Owen Blacker
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owenblacker.bsky.social
Owen Blacker
@owenblacker.bsky.social
2.6K followers 2.9K following 9.8K posts
🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇵🇸♿⧖ 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
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owenblacker.bsky.social
If you see this, post your getaway vehicle.

If I can't have the 1st, the 2nd will do.
The Rocinante. A legitimate salvage. The Screaming Firehawk, previously Julie Mao's Razorback.
November 24, 2025 at 3:24 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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.
Italy's Eurovision 2022 entrants Mahmood (left) and Blanco naked on the cover of Vanity Fair, cropped just below the navel.
November 18, 2025 at 10:41 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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...
Fascists hiding their faces, with a banner that uses the triple-parentheses that fash used to surround Jewish people’s names about a decade ago. The banner also features runes and a stylised eagle. Fascists hiding their faces, holding a black-and-white flag, with a black field, a union flag in the canton and a stylised eagle in the lower fly. They didn't remember to iron the flag.
November 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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...
Bookerly, a clean open serif typeface Literata, a clean open serif typeface Samples from the Inkwell type family, showing Tuscan, Blackletter, sans, open-face and serif faces
November 16, 2025 at 10:41 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
Surely one of the best pissing it down scenes in cinema:
The rain scene from Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love The rain scene from Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love The rain scene from Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love The rain scene from Wong Kar-Wei's In the Mood for Love
November 15, 2025 at 11:18 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
Amusing question on a Green Party leaflet here.

Famously those are the only 2 parties running for the Senedd, of course.
Q13: Would you prefer a Reform MS or a Green MS? A fyddai'n well gennych Aelod o'r Senedd o Blaid Reform neu o'r Blaid Werdd?
November 15, 2025 at 1:58 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
Well, at least they're self-aware, I guess…
After a heading reading "Comfort", Cherae writes "Admittedly, this is not my area of expertise"
November 11, 2025 at 9:22 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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-...
A heading reads "More Pain", followed by a recommendation for "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" by Seth Dickinson
November 11, 2025 at 9:20 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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...
A view down onto part of UEA's Teaching Wall and its walkway level. Everything is made of concrete A different view down onto part of UEA's Teaching Wall and its walkway level, showing steps down, so the walkway level changes relative to ground level. Everything is made of concrete
November 10, 2025 at 7:44 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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...
Alexander said there would be visible patrols of British Transport Police officers at stations for the next few days to reassure passengers, but rejected the idea of security scanners or arches. “I don’t think airport-style scanners would be the way to go,” the transport secretary told Sky News. “I understand why you asked the question, and I understand why some of your viewers might be wondering about that. “We have thousands of railway stations across the UK, and those stations have multiple entrances, multiple platforms. What we can’t do is make life impossible for everyone, but we do need to take sensible and proportionate steps to make the public transport network safe.” A review of train security measures could provide other answers, Alexander said, citing the example of the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attack, in which a van was driven at pedestrians, and after which vehicle blockers were put in place for pavements on several bridges in the capital. Asked what else could be done, Alexander said however horrific the attack on Saturday, public transport was “generally is a low crime environment”. She said: “Our trains are some of the most safest forms of public transport anywhere in the world. For every 1 million passenger journeys that are made, there are 27 crimes.”
November 3, 2025 at 9:36 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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.
The Caerphilly office of Reform Cymru is caused, with metal shutters down over its frontage. Someone has graffiti'd "now u can fuck off home" into the shutters.
October 26, 2025 at 5:16 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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
A screenshot from the White House website, showing Islamophobic libel against President Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood, promotion of a Tennis Pavilion built by Melania Trump, a "cocaine discovered" headline libelling Hunter Biden, and a short mention of Trans Day of Visibility unsing the dated term "transexuals"
October 25, 2025 at 6:12 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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!
Bilingual subtitles from Zoom's automatic captioning
October 25, 2025 at 5:51 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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)
Most reported problems: us-east-1: 46% eu-west-1: 38% eu-central-1: 16%
October 20, 2025 at 9:56 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
Best. Reactji. Ever.
Abe Simpson shouting at clouds. Except the clouds have been replaced by an AWS Cloud logo
October 20, 2025 at 9:53 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
I'm not sure where from, but a colleague posted this to our Slack thread about it earlier
Most reported problems: us-east-1: 46% eu-west-1: 38% eu-central-1: 16%
October 20, 2025 at 9:52 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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
"The Margaret Thatcher flag": reds represent Hell, where she is, brown represents dirt, where her body is, grey represents her tombstone and yellow represents piss. I gather in American English, this is known as "the Ronald Reagan flag". Two countries divided by a common language, huh. A quote from Margaret Thatcher that has been deliberately-badly edited to read "The problem with pissing on my grave is that you eventually run out of piss"
October 13, 2025 at 1:44 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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.
Robert Redford on the phone, a still from All the President's Men
October 9, 2025 at 10:16 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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:
A colourful spreadsheet, listing the following books: A Ruin, Great and Free Cadwell Turnbull, 16 Sept 2025 The Sovereign CL Clark, 30 Sept 2025 (in progress) Fate’s Bane CL Clark, 30 Sept 2025 Shy Trans Banshee Tony Santorella, 2 Oct 2025 (ARC read, review outstanding) A Mouthful of Dust Nghi Vo, 7 Oct 2025 The Door on the Sea Caskey Russell, 7 Oct 2025 Red Star Hustle / Apprehension Sam J Miller & Mary Robinette Kowal, 30 Oct 2025 The Great Work Sheldon Costa, 4 Nov 2025 Black Flame Gretchen Felker-Martin, 4 Nov 2025 Brigands and Breadknives Travis Baldree, 13 Nov 2025 The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver Rafael Torrubia, 27 Nov 2025 The Wolf and His King Finn Longman, 27 Nov 2025 We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope Annalee Newitz & Karen Lord & Malka Older, 2 Dec 2025 Seen: Willem Arondeus Anthony Oliveira & Killian Ng, 31 Dec 2025 The Regicide Report Charles Stross, 27 Jan 2026 Queen of Faces Petra Lord, 29 Jan 2026 (ARC read, review outstanding) The Red Winter Cameron Sullivan, 26 Feb 2026 The Language of Liars SL Huang, 21 Apr 2026 A Long and Speaking Silence Nghi Vo, 5 May 2026 The Last Contract of Isako Fonda Lee, 5 May 2026 Espíritu Aiden Thomas, 10 Sept 2026
October 7, 2025 at 4:52 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
Erm, Spotify?

