Oh.. and a video I'm very pleased with, quirky pop about Temptation - Lead Us Not Literal vibes. youtube.com/watch?v=hIUk5djO… Bass on this by @lelandsklar :-)

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it. The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state. What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it. Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure. In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

I see both sides of the debate, and have sympathies with either side. However when a leading children's charity who take their profession seriously provide cogent arguments for a viewpoint, I feel more drawn towards that.

BOB DYLAN writing in The New York Times on being 85 We’re so used to Dylan being an enigmatic & elusive trickster that it’s always a delightful surprise when he writes something so personal, heartfelt and wise.

This mean students up to Year 11 will not be able to revise GCSE biology on Freesciencelessons YouTube channel. This also mean a 15 years and 364 days old not be able to read Facebook posts from their MP or councillor, but expected to vote for them tomorrow.

Acoustic Encounters returns to #Sheffield's @CrookesSocial this coming Wed 17th Jun! This time it's me, Marilla Homes, & folk duo Summerisle (Sally Doherty and Frank Birtwistle) ..an oasis of calm in the busy week.. tix - wegottickets.com/event/67956… See you there :-)

Fabulous works in the thread. Where AI stands for Artistic Integrity.

Burnham’s team lobbying for Shabana Mahmood as Chancellor is concerning. She’s far too close to Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour thinking, the same faction that helped steer us into Brexit dead-ends and prioritises cultural signalling over practical delivery. We need a Chancellor who will back a proper British food production plan, reopen fertiliser capacity, and support domestic industry, not more of the same inward-looking ideology. @AndyBurnhamGM must choose pragmatists who understand the scale of the reset needed. #AndyForMakerfield #SaveBritishFarming

Spend 20 years studying Chemistry. Collect data. Publish papers. Pass peer review. Earn a PhD. Go online. Get told you're wrong - by an electric screwdriver salesman. That's the internet. Expertise vs confidence. Science isn't broken. Our respect for it is.

To help avoid the drivel peddled by current right wing headlines, repeated by Tufton Street shills Air conditioning is not banned Heated towel rails are not banned Underfloor heating is not banned Meat is not banned Tumble dryers are not banned Fertilisers are not banned

It’s all made up and we can make it different.

Nobody wants a city on Mars. Nobody wants AI in every app. Nobody wants a robot butler. Nobody wants data centers everywhere. Nobody wants flying cars or humanoid robots. We want clean water, we want bees to survive, and we want a habitable planet.

BREAKING: An Economics Professor Just Made A Pretty Stunning Argument About Elon Musk. According to the professor, Musk spent roughly $250 million during the 2024 election cycle. He claims that's just 0.025% of Musk's wealth. In other words, the amount spent was so small relative to Musk's fortune that he could theoretically spend the same amount thousands of times over. That's a democracy question, not just a money question.

If you can’t tax billionaires and trillionaire because “its unrealized gains until they cash out,” then stop letting them leverage that wealth for loans, as collateral, or as equity. If it’s not real enough to tax, it shouldn’t be real enough to leverage. This is why we say the system is rigged in favor of the super wealthy. Abolish billionaires, tax them out of existence, protect working people.

"The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth." ~ George Eliot Two Swallows in Flight 🎨 James Lynch

In the USA in 1943 they produced a film 'Don't be a Sucker' about fascism. It perfectly explains Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the entire Right.

The first thing Nigel Farage will introduce if he is elected is Health Insurance. The NHS correctly costs £200bn a year. In the USA Health Insurance is £14,000 a year per person £14,000 x 50m adults is £700bn a year. £500bn a year profit If you can't afford that you are dying

This is the first case of its kind in UK criminal justice history. A Derbyshire officer allegedly used AI to fabricate evidential material across multiple cases not one. The Crown Prosecution Service is now reviewing every conviction those cases touched. Three days ago, the UK government announced PoliceAI. £140 million. a national AI centre for policing. 40 new facial recognition vans. AI tools for every force in England and Wales by 2027. the official goal: "get responsible AI into the hands of officers." Three days later: criminal investigation into an officer for using AI to manufacture evidence. the interim director of PoliceAI put out a statement today. "our work is rooted in transparency." 97% of all criminal investigations in the UK now involve digital evidence. that's this year's figure. AI is already being used to summarise case files, triage evidence, and assist with disclosure. one officer already used it to manufacture evidence across multiple cases. nobody noticed until now.

I do not care for Association Football, but high calibre japery always deserves acknowledgement.