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Meg Pickard

@megp.bsky.social
244 followers 61 following 183 posts

Crafty nerd (nature/textile art/crochet/linoprint/photography/general web geekery) and charity trainer in North Yorkshire. Ex AOL/Guardian/GDS/consultant. Still looking for the place that feels like the old web (but with a faster modem).

PostsRepliesMedia
Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
@holgate.permanent.red just to say that I’m working in York a lot at the moment and every single time I drive into town I think of you as I pass through Holgate. The power of personal branding is strong!
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I’ve just discovered that Microsoft Bookings - an actual live official service, not a tiny beta - doesn’t support BST. Which means that if you or customers are in the UK, you can’t use it from March to October every year. This, apparently, is not counted as a critical bug. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 1/5
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Larry reminds me of people I’ve worked with.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
If all football was like this, I’d definitely watch.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
I misread this billboard as “Sick of the Chads?” Which took me down a mental rabbit hole of whether this was a male equivalent of a Karen.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
It's almost comical how spring sunshine affects my mood and ability to function. I like to think I'm a complex meat sack but really, I'm just a plant. 🌱
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
One of the great irritations of the modern age is people using computers with big landscape screens to create documents intended for people who mostly use mobiles with small, portrait screens. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Eg school newsletters/letters distributed by email. Trial by PDF. How is this still a thing? 🤔
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Giving the school bully your Geography GCSE in the hope that they pick you for their netball team next PE lesson. 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Morning inexplicably spoilt by Liquid Glass and its ugly little edges on app icons. Ugh. Give me back my solids and get out of the way.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Calmac breakfast is the best, when you’ve left the house before dawn and driven more than an hour across a dark island. Also, the twinkly lights were very cheery.
Tray with a cooked breakfast, cup of tea and brown toast with butterFerry pier illuminated with streetlights, reflecting on the water below. In the sky above, purple light against the clouds signals that dawn is coming. View of the vehicle gangway onto the Clansman CalMac ferry. The word Clansman is made of fairy lights threaded through the railings on the top deck. View of Lismore lighthouse from the ferry. White-tipped waves in a grey blue sea, a rock promontory and a white lighthouse building. Misty hills in the distance.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in your back garden - sparrow hawk - fox - pheasant - bank vole - green mamba (admittedly not in current North Yorkshire back garden)
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Reposted by Meg Pickard
Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
I dreamt last night that I wrote a fantastic (no really, it was amazing) song about being a smallholder. I woke up at one point and thought “I should really write this down” but then figured it was SO GOOD I would definitely remember it. I do not remember it.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Have you visited Schuench? Great skiing. And nothing beats whale watching in Hactish Nonthwest.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
I always get confused between kayfabe and aquafaba.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
“Hey! Why don’t we put AI in charge of the prevention of nuclear war?!?!” Also AI, trying to design a simple exercise routine:
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Post a robot that is not from Star Wars or Transformers.
media.tenor.com
a woman is looking at a machine that says affirmative on the bottom right
Alt: In a scene from cult British TV series Doctor Who, a woman is looking at a robot shaped like a dog. Its “ears” are radar dishes that are twirling round and it has a red eye area. On the side is a logo that says K9. The caption at the bottom says “affirmative”
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
This take from the Guardian is horseshit. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Extra exam time: why do so many schoolkids suddenly need it?
Every year, more pupils are granted special ‘access arrangements’ to give them a fairer chance in GCSEs, A-levels and other exams. But with more than 600,000 arrangements in England alone, can the sch...
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Reposted by Meg Pickard
Berlitz II. @vonmandelbrot.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
How did we get from "Do not use Wikipedia as a source" to "ask hallucinating chatbot everything"?
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
We absolutely must not allow news outlets and pundits to applaud someone who puts out a fire they themselves started. It’s not brave and leaderlike. It’s reckless, damaging ego-driven bluster followed by a humiliating u-turn. Call it what it is.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
I am resolutely not looking at my pension. Also, not entirely unrelated, thinking about which of my skills will be most useful in an apocalypse, and which I might need to develop.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Naomi nails it. It’s all optics, angles, attention and manipulating emotions.
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Reposted by Meg Pickard
Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Because of what I do at work, people quite often ask me about "more responsible" ways to use GenAI, so I've written a blog post with 7 things to look out for and 3 ways of making intentional choices when using text generators www.careful.industries/blog/2025-4-...
careful.industries
Responsible-ish GenAI dos and don’ts: text edition — Careful Industries
Seven things to bear in mind and three responsible-ish AI strategies
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
Imagine looking at [gestures despairingly across the pond] and thinking “we should emulate that here!” 🤦🏻‍♀️ I propose a more British equivalent: Project Monty. Careful, strategic, timely pruning. Work on roots & branches. Ensure fertile ground for future growth. Consider the whole ecosystem.
media.tenor.com
a man giving a thumbs up in front of a greenhouse and the words gardeners world
ALT: a man giving a thumbs up in front of a greenhouse and the words gardeners world
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Post a pic of when your pet was little. This is Fred and Molly when they first arrived.
Small tabby cat looking puzzledSmall tuxedo cat looking surprised
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
This has been my strategy for the last year or so, and I now have six new blankets. There’s been a lot of doom to scroll. Stress crafting is absolutely a thing.
Colourful blanket being crochetedColourful blanket featuring ogee shape motifsCrocheted blanket in shades of blue with a tuxedo cat looking at it Crocheted blanket in shades of blue and purple with yellow star motifs
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Very small side point but I hadn’t realised that Putin is called Poutine in France. Which is also a tasty Canadian dish. Everything is connected.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
When the world is hard, mindless games give us something else to focus on for a bit. Casual gaming soothes the brain. (This is my best score yet on the fiendish 368chickens.com)
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Post a photo of you from a different era.
Young woman standing on Charles Bridge in Prague. She has vivid red hair and a baseball jacket, and is wearing Doctor Martin boots. The Prague old town skyline is behind her.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
“…if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club.”
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Look out for stairs. They’re out to get you. Roving packs of disgruntled stairs, ready to take down anyone who hustles distractedly. You have been warned. (I fell down a flight of stairs this week. Nothing broken, thankfully, but pure agony and couldn’t move for a while. Ambulances were involved.)
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Age yourself with a movie you saw in the theatre. (I also have a strong memory of seeing Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting short film with Donald Sutherland before the main feature of - I think - Back To The Future the year after)
media.tenor.com
a man in a white shirt and white pants is dancing on a dance floor with other people .
ALT: a man in a white shirt and white pants is dancing on a dance floor with other people .
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Decades ago, I had a (new) boss who demanded a breakdown of daily tasks in 15 minute chunks for two weeks. It was demoralising as fuck (possibly the point) and also meaningless because so much of my role was researching widely, percolating, cogitating, explaining and planning. Not digging potatoes.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Movies you have watched more than six times, gifs only
media.tenor.com
Make It Snow GIF
Alt: Make It Snow GIF
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Movies you have watched more than six times, gifs only
media.tenor.com
two women wearing blue skirts and scarves are dancing
Alt: two women wearing blue tablecloths as skirts and scarves are dancing, in a scene from the movie Funny Face
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Excellent work, @mapquest.com
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Can confirm that this Apple voicemail auto transcription service needs…some work. 🤔 Here’s what it made of a Geordie NHS employee calling to arrange an appointment for my daughter… none of the words transcribed here featured in the voice message, except the last.
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Reposted by Meg Pickard
Laura Jedeed @laurajedeed.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Favorite sign so far
A hand-drawn old school doge meme, it's quite good 

