For this work you must be diligent, comfortable with good faith disagreement, and if possible a good writer. A good colleague offers earnest and direct criticism, rather than agrees for the sake of agreeing. 7/n

Gillian Anderson reveals that The X-Files creator spent nine years manipulating her dialogue into weird geometric shapes, banning all "widows" from her script pages "Chris Carter came up to me who was directing the feature. He looked at my sides where my lines were, and he said, 'Look, no widows'" "No widows on your little paragraphs that each character has. The word went all the way to the end with the period, so there wasn't, you didn't like end halfway through that line" "So it was a perfect rectangle. So the dialogue was designed visually for nine years"

This is the most satisfyingly analytical essay I've read about literary style... ever? sxthwxng.substack.com/p/the-…

struggling with Czech pronunciation? trill issue

This is what I felt, too. Triple lock tweaked (in 2030). End of right-to-buy (on new leases). Regaining the ability to nationalise water companies (but not promising to actually do that). Are we just in a holding pattern until the next election?

The Blair 2005 strategy of taking blow after blow from the electorate and hitting back is well worth studying for those in politics today

how has the uk ended up with no frontier lab of its own. we have the talent, the best universities, and london sitting there as the pipeline from research to funded company. the vcs are here. every part of it is here. but we have the highest industrial electricity prices of any developed country, four times what american firms pay and 50% more than france, and we leech off french nuclear to keep the lights on. and where’s our mistral. ai? we had one. deepmind was founded in london in 2010 and sold to google in 2014 for about £400m. we invented the thing and flogged it before anyone realised what it was. this might be britain’s biggest fumble.

NEW: Andy Burnham appears to rule out cutting welfare to fund defence spending - as the Tories have suggested. (He says their plans to cut £4bn from housing allowance would create homelessness). “Yes, we do everything to support our national security, but it can't come at the expense of social security,” he tells MPs. “Having strong national security also depends upon having resilience in our communities. “This side of the house will not be forced to choose between the two, and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% by 2035 at the spending review.” PM says he will cut welfare bill “the Labour way” through getting more young people back into work, mental health support etc. #PMQs

The wife of Nick, 30, speaks to the BBC.

(On childcare, too, you can make it cheaper by jacking up subsidies - which is what we've done for years. But that jacks up spending/borrowing/taxes! Again, no sign of structural reform...)

🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham has paused plans to nationalise Thames Water due to the cost and legal risk involved [@thetimes]

🚨 NEW: The Government is handing out posters to asylum seekers telling them not to have sex with girls or mutilate their genitals

for anyone who's curious, this is the working culture at new media high apm, low ego. glass vs. rubber balls. feedback as a gift, etc. was a lot of fun to write this with the team

🚨 BREAKING: Andy Burnham has announced 24/7 free bus travel for disabled people from next April

Weird economics up on the agent-only runescape server - Low cost of labor makes most commodities abundant - Currency inflation means trading goods for goods, nobody really wants cash - Huge swarm contention as certain resources with limited respawn rate become valuable