One of these tracks is not like the others…
One of Spotify's Daily Mix playlists. 10 tracks are shown, of which 9 are from film soundtracks. The outlier is Firestarter by The Prodigy.
October 7, 2025 at 8:10 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
I just searched and it suggested a keyword; this is the result of clicking that
A screenshot from Netflix showing 38 matches for "Transgender Films & TV Series")
October 2, 2025 at 2:49 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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?
Your calendar events couldn't be refreshed. The calendar "Owen (shared)" failed to update because of an unexpected error. The request for "Owen (shared)" in account [redacted] failed. The server responded with "500"
October 2, 2025 at 8:50 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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)
A dot is in the purple segment of the lower right quadrant, apparently making me more hot and less crazy than average. Both of which feel unlikely A chart with a hot axis horizontally and a crazy axis vertically. The left-hand half of the chat is labelled "no-go zone". If crazy is greater than hot out is the crazy zone. The rest of where hot is between 5 and 8 out of 10 is the purple fun zone. For hot over 8, crazy over 5 is the date zone, crazy between 2 and 5 is labelled marriage and crazy under 2 is labelled unicorn
September 30, 2025 at 11:48 AM
owenblacker.bsky.social
And I thought they were attractive *before* realising they're all so tall!

(from www.reddit.com/r/strictlyco... )
Neil Jones 5ft9 Carlos Gu 5ft10 Nikita Kuzmin 5ft11 Vito Coppola 5ft11 Johannes Radebe 6ft Aljaž Škorjanec 6ft Julian Caillon 6ft Kai Widdrington 6ft2
September 27, 2025 at 7:50 PM
owenblacker.bsky.social
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
Me, wearing the t-shirt described in the skeet. A bike and 6-stripe Pride flags are visible in the background
September 26, 2025 at 10:41 AM