Text: fake agency, much illegal, very data breach, such treasury, unelected, very cool, wow
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
I had a dream about wagtails the other night - there was one sitting on a fence post in the garden. My 9 year old asked how they got their name and I said it was because of their distinctive call. It then shouted ‘WAGTAIL’
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
I am plagued by earworms. Always have been. I must have a particularly Velcro-like brain because stuff appears and repeats in there which I haven’t heard (consciously) for years. Decades even. All weekend, my head is singing 🎶 Nick the Norwegian and Zorba the Swede 🎶 (by Flanders & Swan) WHY? 😩
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
If you see this post, quote with a bridge from your gallery… (This one is over the Swale, near Reeth in North Yorkshire)
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
A friend on the school run pointed out that Tr*mp’s official presidential portrait is a dead ringer for that portrait of Vigo the Carpathian in Ghostbusters II. Reading the Wikipedia entry, the comparison checks out.
Portrait of Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. A scowling man in armour. Excerpt from Wikipedia entry about Vigo of Carpathian: He was a sadistic, power-hungry 16th/17th century tyrant of Carpathia and the conquered country of Moldavia. He describes himself as the "Scourge of Carpathia" and "the Sorrow of Moldavia." His unfortunate subjects gave him other titles: Vigo the Cruel, Vigo the Torturer, Vigo the Despised and Vigo the Unholy. During his time, he was as despotic as other notorious tyrants in history like Attila and Genghis Khan, and according to Leon Zundinger's article in the occult text Magicians, Martyrs and Madmen, that "Carpathia was in a constant state of turmoil" until he died.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
When people start their social media posts with “I have to say…” they really don’t. You are not being paid by the word, or the post. You are not required to create output. You do not have to have an angle. It’s ok to keep hot take opinions to yourself - or wait until they’ve baked a little longer.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Is Liz Truss actually Barbara Streisand?
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Started the day at mum’s house, looking out over the islands. Ended it by the fire at home in North Yorkshire. Seven hours of driving, an hour on a ferry in between. Back again next month.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
The inner Hebrides is positively tropical today in comparison to the north Pennines where I started my day. A balmy 3°C! I may go for a paddle tomorrow.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
No photos (because driving) but the most glorious clear sparkling snowy drive across the north Pennines and up the west coast of Scotland today. Aside from a few miles of freezing fog (hard stare at the Solway Firth) the 5 hour drive has been a tremendous treat: a world dusted with icing sugar.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
I’d just like to thank my 9 year old’s teacher for a) teaching her the recorder b) teaching her only the first ten notes of Eye of the Tiger and c) sending the recorder home for practice. Such kindness.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
The police station (exterior, atrium) in Netflix’s Missing is the same one used in BBC’s Ludwig. I’m sure of it.
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Meg Pickard @megp.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
On the northern edge of North Yorkshire #uksnow DL11 5/10
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