@silentsweeney.bsky.social
Pianist for dance and silent film. Citizen of Aotearoa
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Honestly impressed at Starmer and Nandy's commitment to not doing their job. This guy is literally talking about his wife, his children, her, and her children, and they do nothing!
CT explains why he thinks Shabana Mahmood is neither English, nor British, to which Cole does not respond to at all.
Cole: asks how many generations? Is it a race thing?
CT: Not race as Albanians don't count either. It is ancestry.
It is infinite generations, if you don't have the ancestry.
Cole: asks how many generations? Is it a race thing?
CT: Not race as Albanians don't count either. It is ancestry.
It is infinite generations, if you don't have the ancestry.
December 14, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Honestly impressed at Starmer and Nandy's commitment to not doing their job. This guy is literally talking about his wife, his children, her, and her children, and they do nothing!
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I know it's hard for a lot of Labour supporters to accept but it's true: silence and equivocation in the face of racism, failure to employ all legal means to defeat it, is de facto collusion. It just is. And it has to be condemned, not denied or excused.
Harry Cole hasn't changed. He's always been what he is now. But he's never felt able to platform racists before. That is the government's fault. They have sat by and allowed racism to become normalised. So very obviously apologists for racism will take advantage.
December 14, 2025 at 9:19 PM
I know it's hard for a lot of Labour supporters to accept but it's true: silence and equivocation in the face of racism, failure to employ all legal means to defeat it, is de facto collusion. It just is. And it has to be condemned, not denied or excused.
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I always reflect on the response to the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Powell expelled from the Tories, Wilson calling him evil. And yet Powells views were popular. His speech at the time was popular. Where is that spine now when these views have massively decreased in popularity?
December 14, 2025 at 9:31 PM
I always reflect on the response to the 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Powell expelled from the Tories, Wilson calling him evil. And yet Powells views were popular. His speech at the time was popular. Where is that spine now when these views have massively decreased in popularity?
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Part of the Chanukah tradition is to place the light menorah either outside or in a window where outsiders can see it. This is supposed to advertise the miracle of Chanukah. These days, it is also a way of saying, “This is a Jewish home.”
Every year I think about how it is also an act of bravery.
Every year I think about how it is also an act of bravery.
December 14, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Part of the Chanukah tradition is to place the light menorah either outside or in a window where outsiders can see it. This is supposed to advertise the miracle of Chanukah. These days, it is also a way of saying, “This is a Jewish home.”
Every year I think about how it is also an act of bravery.
Every year I think about how it is also an act of bravery.
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The real divide in America isn’t whether or not you believe this. Literally no one believes this.
The real divide is between the people who think lying should matter—and the people who’ll make an exception for our Great Leader.
The real divide is between the people who think lying should matter—and the people who’ll make an exception for our Great Leader.
Trump suggests he actually won California last year but it was “rigged”
December 14, 2025 at 6:41 PM
The real divide in America isn’t whether or not you believe this. Literally no one believes this.
The real divide is between the people who think lying should matter—and the people who’ll make an exception for our Great Leader.
The real divide is between the people who think lying should matter—and the people who’ll make an exception for our Great Leader.
Am liking the Royal Opera House’s lust of piano-related hazards
December 14, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Am liking the Royal Opera House’s lust of piano-related hazards
Anyone remember “we are the masters of the universe now” circa 2007?
I’ve been seeing this cover over and over and I just…
In the original you’re aware of the horror of falling, but the body positions of the workers are solid on the beam. Here, most of them should be falling off, yet they don’t, because they live in an unreal, consequence-free space.
In the original you’re aware of the horror of falling, but the body positions of the workers are solid on the beam. Here, most of them should be falling off, yet they don’t, because they live in an unreal, consequence-free space.
I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork
December 14, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Anyone remember “we are the masters of the universe now” circa 2007?
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Another AI triumph
December 11, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Another AI triumph
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I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...
How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it
I wanted a dinner recommendation and got a research agenda instead. Using 13000+ restaurants, I rebuild its ratings with machine learning and map how algorithmic visibility actually distributes power.
open.substack.com
December 9, 2025 at 7:53 AM
I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...
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BLOODY AI,a thread:so, I saw a picture online of the Towers of Perugia by a Renaissance artist, Benedetto Bonfigli whose other work I know a little bit. Here is the image 1/n:
December 8, 2025 at 2:08 PM
BLOODY AI,a thread:so, I saw a picture online of the Towers of Perugia by a Renaissance artist, Benedetto Bonfigli whose other work I know a little bit. Here is the image 1/n:
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I mean I have other reasons for treating Labour with contempt, but the way they've treated trans people, immigrants, universities? Yeah, no tactical vote from me! No point voting for a party that's made my friends too scared to go to the toilet, and are proud of it.
December 8, 2025 at 9:06 AM
I mean I have other reasons for treating Labour with contempt, but the way they've treated trans people, immigrants, universities? Yeah, no tactical vote from me! No point voting for a party that's made my friends too scared to go to the toilet, and are proud of it.
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Just when I had repressed this 2024 quote it comes back, like Mike Myers, who would apparently be just as scary if I watched him in bright lights on a tiny screen.
December 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Just when I had repressed this 2024 quote it comes back, like Mike Myers, who would apparently be just as scary if I watched him in bright lights on a tiny screen.
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Genuinely what are people like Ed West doing with their lives? Go to Wigmore Hall, go to the movies, go to Koko, go to the Vortex Jazz Club, go see an orchestra, go see the Last Dinner Party...it ought to cure you out of having this weird, unnatural reaction to your fellow citizens.
