Author: ferrous
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2025 Roundup
This has been my third full year of long covid/ME/CFS, and my first full year since I left classroom teaching. It was the year I finally stepped down as Chair of AMASE, although I remain a committee member. The fifth Weird Pride Day happened in March, and I chatted with Robin Ince and Kate Fox…
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Launches, 2025
I’ve been busy this year and last, with various collaborations: parts of bigger projects, which are now coming to fruition. The 18th of September, 7-8:45pm sees the launch of two animations that I worked on, together with my partner Sonny and a great little team – all autistic, apart from (probably) the animator. I’m particularly…
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To Sir Keir Starmer KC MP, on the matter of trans rights
Dear Sir Keir Starmer KC MP, I note that your 2024 manifesto includes the following: “We will also modernise, simplify, and reform the intrusive and outdated gender recognition law to a new process. We will remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition and acceptance; whilst retaining the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria…
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All about Weird Pride Day
I started Weird Pride Day in 2021, but the roots of pride as a political tool go back through decades of the LGBTQ liberation movement, to Black power in the 1960s. Weird Pride in particular is a concept that many people, from a variety of backgrounds, have arrived at independently. Weird Pride Day is not…
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2024 Roundup
After a year and a half of managing teaching around long covid/post-viral fatigue, with the last six months particularly bad after a second round of infections, I left classroom teaching at the end of the 2023-24 school year. While I was reluctant to make this move, I haven’t missed the classroom as much as I…
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2023 Roundup
I started 2023 with pretty bad fatigue, having had covid in December 2022, following on from a different virus in November which had already given me weeks of post-viral fatigue. This improved slowly over the course of the year, only for the same thing to happen at the end of 2023 – this time, I…
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Frazzle-Fried Sprouts
It’s a Christmas miracle! If you know someone who is threatening to make boiled sprouts for Christmas, it may not be too late to make them make these instead. You’ll be glad you did, and so will everyone else who eats them. Ingredients: Brussels sprouts Flour for batter (I use gram flour; optionally, add baking…
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The Octet Rule
The Octet Rule expresses the idea that atoms like to have eight electrons in their outermost shell, known as the valence shell. This provides something like an explanation for many chemical phenomena – for a start, the noble gases which make up the right-most column of the Periodic Table don’t usually bond with anything at…
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Buffalo Bots
It is well-known that Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, or to put it another way, Buffalo bison bully bison. It is also a common problem that police police police – as Juvenal put it, ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ We might ask, which police police police? The answer is, of course, that police police police police. And…