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MsDWrites

@msdwrites.bsky.social
1.1K followers 606 following 1.6K posts

Editor, writer, ceramicist, keen on facts and changing models when required. She/her, Brit in Oz, sweary, loves animals, lesbian mums, bugger all bigot tolerance.

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Reposted by MsDWrites
Narancia⚧️ still in the blue wonder @naranciazebest.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
If y'all don't follow French news, for the past weeks, French high school students have been protesting their horrible school situation and their general anger at the government's inaction. One of them burned a garbage. The French government sent the riot cops at them, VERY violently.
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
They are the softest babies on Earth.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Nicole is a leading expert on the issue of campus sexual violence. I am floored that USA Today would do this to her. I find this kind of journalistic behavior unethical and morally reprehensible, twisting an interview with a renowned advocate for survivors into a hit piece against a survivor.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Earlier this week, I agreed to interviews with two USA Today journalists. They wrote fantastic articles about the Cornell case that I'm proud to have been a part of. What I did not know is that their employer considers interviews to proprietary and opens up recordings to be used by any journalist.
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Will Burrows 🖖🥖🥀 @reforest-kelley.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Avery Brooks is 78 today
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Real small business owner being quoted in a news piece with the ‘I cannot possibly be expected to pay someone a reasonable wage for this service!’
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 01/10/2026
Huh. Today in "always look up the etymology because sometimes you're just repeating a myth but sometimes it's weirder and more incredible than you could have possibly imagined" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/c...
Screenshot of Merriam Webster etymology note for cockamamie: 
By the look and sound of it, cockamamie (also spelled "cockamamy") could have something to do with a rooster and the outrageous sound it makes. But in fact, cockamamie is believed to be an altered form of the term decalcomania, which refers to the process, invented in the mid-19th century, of transferring pictures and designs from specially prepared paper to surfaces such as glass or porcelain. (The word referring to the picture or design itself, decal, is a shortening of decalcomania.) The word decalcomania comes from French, with décalcomanie combining the verb décalquer, meaning "to trace" or "to transfer by tracing," and -manie, meaning "-mania." Starting in the 1930s, painted strips of paper with images capable of being transferred to the skin were called decals or—in children's slang—cockamamies. Those familiar with today's temporary tattoos will understand quickly that these were regarded by many as silly novelties, lending the word cockamamie the necessary leeway for application to anything ridiculous.
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Tara Flynn @taraflynnirl.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In case you or someone you know might need it, the wonderful @irishhospice.bsky.social has a leaflet on pet loss. Can be hard for anyone who doesn't know that particular grief to understand, but everyone who's ever felt it does. hospicefoundation.ie/our-supports...
hospicefoundation.ie
Bereavement Support Leaflets - Irish Hospice Foundation
Our Bereavement team have written a number of bereavement support leaflets. These supports are available to download, print and order. Find out more>>
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Paper still exists, friend.
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Ilana Horn @ilanahorn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I research teachers' work. There is a known gap between public perception and the actual day-to-day experience of teaching that sociologist Dan Lortie poetically described as coming from "the apprenticeship of observation." This imagination/reality gap creates lots of problems in ed policy.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I keep coming back to this clip against the background of AI companies infesting higher education. And I feel like I need to show this in class to students, for them to understand why not to trust these bastards
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 26/09/2026
The free speech™️ people are at it again. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
hollywoodreporter.com
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing.
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Could they not just find good therapists rather than buggering the whole planet for the rest of us?
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Rex Patrick @mrrexpatrick.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
AI isn’t a legal person so can’t be found guilty or go to jail for its criminal acts. And if it’s AI gone rogue, the developer/operator of the AI currently can’t be found guilty either - there’s no ‘guilty mind’ needed for conviction. What to do? #auspol
michaelwest.com.au
Criminal bots. When AI goes rogue, who goes to jail? - Michael West
Artificial Intelligence bots do not have a legal personality and can’t go to jail. But who is to be held responsible for their criminal acts?
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Veronica @veronicaf.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
If you're inside Australia, Illoura has bank details available. Illoura Animal Refuge BSB - 807009 ACC - 30069080. Money donated to the bank account goes directly to Illoura, I don't see it at all. Money via throne comes to me, and I transfer it to Grace from my bank.
from.my
Press START - Play Free | Arcade.now
Press START and play instantly. Free arcade games at Arcade.now - no downloads, no signup.
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Veronica @veronicaf.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
If you would like to donate to Illoura Animal Refuge via me (good if you're outside of Australia) we have Ginny's meds and rechecks on our throne wishlist. throne.com/veronicafoale
throne.com
Veronica - Wishlist | Throne
Send Veronica gifts via Throne. Browse Veronica 's wishlist and support your favorite creator safely.
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André Brett @drdrehistorian.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Only a fraction of materials that survive from the pre-digital world have been digitised, and even in a world of ideal funding and staffing we would not be close to digitising it all, never mind the straitened conditions in which so many archives and libraries must operate today
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Every time I see it, I think of the NFTs are the new banking stories at the start of this decade.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
This piece touches on an extremely important and terrible trend: AI-false-balance among polite centre-left politicians. Every critique HAS to begin with something like "AI is here to stay. With the right rules, it can be a force for good. But........." www.techpolicy.press/the-life-and...
Information integrity is one of seven critical issues in the Preliminary Report of the UN’s Independent Scientific Panel on AI released in July at the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence. It warns that AI can erode shared reality and civic participation through “epistemic erosion,” the gradual wearing away of society’s ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. Opening the Dialogue, the UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, tied that erosion directly to the viral and exponential nature of advanced data driven technologies: “A machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth, and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake.”“A society that cannot agree on what is real cannot defend itself,” Guterres said.

