Are you a member of:

#poll

The Victorian scientists crowded into the conference hall. In the center of the stage, a pigeon-sized green bird with a yellow beak perched on a tall stand, calmy and intelligently surveying the assembled gentlemen (women were not permitted).

After the hubbub had settled, Sir Cuthbert Flummox took the stage and stood proudly next to the exotic bird.

"The answer is an emphatic yes," he said. "AI---Animal Intelligence---is real. My research zoologists have scoured the world and we have found an animal amenable to be trained for higher-order thinking."

He paused to let the magnitude of the discovery sink in. "The shortage of engineers and colonial administrators will be a thing of the past."

He held out his hand, and the bird carefully stepped onto his wrist. All eyes were locked onto the strange bird. Flummox held up the bird and asked in a loud voice, "What is your name?"

"Pretty Polly" squawked the parrot. An audible gasp swept around the auditorium, followed by an excited murmur.

"Where are we?" demanded Flummox.

The bird hopped onto one leg and, after a pause, screeched "London!"

Journalists were rushing out of the hall to stop the presses.

"What,"thundered Flummox, "is five plus seven?"

The bird was startled by the commotion in the hall and the overbearing inventor. It briefly hid its head under its wing, and when the hall subsided, it straightened up and said proudly, "Ten!"

Flummox smiled and turned to the audience. "Yes every new technology has its growing pains, but the intelligence and potential of this bird is self-evident. All that is required is more training. I am offering the prescient investors of the city the opportunity to sieze the new frontier of AI with me!"

#microfiction #ai

Climate science denial in physical form.
The Land Rover Defender X (yup - they've gone full Musk). Price: £103,460, plus a few kids' lives. 🧵

West African Governments Are Turning LGBTQ+ People Into Criminal Targets.

This is bad.

https://www.transunitedfund.com/p/west-african-governments-are-turning

The Labour Party are transphobic: Repost.

Labour loves to celebrate representation but only when it's politically convenient.

Often, when election results come in, the party proudly boasts that Westminster is the "gayest parliament in the world." Indeed, the recently elected Mayor of Manchester, the amazing Bev Craig, is gay.

But as we hear about record numbers of LGB MPs, diversity milestones, and Labour’s history of championing civil rights, trans people are left out.

It is an LGB parliament with the T completely erased.

Out of 650 MPs, how many are openly trans? Zero.

Out of over 700 active Peers in the House of Lords, how many are trans? Zero.

To understand how staggering this absence is, look at the demographic context again.

Britain's Jewish community makes up roughly 0.5% of the population (~280,000 people). Today, as throughout modern history, Jewish citizens are represented by dozens of Jewish MPs and Peers across the political spectrum.

This is how a healthy democracy works: a minority community having a direct, articulate voice where decisions about their lives are made.

Britain's trans community is also roughly 0.5% (~260,000 people).

Yet trans people have zero parliamentary representation. We are legislated on, debated over, and talked about every day by a Parliament where not a single person holding power shares our lived experience.

When a minority faces systemic underrepresentation, the law provides tools to fix it. The Equality Act 2010- the legislation Labour claims as its proudest civil rights legacy - explicitly permits Positive Action (under Sections 158 and 159). It allows political parties to take targeted steps to overcome disadvantage, build pipelines, and encourage participation.

Labour knows how to use Positive Action when it wants to:

It pioneered All-Women Shortlists to transform female representation.

It created dedicated mentoring and selection pathways for ethnic minority candidates.

So, what positive action has Labour taken for trans members?

None. Zero. Absolute zilch.

No dedicated pipelines. No selection initiatives. No structural measures to encourage, mentor, or protect trans candidates facing hostile political abuse.

While the Conservatives have loaded the House of Lords with terfs, Labour has done nothing.

Instead of positive action, Labour has delivered negative action: stripping trans women of rights in party democracy, shutting down debate, and refusing basic consultation.

Representation isn't achieved by accident; it requires political will and structural investment.

If Labour actually believed in the Equality Act, it wouldn't just use it as a shield to justify exclusion. It would use it as a tool to build true representation.

Until Labour takes positive action for trans representation, its claims remain what they truly are: an LGB victory wrapped in the illusion of equality, built on the political erasure of trans people.

@portstc @lab4transrights @tomlondon6 @petertatchell @dailymirror @peterstefanovi2 @angelarayner @emily4mk @racheltaylormp @nadiawhittomemp @stellacreasy @angelaeagle @bbcwomanshour @goodlawproject @gmb_Southampton @gmb @the_tuc @ianbyrnemp @mainstreamlbr @tonyvaughanmp @samtarry @alexsobel @cmmonwealth @kateosbornemp @rachaelmaskell @lewis_goodall @peterklamb @alfdubs @dawnbutlerbrent @openlabour @libby_brooks @ehrc @stsantek @lucympowell @jacobcolliermp

Plus, female stunt doubles playing Matt Damon is drag, and I don't want my children exposed to sexualized content! /Sarcasm

Trump said "To the victor go the spoils." So I guess the Iranians have the $13 billion from Venezuela.

