Diane Jackson

@FFS_WhatNow @GregBaldwinIroh Nooo! The whole point is to have some areas of soggy toast and some crunchy toast!

@GregBaldwinIroh Don't cover the toast with them. Scoop some on for each bite to keep your toast crunchy 🤌

British blokes…. I’ve purchased several “tins” of Heinz (British) beans because the idea of beans on toast intrigues me. I eagerly anticipate a tasting. Other than toasting bread and heating beans… Are there any other steps/ingredients?

@Mr_Husky1 Congratulations on your sobriety journey, it was clearly a very good decision to get Frank. Here’s our Frank, he doesn’t know it, but he’s our therapy dog and dragging me out in the rain drags me out of dark places literally and figuratively. We love him dearly!

I adopted my dog three weeks after I got sober and everyone in my life thought it was a terrible idea. My sponsor said I needed to focus on myself. My sister said I could barely keep a plant alive. My therapist said, carefully, that she wanted me to think about whether I was ready for that level of responsibility. They were all correct and I did it anyway. His name is Frank. He is a six-year-old Basset Hound I found on the shelter website at 1:00 AM on a Thursday, which is the kind of decision-making hour that should probably require a second opinion, and I drove to the shelter the next morning before I could talk myself out of it. Frank had been there for five months. He was surrendered by a family who said he was too slow, which is the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about him and also not a reason to surrender a dog. He sat in his kennel with the dignified resignation of someone waiting for a connecting flight they have accepted will be delayed indefinitely. When I knelt down at his kennel he walked over slowly, sniffed my hand with great thoroughness, and then sat on my foot. The volunteer said he had never done that before. I took him home that afternoon. The first year of sobriety is hard in ways that are difficult to explain to someone who has not been through it. The cravings are obvious but the other parts are less discussed — the boredom, the social anxiety, the strange disorientation of being present in your own life after years of not being. The evenings were the hardest. That specific window between 7:00 and 10:00 PM when I did not know what to do with my hands or my thoughts and the silence in my apartment felt like something that needed to be filled. Frank filled it. Not by being exciting. Frank is not exciting. He sleeps approximately nineteen hours a day and approaches every situation with the same level of unhurried evaluation, whether it is a new toy or a fire alarm. But he needed to be fed at 6:00 PM and walked at 7:00 and again at 9:00 and those three facts restructured my entire evening around something other than the inside of my own head. My therapist said six months in that Frank might have been the best decision I made in early recovery. She said it like she was slightly annoyed about it, which I respected. I have been sober for two years and four months. Frank is currently asleep on the couch with one ear flipped inside out, which is how he sleeps about half the time, and which I have stopped trying to fix because he clearly does not find it inconvenient. My sponsor asks about him every week now. My sister bought him a birthday cake last month. Frank did not save my sobriety. That was my work and my choice and nobody else's. But he gave me a 7:00 PM and a 9:00 PM and a reason to be home and present and responsible on the nights when I most needed something that required it of me. Sometimes a Basset Hound is exactly the right medicine.

He’d better blinkin’ survive!! The positioning of a new life beginning and another ending is a well worn trope. I hope the idea is not to name the baby ‘Brady’. Please let these characters have a happy ending. Season 8 can’t come soon enough! #VirginRiver #Brady

@WeAreTheFSA @NFFCTrust Good for Forest fans, but let’s not forget that @stokecity have not increased season ticket prices for NINETEEN seasons!!

@CliveMyrieBBC My son sent me a text in the early hours: “FFS Clive Myrie’s in Tel Aviv.” We care about you - stay safe! X

Andrew, you sound like my mum!!

@London_W4 @hairystool So do I, but don’t do them all in one day Darling! 🍺🤪X

@hairystool I love that you’re doing a tour of the pubs in my book. Cheers Paul 🍻

Once more I have been ‘called to the bar’ by Mr Alastair Hilton for one of his ‘Greatest Pubs…’

@emsie76 @carl_thompson70 Radomes at Menwith Hill?

@carl_thompson70 I remember going to the moors yrs ago as a kid. There were massive, what looked like golf balls in the middle of nowhere. Wow you just broke a memory I’ve not thought of for yrs. thanks.

Time for a brew. I've got all this to myself. I haven't seen a soul in ages. Heavenly. The Moors

I was a big fan of Dawson’s Creek and continued to follow its cast. It was clear that James Van Der Beek was not long for this world, but gosh his death at just 48 makes me so sad, his poor wife and children 😢 #RIP

@parkreturns @Hot_Pepper76 Absolutely! That first go around the room, and he’s not just a notch above those before him, he’s leagues above! He raises the bar, but no one else has got anything like the natural instrument of his voice.

@Hot_Pepper76 His performance at the "We Are The World" sessions was superior to all others. Change my mind.

