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Clare King

@clareking.bsky.social
326 followers 1.2K following 52 posts

I am an archaeologist, fencer and martial artist. I probably won't post much, but will lurk a lot.

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Reposted by Clare King
Frances Ryan @francesryan.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Have you ever been criticised in public for using a Blue Badge? I’m looking to gather disabled people’s experiences for The Guardian to explore hostility around the Blue Badge and Motability schemes. We’ve made a quick form you can fill in here: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a... (Please share.)
theguardian.com
Blue badge holders: how are you treated by other members of the public when out?
Have you experienced reactions from other people when using your blue badge? We’d like to hear from you
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
youtube.com/watch?v=XDkh... Love this
youtube.com
When that Man is Dead and Gone (1941) - Protest song against Hitler (Live Take)
YouTube video by Lizzy & the Triggermen
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The Fake History Hunter @fakehistoryhunter.net · 28/02/2026
Just your regularly scheduled share of this masterpiece by @tomgauld.bsky.social
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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
It’s the Government’s duty to protect all communities - including trans people. They’re failing to do that. Trans people deserve safety and dignity. www.attitude.co.uk/news/zack-po...
attitude.co.uk
Zack Polanski on how Keir Starmer could have changed the April 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling to protect trans rights (EXCLUSIVE)
Zack Polanski revealed how Keir Starmer could have acted to protect trans rights after April 2025 UK Supreme Court ruling.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 05/02/2026
it’s genuinely reassuring to me that this is the most miserable and paranoid person in the entire world
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Fishbourne Roman Palace @romanpalace.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Only a couple of weeks left until Half Term fun begins. Join us at Fishbourne Roman Palace from 16-20th February for Roman themed activities every day. Get hands-on with mosaics, discover ancient flavours, and step back in time. sussexpast.co.uk/event/februa...
sussexpast.co.uk
February Half Term at Fishbourne Roman Palace - Sussex Past
Live Like a Roman this half term with fun family activities from 16th to 20th February at Fishbourne Roman Palace, near Chichester
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Omg. WTF is Happening? @lalahaenzy.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Looks about right
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Chris Buckley @chrisbuckley.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Scanning some old slides for an article. This is a petroglyph from the far west of Tibet, made before 0CE. In the so-called Scythian style, in which sinuous game animals appear to float on tiptoe
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AIV - Associazione Italiana di Vulcanologia @aivulcan.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
#Etna update 🌋 #INGV reported that a new eruptive vent has opened near Mt. Simone at ~2,100 m a.s.l., feeding a lava flow down the Valle del Bove. The most advanced front has reached 1,500–1,400 m a.s.l. INGV teams are currently on site monitoring the flow’s evolution. 📸 E. Messina
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Boris Behncke @borisetneo.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Just after midnight on 1 January 2026, a new eruption started from #Etna's eastern flank: a fissure opened at ~2100 m elevation, and a lava flow is descending through the desert-like Valle del Bove. Photos taken in the evening of 1 January from Etna's east and southeast flanks
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
This puts into words quite a lot of what I have been thinking about AI
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CEO Johnny Cans @oldmatecans.bsky.social · 28/12/2025
Knives out: the upper middle class are squabbling vicious children who do not deserve their inheritance Glass onion: the new elite are the stupidest murderous cunts alive and deserve your scorn Wake up dead man: those preaching anger as salvation are leading you to death, hope and kindness matter
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👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 28/12/2025
One thing that gets me every time this comes up is when somebody turns evil and people act like they were evil their whole life. No. Children are not born evil or hateful or bigoted. That behaviour is learned and people learn it at different points in their lives.
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Codfather #FBPE 🇫🇷🇪🇺 @codfather.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
😂 Imagine the flavour - lol
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Dr Craig Barker @drcraigb.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
‘Classical fortifications unearthed at ancient Palaepaphos’ Amazing season results by the University of Cyprus team led by Maria Iacovou #archaeologynews 🏺 cyprus-mail.com/2025/12/23/c... A
cyprus-mail.com
Classical fortifications unearthed at ancient Palaepaphos
Archaeologists announced on Tuesday the discovery of extensive fortifications at ancient Palaepaphos. Researchers uncovered a series of large stone towers forming part of a massive fortification wall ...
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 22/12/2025
Please share. Thanks
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Lexie Henning @lexie-henning.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
New Odyssey trailer is out and I’m screaming. Like WHAT is this helmet?! Also the Greeks apparently have Viking ships. 😡😱
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Best for Britain @bestforbritain.org · 22/12/2025
Reform UK have repeatedly said that Kent is their "flagship" council and "the shop window" for how they intend to run things. When they are exposed as planning to slash social care for old people, in order to hire their cronies as advisors at £150k a pop, I think people should believe them. ~AA