In my historically accurate film of the Odyssey, stunt doubles for men will all be biological men! To make sure I will do genital exams, chromosomes! Also no Low T men on the set!!! /Sarcasm

#musk #trans #odyssey

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/aug/02/matt-damon-stunt-double-the-odyssey-devyn-dalton

This is Wurzel. She wants you to know she recently discovered that cats are not just intruders and mouse thieves. If you catch them little and treat them nice, cats love to play fun with you.

Also, their paws have teeth. Not a lot of people know that.

#dogsOfMastodon

I watched a kitten climb its first tree. Then I watched a kitten get rescued for the first time.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@luckytran/117022276048555718

I posted on Facebook about my experiences working the COVID ICU in 2020. It ultimately led the end of 20 years of hospital chaplaincy when in August of 2020 I suffered a mental breakdown.

The post has over 500 comments and counting. Half of them are other healthcare professionals sharing their stories.

The other half are people calling me a murderer, saying I should be executed, and that I am a granny killer. Comment after comment fat-shaming me, telling me I should have died, and threatening to harm me and my family. Six years after surviving COVID and we still have to deal with this abuse.

Listen, so many of us who worked in the COVID wards wish we had died. Many of us deal every day with survivor’s guilt. I still wake up screaming some nights because I am dreaming about what I witnessed on my 15-hour night shifts. I can still see the faces of the hundreds of patients I watched die.

Yes, therapy helps. But it is still haunting me after all these years. And I still wonder why them and not me.

And stupid me would still go and do it all over again if called.

Yes, I was “only” a chaplain. But let me tell you what I had to do every night. I would start off my night doing rounds of the hundreds of patients in the COVID ICU. Then, I had to go to the worst-off patients and start reaching out to their families. You see, we did the “compassionate extubations” at night. That way we could move their bodies to the morgue with fear of meeting too many people in the halls. So one of my jobs was to contact the families and set up with them a time overnight to contact them on a video call where they could say goodbye to their loved one virtually.

Hundreds of patients in 2020 died at our hospital of COVID. 80% were at night while I was on shift. I was the last person to hold their hand. I was the last voice they heard, if they were even able to hear me. So many families would say goodbye and hang up because they could not handle watching their loved one die.

And then came the supporting of the medical staff tasked with removing them from life support. So many nurses, doctors, and even orderlies who needed to talk, to vent, and to cry. Then on to the next patient.

There were no births to attend to. No happy moments of seeing a COVID patient survive and leave the hospital for me. No, my entire job was in the COVID ICU. The place people entered and left in a body bag.

Who did I talk to? Who did I vent to? No one. No one in administration had considered us Chaplains. We were there to help everyone else cope. We didn’t need any support.

After my breakdown, the hospital changed a lot of things. There were no more 15-hour overnight shifts. It was divided into two shifts overnight. Professional therapists were made available to the chaplains to debrief. It was too late for me, but thankfully the next wave would have a better support system.

I have spent 5 years in therapy now with the diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder and CPTSD. I still struggle. And all this with Dr. Fauci has not helped. It has just reignited old wounds. He deserves our thanks, not a kangaroo court to distract from all the failures of this administration.

Sorry to ramble. And sorry to vent. As so many commenters have pointed out, I am just too weak and worthless to handle the “fake” COVID lie.

I assume that in a few years it will be illegal to say how hot it is

Hey so the Trump regime unilaterally forced Haitian Americans into undocumented status, and is now using that undocumented status as an excuse to force them to wear ankle monitors.

A reminder that the "just follow the law" crowd is lying. It was never about following the law, it was always about banning Black and brown immigrants to advance white supremacy and Christian nationalism. Wake Up.

This morning while watering my vegetable patches I saw five bees in one pumpkin flower. I have never seen more than one bee in a flower before, but to be fair there is plenty of room in a pumpkin flower.

The next time anyone says 'you can't tax the rich, they will leave!' just point at JK Rowling's ongoing attacks on vulnerable communities and weaponisation of the courts against charities and then ask them if they think any one person having that level of influence in a nation is really a good thing.

If someone attended a birthday party and started eating everything, unwrapping and stealing gifts, bullying other people and making threats to anyone who said no, you'd ask them to leave, buying an electric car company or writing child cop wizard books doesn't exempt them from playing nice with others.

Fuck big cars.

#climateCrisis

Christopher Harry on buying an SUV – cartoon Christopher Harry on buying an SUV – cartoon https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/aug/01/christopher-harry-buying-suv-cartoon?CMP=share_btn_url

RE: https://mstdn.social/@stux/113974665364673502

Don't forget

Astrophysical jets are associated with many types of high-energy astronomical sources, such as black holes, neutron stars and pulsars. Their causes are not yet fully understood, but they are believed to arise from dynamic interactions within accretion disks. One explanation is that as an accretion disk spins, it generates a rotating, tangled magnetic field which concentrates material from the disk into the jets and then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet

#void #astrophysics #caturday #caturdayeveryday