No surprise that Ed West thinks you have to be white for London to be "your city", but still shocking that the *London* Standard prints this stuff.
[NB 1/2 of Londoners born in 2000 were not "white British"]
www.standard.co.uk/comment/gen-...
[NB 1/2 of Londoners born in 2000 were not "white British"]
www.standard.co.uk/comment/gen-...
December 6, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Genuinely what are people like Ed West doing with their lives? Go to Wigmore Hall, go to the movies, go to Koko, go to the Vortex Jazz Club, go see an orchestra, go see the Last Dinner Party...it ought to cure you out of having this weird, unnatural reaction to your fellow citizens.
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column maybe coming on this but I don't hugely care about what 61-year-old Farage got up to at school? and I think that Fleet Street finally gunning for him is symptomatic of a culture where the gotcha/scoop factor matters so much that hidden past actions are seen as worse than current, public ones
December 5, 2025 at 9:54 AM
column maybe coming on this but I don't hugely care about what 61-year-old Farage got up to at school? and I think that Fleet Street finally gunning for him is symptomatic of a culture where the gotcha/scoop factor matters so much that hidden past actions are seen as worse than current, public ones
Would def be up for watching this
Seven Brides for Se7en Brothers Karamazov - in this bizarre musical set in 1870s Russia, the serial killing children of a dissolute businessman seek marriage.
Police Academy Seven Brides For Se7en Brothers
December 4, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Would def be up for watching this
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Not to sound like a stuck record, but '400 jobs to be lost in city as car plant/steel works/aerospace facility closes' would be treated somewhat differently, I suspect.
Every sympathy for University of Essex (and pressures facing them) but this is very bad news for Southend.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Essex university to cut 400 jobs as overseas student numbers plummet
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Essex university to cut 400 jobs as overseas student numbers plummet
Essex university to cut 400 jobs as overseas student numbers plummet
Roles to be lost are part of wave of redundancy programmes across UK’s higher education sector
giftarticle.ft.com
December 3, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Not to sound like a stuck record, but '400 jobs to be lost in city as car plant/steel works/aerospace facility closes' would be treated somewhat differently, I suspect.
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personal bugbear: I can get behind this only on the proviso that everyone is required to explicitly mention "percentage of what" each time they use one. Drives me loopy the amount of times random percentages are thrown around without context.
December 1, 2025 at 3:54 PM
personal bugbear: I can get behind this only on the proviso that everyone is required to explicitly mention "percentage of what" each time they use one. Drives me loopy the amount of times random percentages are thrown around without context.
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Christmas at the BBC
![Title panel:
CHRISTMAS… AT THE BBC.
The Traitors Christmas Special:
Who in the BBC Boardroom is trying to bring down the gaff from within?
[Image: The Traitors scene with Claudia Winkleman looking like “ooh-er” while the BBC board sit at a table looking suspiciously at each other]
Apologising To The People Who Want To Destroy Us At Christmas:
A festive extravaganza of self-flagellation before our enemies
[Image: A cozy fireside scene with Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch standing, while at their feet lots of BBC employees are kneeling before them and begging for forgiveness].
Donald's Big Distraction:
Heartwarming Julia Donaldson animation in which a dragon sues the BBC to draw his friends' attention onto something else
[Image: Julia Donaldson’s ‘Zog’ with a Donald Trump wig, holding up a lawyer’s letter to show his dragon friends while trying to block their view of a pile of box files and computer drives some with ‘Epstein’ written on them].
The King's Speech:
We let Nigel Farage tell you the BBC is left wing as if that's some kind of fact
[Image: Nigel Farage as the King delivering his Christmas speech to camera].
A Ghost Story for Christmas:
A venerable British institution is haunted by Boris Johnson's appointees
[Image: A BBC studio with a window, outside in the dark snowy night a spectral apparition in the form of Robbie Gibb taps at the window and wails “I want to destroooy you”]
Christmas Labour Inertia-Time:
Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy present four hours of total silence from under their desks
[Image: Show them both under their desks holding up glasses of sherry]
Rightward Drift Christmas Special:
A bonanza of trust-corrosion with confected immigration panic and Reform coverage
[Image: A computer and a smartphone in a cute snowy scene, both displaying the BBC News website with multiple headlines and LIVE feeds and and BREAKING NEWS stories headlined: “IMMIGRANTS? IMMIGRANTS? IMMIGRANTS? IMMIGRANTS!”]
[Ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreietljvkssrlfwyblu4khsm37dj3753r23rizf7p56rhmo52folnme@jpeg)
November 30, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Christmas at the BBC
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who have what the what.
November 28, 2025 at 4:19 PM
who have what the what.
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This is very true and it affects authors too, because you know that every sentence you write could be taken apart aggressively and in bad faith.
Our information space is dominated by a system that demands and rewards continous and immediate emotional gratification, so you can't even begin to have a discussion about complex issues. It's a bright cancer that spreads and multiplies with every interaction.
It's part of the electionification of everything, which is why we as a country are failing to have a proper conversation about our actual problems. It's bad for the left *and* the right.
November 28, 2025 at 7:13 AM
This is very true and it affects authors too, because you know that every sentence you write could be taken apart aggressively and in bad faith.
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I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
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God it's so cool that so much of British and European nationalist politics has broadly been shaped by warehouse clickfarms rented by guys in South Asia running "how to make money from racist old people" workshops, and that this has had more influence on media and politics than any grassroots group
November 24, 2025 at 11:55 AM
God it's so cool that so much of British and European nationalist politics has broadly been shaped by warehouse clickfarms rented by guys in South Asia running "how to make money from racist old people" workshops, and that this has had more influence on media and politics than any grassroots group