And yet he did not reference the threat of AI to amplify inequality, unless governed effectively. Instead, Guterres casts AI as “the great equaliser of the 21st century ” achievable by developing countries on the technology fast-track through safe systems that honor human rights, with real transparency about labor and planetary impacts. Getting this right, he said, is “at the heart of our common future.”

Yet the Panel’s Report, subtitled as an “evidence-based assessment of the opportunities, risks and impacts of AI” provides no evidence that AI will be a ‘great equaliser’. On the contrary, despite its curious ‘balancing’ of every claim with a counter claim, the heavily referenced report actually demonstrates far more evidence of the negative consequences of AI, while doing very little to support claims that AI will help in the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Regardless, this did not stop the ‘great equaliser’ mantra from being repeated by numerous member states and heads of multilateral bodies who subsequently addressed the forum.

In fact the report highlights the lack of — and unevenness of — evidence, including on some of the big ticket items: productivity gains, labor market effects, value-chain impacts, and …
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
One of my most galaxy-brained takes is that politicians and political groups should talk more about workers’ share of national income. It's one of the clearest, simplest ways to describe how billionaires and corporate elites captured so much of the economy--and something policy can change.
axios.com
U.S. workers' share of national income falls to a new low
Labor's bargaining position has worsened markedly in the last half-decade.
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
I'm just a lowly art historian, but in moments like these I always think back to one early sign of Trump's wanton, pointless destructiveness: his demolition of the priceless & irreplaceable Art Deco relief sculptures on facade of the Bonwit Teller building, which he tore down to build Trump Tower
B&W photo of a building facaceRelief sculpture of a lithe figure in a dancing-like pose
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🦇💀 Rigg-or Mortis 💀🦇 @rigg.lgbt · 23/09/2026
Clear evidence that lactose intolerance is taken seriously in this country: hit someone with a milkshake and you are ordered to pay them compensation and get a suspended prison sentence. Hit someone with a metal stick, with a gang of your mates joining in, and it's a caution
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I… I am no longer opposed as I was before reading this…
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 22/09/2026
Happy mushroom season!
A comic titled "Types of mushrooms" with 12 mushroom species. A wrinkly-looking morel is labeled "creepy but tasty". A brownish deadly galerina is labeled "boring but deadly". A witch's butter on a branch is labeled "jiggles if you poke it". A large puffball is labeled "egg". A creepy red-dripping bleeding tooth fungus is labeled "deeply disconcerting". A fly agaric with a green treefrog sitting under it is labeled "frog umbrella". A black chanterelle is labeled "chalice for forbidden elixers". Three straight-stemmed entolomas are labeled "haha, nipples". A bright purple viscid violet cort is labeled "purple is nice". A birch polypore sticking out of a birch trunk is labeled "tree nose". A complex yellow-tpped coral fungus is labeled "cursed citadel where dwells a fairy queen". A Ravenel's stinkhorn is pixellated at the top for your safety, and labeled "NSFW".
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Same. And I was told recently that I have become an important part of the local community, just by learning those names and having those chats. Here I was thinking they were all brightening up my day, it turns out it was reciprocal!
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Pup Fiction @pupfiction.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is a great insight from a young woman in Canberra on housing and time and multiculturalism www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
The woman who feels priced out of spare time

Rosie* is in her 30s and lives in Canberra. She captured the point vividly.