Born in 1949 in California to immigrant parents, he grew up surrounded by music, his father was a vocalist and co-owned a local radio station. An only child, his parents separated when he was eight, and he moved with his mother to live on his grandparents’ dairy farm. His love for singing started young. On his 12th birthday, his mother gave him a gold eighth-note pendant, and soon after he heard a song on the car radio that inspired him to pursue music. In his early 20s, he played in several bands, but setbacks were constant. The tragic death of a bandmate nearly drove him to quit music entirely. His career took a turn when, at his mother’s urging, he responded to an invitation from a band whose manager had been seeking a lead singer, which led to him becoming the band’s frontman. Even after achieving fame, life threw more challenges his way. During the recording of one album, he frequently returned home to care for his ailing mother, who passed away during production. Later, a hip injury and degenerative bone condition ultimately led him to leave the band permanently after discussions about surgery. He also survived melanoma after having a mole removed, and he continues to keep much of his personal life private, including his child and grandchildren. He has never been married, though a 1980s relationship inspired one of his biggest solo hits, and he later lost a long-term partner to cancer in 2012. Despite being one of rock’s greatest voices, he has never won a Grammy. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a fitting recognition of his enduring impact. Through all the challenges, his voice and music continue to inspire millions. Do you know who this is?

Tech support to the rescue... A young woman who submitted a tech support message presumably did it as a joke. Then she got a reply that was way too good to keep to herself. The query: Dear Tech Support, Last year, I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewellery applications and intimacy, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf 4.1 Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House Cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do? Signed, Desperate The response: Dear Desperate, First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system. Please enter command: I thought you loved me. html and try to download Tears 6.2. Do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta version. Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 as it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources. In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0. Good Luck! Tech Support

BREASTMILK She thought she was studying milk. What she uncovered was a conversation. In 2008, evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde was working in a primate research lab in California, analyzing breast milk from rhesus macaque mothers. She had hundreds of samples and thousands of data points. Everything looked ordinary—until one pattern refused to go away. Mothers raising sons produced milk richer in fat and protein. Mothers raising daughters produced a larger volume with different nutrient balances. It was consistent. Repeatable. And deeply uncomfortable for the scientific consensus. Colleagues suggested error. Noise. Statistical coincidence. But Katie trusted the data. And the data pointed to a radical idea. Milk is not just nutrition. It is information. For decades, biology treated breast milk as simple fuel. Calories in. Growth out. But if milk were only calories, why would it change depending on the sex of the baby? Katie kept digging. Across more than 250 mothers and over 700 sampling events, the story grew more complex. Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly higher levels of cortisol—the stress hormone. The babies who drank it grew faster. They were also more alert, more cautious, more anxious. Milk wasn’t just building bodies. It was shaping behavior. Then came the discovery that changed everything. When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow back into the breast. That saliva carries biological signals about the infant’s immune system. If the baby is getting sick, the mother’s body detects it. Within hours, the milk changes. White blood cells surge. Macrophages multiply. Targeted antibodies appear. When the baby recovers, the milk returns to baseline. This was not coincidence. It was call and response. A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Invisible—until someone thought to listen. As Katie reviewed existing research, she noticed something unsettling. There were twice as many scientific studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition. The first food every human consumes. The substance that shaped our species. Largely ignored. So she did something bold. She launched a blog with a deliberately provocative name: Mammals Suck Milk. It exploded. Over a million readers in its first year. Parents. Doctors. Scientists. People asking questions research had skipped. The discoveries kept coming. Milk changes by time of day. Foremilk differs from hindmilk. Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides babies can’t digest—because they exist to feed beneficial gut bacteria. Every mother’s milk is biologically unique. In 2017, Katie brought this work to a TED stage. In 2020, it reached a global audience through Netflix’s Babies. Today, at Arizona State University’s Comparative Lactation Lab, she continues reshaping how medicine understands infant development, neonatal care, formula design, and public health. The implications are staggering. Milk has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we once dismissed as simple nourishment is one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced. Katie Hinde didn’t just study milk. She revealed that nourishment is intelligence. A living, responsive system shaping who we become before we ever speak. All because one scientist refused to accept that half the story was “measurement error.” Sometimes the biggest revolutions begin by listening to what everyone else ignores.

@thesilkmen Absolutely fantastic! Congratulations! 🥳

Did that just happen?

"I live on a street with a lot of elderly neighbors. Mrs. Higgins lives next door. She’s 90. Every night at 5 PM, she turns on her porch light. If the light isn't on by 5:15, I go over. It’s our silent code. Last week, 5:30 came. No light. I ran over. I knocked. No answer. I used the spare key she gave me. She was in the kitchen, confused. The power had gone out in her section of the house, and she couldn't reach the fuse box. She was sitting in the dark, afraid. 'I knew you’d come,' she said when she saw my flashlight. I fixed the fuse. We had tea. 'You’re a good neighbor,' she said. 'No,' I said. 'I’m just watching the light.' We are all just walking each other home in the dark. Look for the lights. And if one goes out, go knock. It takes five minutes to save a life."

@London_W4 Wow! I can imagine that lungfuls of that cold, crisp, fresh mountain air feel tremendous! Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas you beautiful people. Speaking of beautiful, I arrived at this hotel last night in the dark and couldn’t see a thing of the scenery, but I’ve just woken up, stepped out of my room onto the balcony and this is the view. A perfect white Christmas.

