James T. Harding
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empowermint.bsky.social
James T. Harding
@empowermint.bsky.social
520 followers 520 following 630 posts
Liable to tweet about books (SFF), RPGs, queer politics, Edinburgh, TypeScript, and my cats. Former publisher now working as a software engineer. He/him
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Reposted by James T. Harding
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
Or better yet: make GenAI about an assault on civics. Because if you are selling a product that necessarily attempts to con one person into believing they are engaging with another person when they are not, you’re not just ruining education. You’re dismantling society’s foundations in social trust.
December 4, 2025 at 11:37 PM
empowermint.bsky.social
Partly confirmation bias, but I feel like this shows how things are shaping up very clearly
sundersays.bsky.social Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 2d
If voters could vote against a party (More in Common)
December 5, 2025 at 1:16 PM
empowermint.bsky.social
This is the sort of thing l’d like to see ministers saying in the UK
cathalmalone.bsky.social Cathal Malone @cathalmalone.bsky.social · 2d
My head nearly fell off. The actual Minister for Health said this?

m.independent.ie/irish-news/t...
December 5, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
edinburghminute.bsky.social
Creative Scotland multi-year funding published. The Traverse (£3,691,400) and Lyceum theatres (4,974,570), the Hidden Door festival (£363,126) and Edinburgh International Festival (£11,750,000) among those sharing a total of £208m over 3yrs. Spreadsheet here: www.creativescotland.com/funding/fund...
Multi-Year Funding
The Multi-Year Funding Programme is designed to provide stable, long-term financial support to creative and cultural organisations in Scotland, covering core costs and programmes of work from April 20...
www.creativescotland.com
December 4, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
rincewind.run
my job: it is important that you come to the office, for productivity reasons

also my job: here is a fire drill, please go stand outside and don’t do work
December 4, 2025 at 6:38 PM
empowermint.bsky.social
Let’s hope he stays true to his promise to never speak to the BBC again. I think it would improve their coverage significantly.
December 4, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
sheg7.bsky.social
This is peak Britain. A man notorious for sneaking into kids' bedrooms in the middle of the night is finally arrested, but it's for opposing a genocide, so at least he will actually serve prison time.
Police arrest ‘Father Christmas’ during Palestine Action protest Man detained in Norfolk while holding placard ‘opposing genocide’
December 3, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
gillianmacmsp.bsky.social
Safe access zones have hugely reduced the number of anti-choice protests near hospitals.

It is something that government should look at in relation to hotels.

These protests are designed to spread fear.
They don’t reflect the community that I represent.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politic...
SNP Government urged to consider asylum seeker hotel protest curbs
EXCLUSIVE: Gillian Mackay was responsible for safe access zones for women outside clinics and said asylum seekers may need similar protections.
www.dailyrecord.co.uk
December 2, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
snowden.st
Currently dorking out over this graph about child mortality with my brother. Just mind boggling to take in.
chart of child mortality in history, roughly 48% for all societies across the globe…until the 20th century, where it plummets to 4%
December 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
barristersecret.bsky.social
Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇
November 27, 2025 at 8:01 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
harrywallop.co.uk
Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
December 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
empowermint.bsky.social
Just received a link to a Christmas charity raffle via a jpg of a QR code attached to a mass CC email.

No clues as to what the URL might be. The only way to follow it is to display it on one device and scan it with a second.
December 2, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
smoothdunk2.bsky.social
i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse
4 panel comic Panel 1: Red Guy looking way way too happy yells “Hey Guys! Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” Blue Guy next to him calmly says “Shhh” Panel 2: Blue Guy tenderly puts his arms around Red Guy and says “You don’t have to do this” Panel 3: Blue Guy still holds Red Guy tightly and repeats “You don’t have to do this every year”. Red Guy begins to break. Panel 4: Red Guy dissolves into Blue Guy’s embrace, sobbing. He finally feels the weight of Christmas Discourse lifting from his shoulders. He is finally free.
December 2, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
leamingtonphil.bsky.social
Well this is fascinating in a car-crash, keep-you-awake-at-night and give-you-nightmares-for-weeks-afterwards kind of way.
• 11:30-11:35 - the web developer began uploading documents to the draft area of the OBR website (which was understood by all involved to be not publicly accessible), including the EFO PDF.
December 1, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
bfletcherwatson.bsky.social
Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.
"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”
November 30, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
alexdecampi.bsky.social
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.
December 1, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social
2025:

A WordPress plug-in accidentally pushes something to live - the chair of a national institution resigns

OpenAI intentionally release products to a mass market that includes errors, manipulations and stolen material - cool, cool

Is this how it works?

www.theguardian.com/business/202...
The report found that the OBR had uploaded its budget documents to a link which it believed to be inaccessible to the public. However, because the organisation was using a particular add-on to the WordPress publishing system, the link ended up being live, unbeknownst to the OBR itself.
December 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
douglascheape.bsky.social
Your annual reminder that the most revealing difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is definitely in the words for December: Mí na Nollag (Month of Christmas) in Ireland, and An Dubhlachd (the Blackness) in Scotland. So once again may I wish you all a lovely Blackness.
December 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
andrewblair.co.uk
Christweight
Christmas = ______________
Christgravitational
field strength
December 1, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
davidheniguk.bsky.social
Just mucking around with some stats on the internet and found the stability of UK labour force participation remarkable given all the discussions / panics over many years www.ons.gov.uk/employmentan...
November 30, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
matthewpb.bsky.social
Speaking on Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast on Friday morning, Badenoch suggested it could be "argued that" the Budget was unchristian. When pressed on the remark, the Tory leader explained: "In early Christian times, there was no state or welfare, so I think that you can argue that, actually.
November 28, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
oddthisday.bsky.social
To begin with today, happy 117th anniversary to this entirely reasonable cat
Article from Des Moines Register 27 November 1908: NO BEER; CAT LEAVES TOWN Feline Deserts Connecticut Village That Went "Dry." WINSTED, Conn., Nov. 28. Fannie, a cat owned by Barreuther Bros., had liking for lager beer. When the town recently voted "dry" her owners went out of business and Fannie missed her drink. For some days she went to her saucer and cried for beer, but as none was forthcoming she disappeared. It is suspected she has gone to the nearest license town.
November 28, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by James T. Harding
davidwearing.bsky.social
The diplomatic "achievement" of the ceasefire was to recalibrate the tempo of the genocide sufficiently to get it off the front pages and the news bulletins, thus alleviating the political pressure on Israel's western accomplices.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Israel still committing genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says
The NGO’s chief says last month’s ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal’
www.theguardian.com
November 27, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
zoegrunewald.bsky.social
The "don't have an extra kid if you can't afford it" brigade get awfully upset when you suggest they don't stay in their £2m house if they can't afford it, don't they?
November 27, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Reposted by James T. Harding
theguardian.com
‘Unelected power’ of ultra-rich is reshaping British politics, report claims
‘Unelected power’ of ultra-rich is reshaping British politics, report claims
Equality Trust study shows how House of Lords appointments, big donations and media concentration affects political decision Structural corruption and the rise of “conduits for unelected power” are reshaping British politics, according to a stark report from the Equality Trust. Unelected influence has surged over the past two decades, the report claims, driven by the growing political clout of the ultra-rich and the institutions that enable it. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
November 27, 2025 at 3:16 PM