:
November 15, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Amusing question on a Green Party leaflet here.

Famously those are the only 2 parties running for the Senedd, of course.
November 15, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Well, at least they're self-aware, I guess…
November 11, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Just reading this piece by @clclark.bsky.social on “18 Books to Read after The Sovereign” and, well, no lies detected.

clclarkwrites.com/18-books-to-...
November 11, 2025 at 9:20 AM
I went to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, with beautiful brutalist 1960s architecture.

Along the Lasdun Teaching Wall, floor 0 is walkway level, floors above are 1, 2…, floors below are 01, 02… and ground level depends on the part of the building

purcellarchitecture.com/project/univ...
November 10, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Pleased Transport Sec's response here seems pretty sensible >>
Metal detectors at train stations would ‘make life impossible’, says UK transport secretary
Heidi Alexander says security review after Cambridgeshire train stabbings will consider all other options
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
November 3, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Seen this elsewhere — and Wales Online has posted a blur-censored version, so I assume its true.

Caerffili adding to the reasons why mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i fi.
October 26, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Wow, proper fascist propaganda on the White House website now — and this is the only mention of events about minoritised people. Nothing about the signing of equality acts, for example
October 25, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Interesting that Zoom has improved to handle their autocaptions better.

I am watching a #QueeringWikipedia presentation being given in Spanish and listening to the English live-interpretation and Zoom is showing both subtitles, but not showing the French, that I am not listening to.

I'm impressed!
October 25, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Does Spotify use us-east-1 to serve adverts?

I'm finding the app player is crashing on me every few tracks…

(Apparently the problem is not limited to us-east-1 — a colleague posted this image to Slack earlier — but this might be because some AWS services are *only* supplied in us-east-1)
October 20, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Best. Reactji. Ever.
October 20, 2025 at 9:53 AM
I'm not sure where from, but a colleague posted this to our Slack thread about it earlier
October 20, 2025 at 9:52 AM
On the occasion of Margaret Thatcher's 100th birthday, I hope everyone here will join me in raising a toast to her still being dead
October 13, 2025 at 1:44 PM
All the President"s Men is on BBC4 still and it's a great film, proper "this is how the news is made" stuff. If you haven't seen it before, it's well worth catching it on iPlayer

But dear gods I had forgotten (already) quote how strikingly handsome Robert Redford was.
October 9, 2025 at 10:16 PM
I don't have many 2026 books preordered yet, though I really enjoyed Queen of Faces by Petra Lord; I read an ARC of that recently.

Here's my spreadsheet of pre-orders from end-Sept 2025 onwards:
October 7, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Erm, Spotify?

One of these tracks is not like the others…
October 7, 2025 at 8:10 AM
I just searched and it suggested a keyword; this is the result of clicking that
October 2, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Anyone got any idea why MacOS's Calendar.app might suddenly have stopped being able to sync with 1, but only 1, of the calendars from my Google account?

It is happily syncing with several others from the same Google account, but the only info is a Server error HTTP code. Are there logs somewhere?
October 2, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Apparently I am 60% hot, 31.67% crazy, which places me in the fun zone. This feels implausible.

www.idrlabs.com/hot-crazy-sc...

(I am not endorsing the chart segments or even the very idea of "crazy" people being with avoiding. I am definitely not endorsing the idea that I am more hot than crazy)
September 30, 2025 at 11:48 AM
And I thought they were attractive *before* realising they're all so tall!

(from www.reddit.com/r/strictlyco... )
September 27, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Ngl, kinda disappointed that nobody on any of today's calls has commented on my new t-shirt, with lots of kawaii versions of Derpy, the 바보호랑이 from K-Pop Demon Hunters
September 26, 2025 at 10:41 AM