i tend to only take advantage (is that the right word?) of #BandcampFriday when it falls near a payday. and in any case i tend not to wear my commercial choices on my sleeve.

but it seems to me that more people deserve to know about Cinder Well. They have albums on bandcamp and i bought one.

if you're up for angsty alt-folk that might turn your heart inside out, this is that.

(If you liked the theme of the UK show Small Prophets, that was them.)

#Bandcamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymxCN77-uDw

BTW -- that policy about ridding the country of homelessness? I think it's bloody silly.

That's not a policy, because you can't control whether people are homeless or not. It's like saying you'll have a policy of no more heatwaves, or winning the world cup.

Sure, you can do things as a government to _help_ prevent homelessness. And we should definitely do that! But that's the policy, not "ending homelessness!!!1one!" -- which is just a soundbite.

so, we've had Burnhams first speech. time to review all those "andy burnham will say…" news articles that we were praising or damning him for on here.

did he say he'd grant new drilling licenses? no. did he in fact say any of the things we were authoratatively told he would say? no, none of them.

are any of them going to be policy? WE. DON'T. KNOW. YET.

#UKPol

https://mastodon.social/@netpol/116879949104640174

**Ofsted drops ‘clumsy’ and ‘offensive’ guidance linking autism and extremism**

> "[…] children with autism […] trust the information they read and the ‘friends’ that they find online and so can be drawn into extremism,”

now denying the guidance (which is a matter of record) ever existed:

> “Ofsted does not – and has never – labelled children with autism as ‘likely extremists’. …"

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jul/05/ofsted-drops-autism-extremism-guidance

asking for #advice again, sorry.

i'm now officially #diabetic (type 2) and looking to control it with diet. (hence the last request for advice.)

information about nutrition on the internet has always been a hot mess, more so in these days of so-called "Al".

can anyone recommend an _authoritative_ source on the amount of carbohydrate in basic foods?

searching online i see *wildly* different numbers for, eg, potato.

edit: okay, wow! thank you, everyone! You'll all wonderful! Love this place!

isn't… isn't it supposed to get colder overnight?

it's not yet 8am and it's been 31°C in my office since 2am?

Slightly odd. I don't often use the web interface. It turns out that there was a follower request waiting for me to authorise.

I don't have that turned on, though. It came with a message saying someone (presumably the mods?) thought I might want to authorise this one anyway?

What's that about?

I don't immediately see any red flags about the account unless I start to get paranoid. I won't say who it is. I've put a note on the account. They are local to this instance.

does anyone have any recomendations for a recipie book for proper, old fashioned hippie food? brown rice, lentils, beans?

seems i have to eat more healthy now. in my case, this sort of food is a good match — and i really love eating it…

feel free to boost.

edit: suggestions for modern search terms for this sort of food would be useful, too.

re: voting, take a look here. ignore the text, scroll down to where it says:

**Makerfield's left and right voting blocs remain largely unchanged**

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/19/nigel-farage-urges-restore-voters-to-back-reform-after-disappointing-night-in-makerfield

So, despite all the bluster by every party, what appears to have happened in #Makerfield is: if you normally voted for reform, the tories or the like, you carried on as normal; if you voted for any party that claimed to be of the centre or left, you voted for #Burnham.

This is either a ringing endorsement of the Labour candidate, or an act of collective grownupness by left voters in an attempt to fix things.

Either way, it's rather remarkable.

**UK could keep special pre-Brexit terms if it rejoined EU, Michel Barnier says**

> …said he could not see any obstacle to the UK keeping the pound and remaining outside the passport-free Schengen travel area should the country rejoin.

bloody hell! that's quite the come-hither!

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/18/uk-could-keep-special-pre-brexit-terms-if-it-rejoined-eu-michel-barnier-says

… what's more it was clear that each new doctor had to be more manic than the last, and each story had to run purely on adrenaline, never mind making sense.

i gave up watching a while ago. the old Who was genuinely a show for both adults and children. the new who gradually stopped being that, i felt.

i did watch a few with Jodie Whittaker, and was delighted to find that she made an excellent Doctor; but the stories were no better.

so it might be the end of Dr Who. my no-doubt extremely unpopular take, so i'll dodge using the hashtag: maybe it's, if you'll excuse the expression, time.

i was really pleased for it to return. Davies did a good job initially, but centring the stories on the doctor themselves was always going to be problematic. in the original show, each plot was about the characters and the story *they* told, into which the doctor was inserted as an enigma.

do you know what i would like? when the news reports on an announcement about technology from the government, the news then asks people who actually know about that technology whether it's bollocks or not.

easy job; it usually is.

oh, brilliant. just had a very unpleasant conversation with two workmen who tried to convince me i suddenly owed them a lot of money.

it was a fairly obvious con cleverly obscured by the fact that they did real work for me first.

now i have to decide if it's in my best interests to call the police.

i'm not sure how well the quote-toot thing is working, technically. often (in Tusky, at least) i just see "post pending".

i confess i don't know what i'll think if Burnham loses to the Green candidate.

feels like the Greens putting party before country, there. Like standing down so folks would vote for Burnham would be a "greater good".

humans are so petty and combative.

#microfiction
Once i had all the safety gear on – and there was a lot – they led me to a giant steel door.

"I thought," I said, having to raise my voice to be heard through the layers of padding in the helmet, "that you were hiring an IT manager?"

"We are," they said, beckoning me over and throwing open a little port in the door.

They indicated that I should look through the port. Hot red light poured through it.

"Behold: IT."

… i suspect that this has been caused by a law written ambiguously in english, or worse, by someone *thinking* ambiguously in english.