@London_W4 A friend made a similar mistake in New York one Christmas. A snowstorm, so almost everywhere closed except the cinemas and the odd convenience store (although there was hardly another soul to be seen). Their Christmas Day fayre from a 7-Eleven and not dissimilar to yours.

Well, after a beautiful train journey from Munich looking out across snow covered fields, hills and forests, I arrived in Salzburg, Austria. Decided to head to the nearest bar to relax. It was closed. And so was the next one. And the next. And every single one. Everything was closed. The only thing open was a petrol station, so I bought dinner and a bottle of wine there, then got a cab to the middle of absolutely nowhere way outside Salzburg. So now I’m here in the hotel room and this is my dinner this Christmas Eve. I kid you not. Cheers 🍻

This is a photograph of me at eight years old. I remember that jumper clearly. I had dragged my dad into GAP, straight to the boys’ section, and begged for it instead of the girly blouse that had been suggested. At that age, I refused to wear any colour other than blue. I pleaded to have my hair cut short, properly short, like the boys. My parents would not let it be shorter than a bob. I am sparing you the photograph. It was truly dreadful. From about the age of three, I was unmistakably a tomboy. I asked for toy soldiers and a football shirt for Christmas (Chelsea- Blue is the colour!). I was the only girl invited to a friend’s football party. I was the only girl who turned up dressed as a prince to a ‘princes and princesses’ party. I read and wrote obsessively. I gravitated towards The Lord of the Rings, spy novels, all the familiar ‘boy’ stories. In every story, in every game, I imagined myself as a male protagonist. His name was always Theo, the boy version of my own. If someone had told me then that it was possible to actually BE a boy, that there were drugs I could take to transform myself and my body, I would have seized the opportunity. And deeply regretted it later. As I moved through my teenage years, I began to realise something crucial. I was perfectly capable of loving all of these things while still being a girl. I had despised the words ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ because I had bundled them together with every restrictive feminine stereotype I had encountered. Today, I would have almost certainly been described as having ‘gender incongruence’ or ‘dysphoria’. And on that basis, I might have been offered medical interventions that risk infertility and amount to chemical castration. Then when I’d been brainwashed enough, I might have been pushed towards a double mastectomy or cross-sex hormones. The Pathways trial MUST BE STOPPED. #StopTheTrial

@MickPuck It’s a great song for sure, but Chris Martin’s straining voice is anathema to me.

Fix You by Coldplay playing in cafe. I heard it as if first time. Choirboy voice, kind melodies, minimalist indie lead guitar, stirring bridge, clever naked octave drop at end. Overarching impression: this music loves me.

@owenjonesjourno This attitude is why victims are not just ignored but accused of crimes themselves. This attitude is contributory to the crime by allowing it to perpetuate unhindered. This attitude is abhorrent.

"We must identify and address any links between ethnicity, religion and culture - and child rape." This is a Labour minister. What. The. Fuck.

@newstart_2024 Lipoedema responds very well to a ketogenic lifestyle and, I believe although I am yet to try it myself, a whollly carnivorous lifestyle even more.

Mikhaila Peterson Fuller stepped onto the historic Oxford Union stage and silenced the entire room with an 8-minute speech. The motion being debated: “This House Would Move Beyond Meat.” She spoke against it — and started with this: “At age 7 I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis in 37 joints. By 17 both my hip and ankle had been replaced. 16 years of immunosuppressant injections, crippling depression, and a body that was falling apart. Doctors called it incurable.” Then, at 23, she tried the one thing no doctor ever suggested: She ate only meat. 2 months later → almost every symptom gone. Off SSRIs, Adderall, and all immune drugs. Pregnancy brought symptoms roaring back… so she went 100% carnivore (beef, salt, water). 6 months later → full remission again. 8+ years later she’s still symptom-free and flares every single time she tries adding plants. She’s not alone: her whole family is carnivore for autoimmune issues, and her community has 7,000+ people with identical stories. Then she dropped the receipts: A Harvard-published survey (Oxford University Press) of 2,000+ carnivores (6+ months): → 90–95% saw major improvement or complete resolution of autoimmune, mood, metabolic, gut & skin issues → 92% of type-2 diabetics discontinued insulin entirely → Almost zero adverse effects Her closing line at Oxford: “We’re being told to eat less of the one food that puts ‘incurable’ diseases into remission for thousands of people… while 1 in 5 North Americans have autoimmunity and 68% are overweight or obese. Maybe we got the food pyramid completely upside down.” Watch the full 8-minute Oxford Union speech below. It’s raw, personal, and will make you question everything you’ve been taught about meat. What chronic health struggle would you do anything to fix? Share your story below — no judgment, only support.

@katherinealee Beautiful dress, you look stunning! Congratulations! 🥳

Post-wedding, the name change is done! I’m not changing my X handle (for nostalgia reasons) but…hi again all. I guess I’m Katy Thompson now!