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Steven T. Dennis @steventdennis.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Bloomberg Analysis: 15 People Have Died in Crashes Where Tesla Doors Wouldn’t Open Note: Tesla said on a new safety page on its website last week that when a serious collision is detected, "doors will automatically unlock for emergency access." GIFT LINK: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
bloomberg.com
15 People Have Died in Crashes Where Tesla Doors Wouldn’t Open
There are no official statistics on the dangers of electric handles. So Bloomberg did its own analysis.
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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.
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Raphael van Lierop 🇨🇦 @raphlife.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Techbros seem to love Tolkien, so here's an analogy to help you understand what genAI is. GenAI is The One Ring. You think your use is justified, b/c you don't have evil in your heart. But it came from evil, it is intended for evil purpose, & anything you do with it will be twisted to that end.
Boromir from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, holding The One Ring. He thought he could use it for good, but everything done with the ring turns to evil. He was one of the mightiest warriors of middle earth, and he could not resist its powers. Others even mightier fell to the ring. Do you think you are stronger than them? The One Ring is generative AI.
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
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Garry @thegmcconnachie.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people
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Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken @papawoof.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
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Robin Ince @robinince.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
This is the saddest day of my professional life.
Today is not only the final recording of the latest series of The Infinite Monkey Cage, it is my last ever Monkey Cage.
I never thought that I would have to leave the show. I always imagined going on until | dropped dead under the studio lights due to a brain aneurysm caused by my final attempt to understand notions of quantum gravity or the shock of being told about fly maggot infestations in the sacks of macaque monkeys.
I resigned in September, after sixteen years of dedication to the show,
A show that I named and helped develop over all those years.
Unfortunately, my opinions outside the BBC have been considered problematic for sometime, whether it has been voicing support for the trans community, criticism of Donald Trump, numerous other outlandish opinions, including once gently criticising Stephen Fry.
These things were considered to conflict with being a freelance BBC science presenterIn a recent meeting where BBC Studio executives again voiced problems with me, I realised my choices.
Obedience and being quieter to remain making Monkey Cage, or 'Resign and have the freedom to speak out against what I believe are injustices'.
•
I chose the latter.
It broke my heart.
I love this show and I love the audience, and it is because of the audience in particular, that this decision was so difficult to make.
I kept thinking about all the extremist voices promoting hate and division. They are being given so many platforms, while voices that represent kindness, open mindedness, empathy seem to be scarcer and scarcer.
I felt I couldn't pamper myself with the luxury of silence.
One of my many privileges is that I am able to resign and I can speak out even if it is to the detriment of my career.I have thought a lot about my heroes, Sinead O Connor, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and so many more.
I think of Sinead's words, "the job of an artist is to be themselves at any cost".
James Baldwin said prejudice was really just a word for cowardice.
Audre Lorde, viewing her life, wrote that her only regrets were her silences.
I think of my father as I resign, he brought me up to believe in fairness , justice and kindness.
Though my heart is broken, it is also full of fire.
I apologise to our incredible listeners for my departure, your love of the show means a great deal.
I am so sorry to let you down.
I hope that you can understand my reasoning.
I have to accept that I am not what the current
BBC expects of their freelance presenters.Despite this I should add that I have always worked far more than my contracted hours to try and ensure the show was always the best it could be, as well as making myself accessible and responsive to the audience wherever and whenever I met them. Every night, we have recorded, I have been filled with determination to make the best show possible. This was not
"just a job"
I hope that with my departure I can be a better ally to the LGBTQ community, to the neurodivergent community, to activists fighting against those who aim to brutalise society, to those currently in prison on hunger strike, and to all those who fight for a more inclusive world.
From many conversations, I know there are many Monkey Cage listeners who support these communities and activists too.
The strawberry is dead.
Long live the strawberry. B
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
BBC News - Hundreds of items stolen in 'high-value' Bristol museum raid - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Hundreds of items stolen in 'high-value' Bristol museum raid
More than 600 artefacts from the museum's British Empire and Commonwealth collection were taken.
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Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken @papawoof.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
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👻madeline bOoOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 02/12/2025
for clarity, the City of London refers to a 1 (one) square mile area in central London. this is not even all the churches in that area
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Alex de Campi @alexdecampi.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community, by Fran Lebowitz. For World AIDS Day. Part 2 of 2:
8. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer runs into a 34-year-old painter at a party and the painter says to the writer that he is just back from Los Angeles and he says with some surprise that he had a really good time there and he asks why does she think that happened and says it's because New York is so boring now that Los Angeles is fun in comparison and that's true and it's one reason but the real reason is that they don't know the people who are dying there.

9. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer has dinner every night for 11 nights in a row with the same 32-year-old musician while he waits for his biopsy to come back because luckily for her she is the only one he trusts enough to tell.

10. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer……trying to make plans to go out of town flips through her appointment book and hears herself say, ''Well, I have a funeral on Tuesday, lunch with my editor on Wednesday, a memorial service on Thursday, so I guess I could come on Friday, unless, of course, Robert dies.''

11. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that when the world's most famous artist dies of complications following surgery at the age of 61 it doesn't seem like he really died at all - it seems like he got off easy.

12. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that at a rather grand dinner held at a venerable New York cultural institution and catered by a company famous for the beauty of its waiters a 39-year-old painter remarks to a 36-year-old writer that the company in question doesn't seem to employ as many really handsome boys as it used to and the writer replies, ''Well, it doesn't always pay to be popular.''
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Alex de Campi @alexdecampi.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community, by Fran Lebowitz. For World AIDS Day. 1 of 2:
1. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that when a 36-year-old writer is asked on a network news show about the Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community particularly in regard to the Well-Known Preponderance of Homosexuals in the Arts she replies that if you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture you would be pretty much left with ''Let's Make a Deal.''

The interviewer's lack of response compels her to conclude that he has no idea what she is talking about and she realizes that soon many of those who do know what she is talking about will be what is generally regarded as dead.

2. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that on New Year's Eve Day……a 36-year-old writer takes a 31-year-old photographer to get a chest X-ray and listens to him say with what can only be described as a certain guarded hope, ''Maybe I just have lung cancer.''
3. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer has a telephone conversation with a dying 41-year-old book editor whom even the most practiced verbal assassin has called the last of the Southern gentlemen and hears him say in a hoarse whisper, ''I'm sorry but I just hate old people. I look at them and think, 'Why don't you die?' ''

4. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that an aspiring little avant-garde movie director approaches a fairly famous actor in a restaurant and attempts to make social hay out of the fact that they met at Antonio's and will undoubtedly see each other at Charles's and Antonio's and Charles's are not parties and Antonio's and Charles's are not bars and Antonio's and Charles's are not summer houses in chic Tuscan towns - Antonio's and Charles's are funerals.5. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer is on the telephone with a 38-year-old art director making arrangements to go together the following morning to the funeral of a 27-year-old architect and the art director says to the writer, ''If you get there first sit near the front where we usually sit and save me the seat on the aisle.''

6. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 24-year-old ballet dancer is in the hospital for 10 days following an emergency appendectomy and nobody goes to visit him because everyone is really busy and after all he's not dying or anything.

7. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community is that a 36-year-old writer takes time out at a memorial service for the world's pre-eminent makeup artist and a man worth any number of interesting new painters to get angry because the makeup artist's best friend and eulogist uses a story that she has for years been hoarding for her book which she can't write anymore anyway unless she writes it as a historical novel because it's about a world that in the last few years has disappeared almost entirely.
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Colin Stark @cstark.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Nope. The headline should actually read “Astronomers using ML discover quasars acting as lenses”
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Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺 @katherineschof8.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
If you are a member of the National Trust and also despise the Reform tendency, please vote in the AGM to keep the astroturf candidates of Restore Trust out of power. You can find the names to avoid here, at this deliberately broken link: https:// www. restoretrust. org. uk / agm-2025
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Clare King @clareking.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Also, the Science Museum in London has a 'Maths' area that has things like theodolites, but doesn't explain the trigonometry that actually allows them to work.
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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison. Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Maybe this is simply a difference in the expected 'rate' of knew knowledge, but this take puzzles me, because there's quite a bit of new data and studies needing to be done that I can see pretty easily in Roman history. Knowledge creation steady and clearly visible.
A tweet by Theo Nash, which reads, "The problem is that (almost) no one, at least in the humanities, is able to produce ‘new knowledge’ at anything like the rate expected. So scholars grasp at faddish trends and voguish theories to publish books that seem exciting in the moment but have no enduring value."
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
One of the fundamental truths we need to acknowledge in this moment is that domestic violence is where fascists learned how to get away with their violence. “What did you do to provoke him?” is exactly what victims hear when they try to seek help in an abusive relationship.
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archaeoINK - Jona Schlegel @jonaschlegel.com · 04/10/2025
day 3 of #archink2025: residue. what's left inside a pot can say a lot. grains, fats, traces of meals long gone. drew that chain in a kind of comic style: pot in use, pot buried/excavated, pot in the lab. Small remains lead to past recipes. #archInk #archaeology
A three-panel digital illustration showing the archaeological process of residue analysis.
In the first panel, a clay pot sits over a small fire surrounded by stones.
In the second, a broken pot is uncovered in the ground with a trowel nearby.
In the third, gloved hands hold a sherd and take a sample with a small tool. Two circles highlight what residue analysis can reveal: plant grains and a goat
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Red Hot World @redhotworld.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
When speaking to Tommy Robinson at the far right demonstration in London today, Elon Musk wore a t-shirt saying "What would Orwell think?" So let's dive in - what would George Orwell think about Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk? 🧵
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Susie Dent @susiedentwords.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Word of the day is ‘tamalou’: a French name for an older person who no longer greets their friends with ‘how was your holiday?, but with ‘t’as mal où ?’, ‘where does it hurt?’. There follows an enthusiastic account of aches and pains and doctor’s appointments.
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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
🧵 When I was growing up, my Uncle Noel would come to stay every Christmas. He was a solitary character, quiet but droll. Quite a hard character to read or get to know. Certainly not a cuddly, fun uncle who played games. He grew up very poor, became a builder/labourer like many Irish immigrants...
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Angry People in Local Newspapers @apiln.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
The Aussie press not holding back when it comes to its coverage of neo-Nazis.
The Nightly electronic newspaper: Who is this dickhead. 

Picture shows a white man with a moustache, in a black baseball cap, and a black jacket, calling him “Australia’s least wanted”.
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Martin Lewis @martinlewis.moneysavingexpert.com · 02/09/2025
Expect your mobile to go off 3pm Sunday! Be prepared for a test of the Govt's emergency alert system. Full info... www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/09... LIVING WITH DOMESTIC ABUSE? If you've a hidden mobile, you the link above has details of how to opt out of the alert. Pls share
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Women's History Network @womenshistnet.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
If you’d like to support or learn more: - tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign - Coverage in The Observer: tinyurl.com/bbcwaccampaign
tinyurl.com
Open letter BBC Written Archives - August 2025
Join the campaign to protect the future of independent research at the BBC Written Archives Centre The following text is an open letter expressing the concern of historians and researchers about chan...
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Susie Dent @susiedentwords.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Word of the Day is ‘theic’ (19th century), defined as ‘one given to immoderate tea-drinking; a tea drunkard’.
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Mark Rees @reviewwales.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
"Some black cats are witches in disguise. Some witches are black cats in disguise." 🐈‍⬛ Folklore of Wales (1909) 🎨Maggie Vandewalle #InternationalCatDay
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Rhodri Marsden @rhodri.biz · 08/08/2025
This is quite beautiful. All hail Dmitry Lamonov
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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
I see the first articles in the UK press giving space to the claim that 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft. Briefly: It’s a comet that formed billions of years ago, passing through our Solar System. It’s behaving like a comet. There is no evidence it’s artificial.
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