Craig Weldon

@Helen_Fields Difficult. The kids I know round here who've got work have parental connections in trades, I don't know how that translates to law. But I got my first break from a friend's mum whose husband's work was hiring. Modern recruitment is broken, only networks remain!

Sigh. Son who is about to graduate from Exeter with a good law degree has sent off 150 applications for summer work, internships, experience. His CV looks good. Results are good. Very personable. Scrubs up well. Loads of mini pupillage experience. Some of the applications are for unpaid work. Most don’t bother replying. None give feedback. The opportunities for young people, even law graduates, just aren’t there. It’s heart-breaking.

@HDunn_Writer The words my tailor used was "I'm afraid sir is too successful for that suit." Successful - that's the best way I've heard it put!

I watched a weird video on YouTube about "body positivity" and one of the people said the word "obese" was a "slur," and she wanted to be called "fat bodied." Honestly, MANY of my emotional scars and insecurities I deal with as an adult are because I was constantly called "fat" as a child & adolescent. I would NEVER want to be called "fat bodied" and I'm so confused as to why this is the preferred term now? There's gotta be something better.

@MadelaineLucyH I like A because it completes a story I read at an impressionable age, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing…

Ok crunch time, what one do you want to read more: A: 1902. A strange child is discovered in a Bloomsbury townhouse, her family vanished, and no one remembers or knows anything about them. A grieving widow becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. B: 1632. A woman wanders into an isolated village snowed off from the world, and is offered uneasy shelter for the winter. But when young boys start dying in strange accidents, the village must decide whether the outsider is to blame.

So not a lot of people know I co-own a charcuterie. We also sell cheese on the side. In fact our most popular-selling product is a cheeseboard for one, which we market as 'Your Own Personal Cheeses'

@techtoby__ I had a graduate friend in the geekier side of defence, and one of the phrases the company HR dept specifically barred them from saying in public was replying to the question "what do you do?" with "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

> you start bristol maxxing > no one told you rent is the highest outside of london > sinking an £8 pint on kings street you meet monty and hugo, two defence contract recruiters > they tell you it’s “fucking sick pay” and that “permies are povos” > £650 a day locked in > laugh at all the povos pretending to enjoy the city and move to the suburbs > you have a date with a girl with a self cut fringe > asks what you do for work > you say supply chain > not autonomous drones > weird, next week she’s protesting outside of your company office > ir35 fucks everything > realise everything cool is being built in london > move to london

Love this. If you are a poor writer, LLM prediction machines can raise your work to the level of mainstream mediocrity. And if you are a great writer, LLMs can reduce your work to the same level.

There's a lot of moaning on twitter about Muslims stealing our country today in the wake of #GortonandDentonByElection and it reads *exactly* like the complaints being made in the 1930s about Irish Catholics. #ScottishHistory craigweldon.com/a-history-of-s…

@AmbJapanUK Ah God I could go a pint of mild right now!

Black Country Ale in Birmingham!!🍺👍

26 years ago I read an article that reckoned the three most likely disasters to befall the USA in the near future were a terrorist attack in New York, a hurricane in New Orleans, and a major earthquake in California - and the most likely was the earthquake. 😲

@theiaincameron My understanding is the oldest written description comes from Pytheas in On the Ocean, he describes Britain as a triangular island with corners at Kantion (Kent), Orkas (Orkney) and Belerion (presumably Cornwall).

What is Scotland’s Oldest Place-Name? Scotland’s oldest place-names are not towns, mountains or cities, but rivers. These names can survive waves of invasion and changes of language. Some have been around for millennia, predating recorded history. Here are three of the oldest: 1/4

@AnkerBuchter @colingorrie If you say "I have a boat" in every language round the North Sea, it's pretty much the same phrase.

@colingorrie As a young man my father in law from the west coast of Jutland went sailing and visited the East coast of England, speaking not a word of English. He could talk with old people there, each speaking their respective dialects of English and Danish.

Written English has barely changed in 300 years. If you can read Harry Potter, you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719). The Spelling of our Tongue was in the main ſettled ere the eighteenth Century, & the Grammar has ſuffer'd but little Alteration ſince. Yet before this happy Settlement, things were exceeding ſtrange. In Shakeſpeares dayes, ſpelling was much more variable, & you ſhall finde notable differences in the grammar: "thou" could bee intimate or inſulting, depending vpon whom you ſayd it to; to chooſe amiſse had conſequences. Wende we now tuo hundred ȝeer bifore, to Chauceres tyme. It seemeth ȝit as Englisshe, but it nis nat esy to reden withouten greet connynge. Yet tuo hundred wintre er, sone after þat the Normans comen to þis londe, is Englisch on muchel wandlunge. Þe tunges work is tobroken, Frensce wordes comeþ in, and þe writunge is al totwemed. Þy furðor þu underbæc færst, þy gelicor biþ Englisc gesewen þære Deniscan spræce. Englisce bec þæs m. geare ne mæg nan mann rædan buton he sundorlice geleornad sy.