"Housing gets covered as deposits, rates, supply. Living it, the real cost is time. You work the hours the housing demands, in the suburb the housing pushed you to, and what gets sacrificed is the ability to sit down with the people around you.

"Multiculturalism worked in this country when people had time to spend with people unlike themselves. Not policy time — ordinary time. Backyards, front steps, sport, the shops, someone's kitchen. That's how a stranger stops being a category and becomes a neighbour.

"We have spent 30 years pricing that time out of people's lives and now we're surprised that cohesion is fraying and asking what went wrong with our values.

"When people are exhausted and stretched and never in the same room, difference stops being interesting and starts being threatening. That's not a failure of tolerance. It's a failure of time. That's what I'd want people in power to understand."
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The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Good to see this finally get coverage in my old paper. This is the same mob who campaigned against me, but it wasn’t sufficiently newsworthy then.
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bronte lee @brontelee.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
in case you missed it!! new release of @kudelka.bsky.social’s rusted-on bingo tea towels, with $5 from every tea towel sold going to the Jon Kudelka Fund for Glioblastoma Research at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research get yours now!! www.kudelkashop.com/product/rust...
Screenshot of a post from facebook:

The Kudelka Shop is at The Kudelka Shop.
RUSTED ON BINGO IS BACK.
Jon Kudelka's classic tea towel is getting a special re-release.
This time, $5 from every tea towel sold goes to the Jon Kudelka Fund for Glioblastoma Research at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research.
#JonKudelka #RustedOnBingo
#glioblastomaresearch #menziesinstituteformedicalresearch
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Come back with this when an AI creates or solves something without humans doing most of the work on which that ‘creation’ or ‘solution’ is based. The willingness to attribute things like the Navier-Stokes solution to AI ‘intelligence’ rather than compute power using human models is v disappointing.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 21/09/2026
It is so funny to me that the fossil fuel industry's big lie is denying an apocalypse that science confirmed as a real risk while the tech industry's big lie is insisting on the threat of an apocalypse for which there's no scientific evidence for at all
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

1
Wide shot of the BRITISH MUSEUM. There are suggestions of fascism around the streets - tanks, barricades, an Orwellian 'Big Brother'-style poster on a wall. A voice of a TOUR GUIDE emanates from the museum:

TOUR GUIDE:
So the Tapestry tells acrucial chapter of our nation's history...

2 
[Cut to interior of museum. A long Bayeaux-style TAPESTRY is on display, and the Tour Guide is speaking to a tour group]

TOUR GUIDE [smiling]:
How modern fascist Britain was created. 

3
TOUR GUIDE:
The Tapestry begins here with the 2008 Crash, then austerity, then the AI Crash...

4
TOUR GUIDE:
...and by the end of the room it's just full-on fash. 

5
CHILD IN TOUR GROUP [gesturing to the tapestry]:
What's this middle bit?

TOUR GUIDE:
This is the 2026 Battle of Legitimate Concerns 

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TOUR GUIDE:
[show a reporter standing next to the Dover protests]
Here's the media saying the government have got to do something about the legitimate concerns...

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CHILD:
...About the failure of capitalism?

TOUR GUIDE:
No about brown people on boats

8
CHILD:
[pointing at boats crossing the sea on the tapestry]
Are these boats the mega-dinghies?

TOUR GUIDE:
Not all of them

9
[we see one of the boats  is a giant yacht]
TOUR GUIDE:
That one's a superyacht,
carrying money from the American fascists to the British ones.

10
TOUR GUIDE:
You see really it's as much a story of convergence as it is of conflict.

[An alarm sounds in the museum]
DING DING DING DING 

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TOUR GUIDE:
Ok, tour over everyone 

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TOUR GUIDE:
It's time for the Two Minute Hate!

