Good news, everyone! They've invented a robot disembodied hand that walks like Thing from the Addams Family. https://spectrum.ieee.org/walking-robotic-hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93BLyBPAfYs
Anyone have any suggestions for left-of-centre UK news? With the Canary down and New Statesman paywalling almost everything I'm running short. Don't mention the Guardian. Depressing how the right wing have unlimited money to blast out their own free-to-read news/propaganda and we have so little.
A certified poet from Slough,
Whose methods of rhyming were rough,
Retorted, “I see
That the letters agree
And if that’s not sufficient I’m through.”
— Clifford Witting
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/04/09/limerick-23/
The UK govt is currently holding a "consulation" which they intend to use to justify unfair and punitive changes to UK immigration to appease the far right:
https://migrantsrights.org.uk/2026/01/29/earned-settlement-consultation/
It takes 20-30 minutes but UK resisdents please fill in the consulation:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/earned-settlement
There is a guide to how to respond here:
https://migrantsrights.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/MRN-Earned-Settlement-Consultation-Response.docx.pdf
#ukpol This is really disturbing, judge mysteriously removed from Palestine Action case. It's like Putin and similar regimes: declare dissidents to be terrorists and get tame judges to confirm it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/25/removal-judge-palestine-action-ban-legal-challenge-justice-chamberlain
https://www.thecanary.co/skwawkbox/2025/11/26/palestine-action-legal-challenge-2/
#ukpol Ian Dunt: The populist assault on the #BBC
https://iandunt.substack.com/p/extra-edition-the-populist-assault
Nobody seems to ask for their balls back anymore. The back garden has one football, three soft cricket balls, and a blue ball. They could have come from either side or gardens at the back. When I chuck them back at random though they just get returned.
Where does the money go when there's a stock market crash? https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/03/where-does-money-go-in-a-crash/
(Richard Murphy can be a big flaky on some topics, but this is a clear and accurate explanation of where the money has "gone" when the news says "billions wiped off the stock market today") #economics
I'm part way through watching Star Trek: Discovery (s3e2) and I don't get how Airiam got a cool cyborg body after her horrific accident, but Captain Pike is stuck in a Victorian bath chair
Word of the day: "Brayette". Chain-mail underpants to be worn under plate armour so you can't be stabbed in the groin when you move your legs, exposing a gap in the armour. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brayette
TFW you think "OH SHIT I FORGOT TO TAKE IT OUT OF THE OVEN IT'LL BE BURNT TO A CRISP" but fortunately you also forgot to put it into the oven in the first place
Great 33 minute video of a bearded man talking about caltrops, from the ancient world to modern Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxFD3Wjhgck
My 11yo kid has to do some homework involving researching generative AI. How can I show him its limits & flaws right now? ChatGPT doesn't seem to create fake lawsuits or fictional railways when I tried just now.
Apparently Hell is very well organized, ruled by 72 demons, each with their own sigil and bureaucracy
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/11/09/org-chart/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goetia
Early road-testing of annoying my son by calling "Five Guys" "Four Dudes" is inconclusive so far
Listened to a podcast that claimed there have already been sightings of the ghost of Queen Elizabeth II. Come off it. She was 96 when she died, how much Unfinished Business can she possibly have had left? No sympathy for ghosts that age TBH, you should just have got on with it.
Why a village in North Holland has a coat of arms depicting a chicken wearing trousers:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2024/09/16/canting-arms/
Fascinating #podcast interview with Rebecca Futo Kennedy on ancient Athenian women, has some good stuff on how Victorian scholars projected their rigid wife/virgin/prostitute categories into dictionaries and scholarship #ancienthistory #history
https://partialhistorians.com/2022/06/30/special-episode-ancient-athenian-women-with-rebecca-futo-kennedy/
Crypto, As a Political Characteristic:
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/crypto-as-a-political-characteristic
Good substack article by Sofia Coppala debunking three myths of UK employment https://coppolacomment.substack.com/p/the-myths-that-refuse-to-die
* The myth of the "tide of unskilled immigration"
* The myth of the falling participation rate
* The myth of the "workless yoof".