OK so this doesn't make much sense till you click the image. 42MB for Notepad.exe. No doubt caused by Copilot for Notepad

What the hell? That's a lot of memory for a few text files.

@Annemarieward @KelvingroveArt @artist_dali I preferred where the painting used to be, at the end of a long corridor. The perspective effect when you came round the corner, looked down the corridor and saw it, as if the whole building was amplifying the painting. Even a philistine child like me got goosebumps

A diplomat standing in @KelvingroveArt , gazing up at @artist_dali Christ of St John of the Cross, holding a Paddington Bear, strangely perfect. A Japanese ambassador, a Spanish surrealist, a Scottish gallery, and a small bear from darkest Peru all looking up at Christ suspended over Glasgow. If that’s not a parable about hope and unlikely grace, I don’t know what is. Soft power, meet soft toy. Wonderful.

See if you can guess what 19th century British city is being described by a contemporary campaigner... "these Augean stables, this pandemonium, this tangle of crime, filth and pestilence" #scottishhistory amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CLKWBDKD

@Real_TRogers @JABryden @justoutofrange I made a note to buy this because I liked the cover and the blurb so just ordered the paperback today. Hope it's good 🤞

@JABryden @justoutofrange I'll pretend you want "Legend In The Making" and drop my debut. Be gentle.

Hey indie legends, I need some for my YouTube series where we judge books by their covers. Think yours can hold up to the scrutiny of @justoutofrange and me? At the risk of sounding like a scambot... drop your books below. 🙃

@NoahRayWrites @HDunn_Writer Option 2 is best if your own son has it in him Option 4 invite all the teachers round to your house for a big party 5 join the school board / PTA 6 persuade another kid to bodyguard yours 7 have your son collected by some Mafia looking types in a couple of blacked out cars

Its probably learned behaviour from an adult. That said... You have three options now that official channels have failed. One is to help your kid smuggle a recorder or even better a camera so he can catch the bastard in the act. Little known fact: You can persue assult charges without the schools. He will be tried as a minor but it will be a serious consequence. Two. Teach your kid to fight back. He will get in trouble but if you back him up he will remember and love the memory of you supporting him even as the school condemned him. Option 3 is try to meet the parents. Chances are they are abusive and the kid is repeating behavior from home. Snitch on the kid to his own parents and make sure he knows any time he messes with your kid his parents will find out and cause his life to become even more hellish than it already is. This option is the most likely to backfire as his parents may brush it of or even worse encourage it if they are teaching this kid to make racist remarks. Thats all I got.

WWYD - My son, 4th grade, and a group of his friends are being bullied by another kid in his class. This kid is actually a year older (he was held back in 1st) and TOWERS over the other kids. He's probably my height, 5'4". Anyhow, this child has been punching, scratching, tackling, hitting people with gym equipment, walking past roughly and pushing them against the walls, etc. With ONE exception at recess, he does this when an adult isn't looking. He was caught once (and of course, my son was the victim) and WAS taken the principal. I am told the parents are very uninvolved. My son is scared to dime on this kid... the kid has told him that going to adults about this is "typical white person behavior" (wtf does that mean?) and my son actually thinks this kid is going to kill them all. I have spoken to the teacher & principal about the issue, and asked them to please leave my son's name out of anything they do w/this kid... and some of the other parents have done the same, but NOTHING is really being done other than moving the kids seat around. And then he ends up terrorizing a new kid. Apparently this has been happening w/the child since kindergarten. What the fucking fuck? And what the hell is "typical white people behavior?"

@HDunn_Writer I joined twitter and Instagram because my publisher said I had to do them. So I religiously did my 15 minutes social a day, the publisher went bust, and now I'm not sure what I am doing here...

I think being on here, and seeing the range of judginess (yes, I know that isn't a word) of other writers toward fellow indies has contributed to my lack of desire to continue writing. I'm paranoid about it now. The fiction, not the poetry. I don't know if I will return to it.

@Real_TRogers @JABryden @justoutofrange I really like this

@jratcliff It's good for someone like me who doesn't know much about programming, to build small one off jobs to get a task done without security or performance concerns. For writing essays it's still dogshit, but maybe that's because I have a higher bar for writing than coding.