[They all leave the museum]

[ends]
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Yes, but also climate change is causing pollen combinations that have never existed before as the plants with flowering driven by temperatures get out of whack with the ones that have flowering driven by day length.
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Jes Steele ✌️ @piratito.com · 20/09/2026
Nature’s version of ‘Twins (1988)’.
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Weird that he doesn’t consider the systemic sexual assault crisis in the ADF disqualifying for employment around children. Everything else wild about that suggestion aside …
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AgentJoeMcJoe 🇺🇸 @joemcjoe11.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
So Trumpy's mini-me, Petey Hegshit also banned the same news media from the Pentagon. This should terrify everyone. Trumpy's government is banning media it doesn't like. This is a 3 alarm fire on democracy. My demand is simple. PROVE IT. Show us the 'fake news'. They can't, it does not exist.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 19/09/2026
Journalists reporting on people who reject AI like they're doing a piece on some weird cult rather than the mainstream opinion among the vast majority of young people around the world www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
abc.net.au
Young people pushing back against artificial intelligence
AI may be here to stay, but the generation that will inherit the results of the guidelines set for its use has something to say about that.
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
‘Greetings human, have you heard of our new taxes?’
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MsDWrites @msdwrites.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I may have gone too far befriending the local magpies; this one came over to demand snacks while I was watering the garden…
Australian magpie sitting on porch gutter, demanding treats
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Fiona Katauskas @fionakatauskas.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
God, reading this article it's clear that what she said was demonstrably, clearly true and has been willfully misrepresented in bad faith.
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Joshua Earle, Ph.D. @cyborgapologist.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Even Weizenbaum, after watching people use ELIZA was like "Boy, they all treat this bot like a person and that's weird and probably bad." It is very literally the first thing any critic notices.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 15/09/2026
“you will let me rename this after myself or I’m destroying the whole thing forever: the Donald Trump experience”
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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 14/09/2026
New: Before Renée and Alex, ICE fatally shot Mexican immigrant Silverio Villegas González last fall outside Chicago in suburban Franklin Park. One year later, @domguan.bsky.social spent some time with the group of local women tending to his memorial. His family is still demanding answers:
unraveledpress.com
Growing Where He Died: Silverio Villegas González, One Year Later
One year on from the killing of Silverio Villegas González, a community of Franklin Park women continue the fight to keep his memory alive–through art, flowers, and “a culture of celebrating life.”
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Shut up, Jeff Bezos, and your propaganda rag, the current Washington Post. The Kennedy Center is only in trouble because the lowbrow idiot Donald Trump and his stupid, uncultured minions interfered with it, driving away audiences. Adding his vulgar name will *guarantee* bankruptcy, not avoid it.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
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kate conger @kateconger.com · 11/09/2026
We also partnered with the Canadian Center for Child Protection to analyze Grok images produced during the nudification episode in Jan. It found images of known CSAM victims that were modified by Grok, and new CSAM that it created in response to requests from users. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/t...
nytimes.com
Elon Musk Has Pledged to Rid His Platform, X, of Child Sexual Abuse, but It Persists (Gift Article)
Reviews by the Canadian Center for Child Protection and The New York Times found that explicit images of children remain on the social media site owned by Elon Musk.
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Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
🔴 Jason Arday: The Story Behind the Story of The Times' 'Impossible Data' The newspaper of record failed to distinguish between corrections & retractions in the work of the late Cambridge University academic, fuelling the media storm that engulfed him. Special Investigation by @nafeez.bsky.social:
bylinetimes.com
Jason Arday: The Story Behind the Story of The Times’ ‘Impossible Data’
The newspaper of record failed to distinguish between corrections and retractions in the work of the late Cambridge University academic, fuelling the media firestorm that engulfed him
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Simon Lee @simonleewx.com · 10/09/2026
8 years ago, I tweeted side-by-side maps from NASA GISS showing global temperatures in 1976 and 2018 – both hot summers in the UK. It subsequently went viral and was printed in the Daily Mail! The 2026 version is stark. Two locally extreme summers separated by 50 years of global climate change.
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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
As if the headline isn't enough incentive, do read this short news story to the last paragraph because MAN does it escalate! playbill.com/article/man-...
playbill.com
Man Sentenced to 2-Year Jail Sentence After Strangling Fellow Theatregoer for Singing Along During We Will Rock You
The dust-up happened at a 2023 press performance in London's West End.
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