Celestial M Weasel

Now do Oxford someone:-)

I made up a new form of Capital TYPES OF SOCIOLOGY PAPER ook it s all very omplicated and everythin c natters We made up a new sort of Labor dere going to ring this back In I take a SOCIOLOGICAL approach, unlike SOME people or Evil Reasons Five years of brutal, intensive ethnographic work suggests it sucks to have no money Can you believe there's still more o be squeezed ut of the GSS: Scandinavian Registry Data show mobility dependent on relative oatmeal content of grandparents® diet We got hold of this sweet data from Facebook; lol no you can't have it This seems very weird and bad but you re poor A critique of what I imagine the Economists believe

This is an officially recognized Type Of Paper, btw kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

it really goddamn bothers me but you all need to learn that GPEW and SGP aren't /just/ autonomous, they are /completely separate parties/

Graph of average annual fees for BA/BSc or equivalent courses in the OECD showing England as the most expensive and Nordics the least

Anglosphere agony vs Nordic nirvana.

(PS Can't believe I'd never seen this graph before, so grateful to @stephenkb.bsky.social for sharing in his fab morning newsletter (www.ft.com/inside-polit...)

‘The law changed around me’: top Sudanese students blocked from UK universities by visa ban [FREE TO READ] High-achieving applicants’ educational plans derailed by ‘emergency visa brake’

I'm trying to think who this idiocy is for, who would say: I wasn't going to vote Labour but now they've blocked a clearly exceptionally bright Sudanese woman from doing a postgraduate course in computational biology at Cambridge, I'm all in?

www.ft.com/content/4493...

The parents in the study were interested in the toy's potential to teach language and communication skills. However, their children frequently struggled to converse with it. Gabbo didn't hear their interruptions, talked over them, could not differentiate between child and adult voices and responded awkwardly to declarations of affection. When one five-year-old said, "I love you," to the toy, it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."

This is so tragic it's actually incredibly funny

Obviously the reported swings don't give a full picture in this sort of situation

I would like someone - a journalist, a backbencher, an opposition leader - to ask the prime minister to defend this, explicitly.

I want to know if the "purpose of this structure" is defined as "communal beheading of thieves" in the document.

www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/news/people/...

"I have enough unexplained wealth that I'm setting off anti-fraud checks at the bank. Better publicise this to HMRC in an article in the newspaper for some reason."

There was an electoral pact in the district council elections (one LibDem and one Green standing for two seats) but there wasn't for the by election. I think there tend not to be in this situation

Punk news: BrewDog founder James Watt is no longer describing himself as a "punk" in the LinkedIn profile that the multi-millionaire sometimes uses to rail against being asked to pay more tax.

My contempt for these 2 is bottomless.

points at everything and posts this again and again and again

The competition for dumbest Anglophone government remains stiff

Creative arts graduates aren't the problem – they're the subsidy Johnny Rich argues that low graduate salaries in the arts aren't a sign of poor courses – they're a sign of an industry that profits from exploiting its workforce

'some creative arts graduates don’t appear to earn a significant graduate premium, but the UK’s creative industries are worth £125bn a year or, to put it another way, more than £1 in every £20 in the UK economy – a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth than almost any other country on earth.' 1/3

It seems possible that all the US and Israel have done is prove to Iran that they can’t quickly topple the regime but also that they have little to lose now and some leverage over the world’s economy. Which wouldn’t be great for the region or for things settling down soon

For God's sakes, this coverage!

You know her name, she's the leader of the opposition!

I think I've lost the plot with most pop culture franchises I grew up with as a kid. There are over a thousand Pokémon now. Dave Filoni tells me Glorbo the Shmperpfluggikger will be in the new Star Wars like I'm supposed to feel something other than bafflement.

Natch
Soap is woke

Nor is the world

AI Used to Promote Non-Existent Evacuation Flights From the Middle East - bellingcat A Dutch newspaper published a story about private evacuation flights from Dubai, but the photo shows signs of AI generation and the flights appear never to have existed.

De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest newspaper, recently published an interview with a woman promoting €1,600 seats on private evacuation flights from Dubai. Bellingcat found that her image was likely AI-generated, and flight data suggests no such plane took off. www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...

Ancient Essex weir will not be rebuilt after collapsing into river Historians fear not reinstating it will affect the river banks and nearby homes

It's beginning to look like state failure, everywhere you go, part 4533: a weir that had been in place since 1101 collapsed 2 years ago,and the council says it's too expensive to fix: www.essexlive.news/news/essex-n...

cc @celestialweasel.bsky.social for the invocation of his favourite song 🎶

Look, it was 'build alternative pipelines or a navy' OR 'sink billions into the Line', which would you choose? Huh?!

I see Americans are learning why the term "reverse ferret" was invented for British newspapers.

This is a bit disingenuous - the Trump regime deliberately and calculatedly turned the protesting calculus from "the cops might rough you up a bit" to "you will be murdered and then your family will be harassed by goons". That's a much tougher ask and requires very different organisational efforts

this is precisely the same argument that Maurice Glasman has made, obviously not about Labour voters, but about liberals in general

Narratively having Ever Given getting stuck in 2021 to set up Hormuz in 2026 is great foreshadowing. You want your audience to understand the basics of international shipping in a lower stakes context so you drop the real plot without a lot of saggy exposition about the minutiae of cargo logistics.