What The Actual !!!

Breaking up with me and then expecting me to cheer you up is quite the aftercare package. Sadly, discontinued. Miss Me on Your Own by Rose Static 🤎 His jacket’s with the neighbour. youtu.be/S-ob0qP3-gM

Nobody talks enough about how suspicious coffee is. You try it for the first time and think, who on earth decided burnt, bitter bean water was a good idea? Fast forward a few years and you’re spending £5 on one, buying a machine for your kitchen and developing strong opinions about milk foam. ☕😂 Well, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have discovered something rather interesting about how our brains learn to enjoy flavours. They’ve identified a slower dopamine signalling pathway that responds to what happens AFTER food or drink reaches our digestive system. Basically, your brain doesn’t just care how something tastes. It also learns to associate flavours with what happens afterwards. The researchers demonstrated this in mice, then found supporting evidence of a similar process in human brain scans. It could help explain why something initially unpleasant, such as bitter coffee, becomes enjoyable over time. Although the study didn’t directly test people learning to love coffee. So apparently, my brain has been conducting its own little reward programme while I’ve been innocently drinking cappuccinos. I’d quite like it to apply the same enthusiasm to broccoli, but clearly we’ve still got some work to do. 🤣💕

On Thursday, about fifty European leaders land in Dublin. Ireland’s calling it the biggest security operation in the history of the State. Roads shut. Airspace restricted so tightly that unauthorised drones stay grounded. And the warm-up act? Hoax bomb threats disrupting flights, including services from Ireland and the UK. RTÉ and other Irish newsrooms were targeted with emails claiming devices were inside. Separately, 13 SuperValu stores had refrigeration systems hit by a suspected cyber attack. Asked who’s behind it, Defence Minister Helen McEntee said nobody can rule Russia out. The official government line is more careful: it’s too early to name a culprit. Hoaxes. Hacked fridges. City centre cordons. If the goal was to make everyone jumpy, job done. What the actual!!! Source: Irish Times on the threats] irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/…)

Spotted someone I vaguely know at the end of the cereal aisle, so obviously I pressed my phone to my ear and started a deeply convincing conversation with absolutely nobody. “Yeah... no... totally... I’ll ask him.” Ask who? There is no him. Then the phone rang. Out loud. While I was “on it”. I shop at a different Tesco now. Possibly a different county.

I gave the lead in my new soul pop video to a little blue haired puppet. She’s about to ring her ex from outside the chippy, so emotionally I’d say she’s one of us. ☎️ I Could Use Your Hello by Rose Static 🎶 youtu.be/s4IoWYooX78

So Scottish independence is “not on the table.” Clear consensus required. Move beyond the constitutional questions. Got it. Except the Cabinet Office has been polling Scotland on independence since Andy Burnham walked into Number 10. We only know because a Freedom of Information request forced them to admit it. What we still don’t know is what the numbers said, or how much of your money paid for them. Both withheld. He’ll tell you there’s no majority for another referendum. Fair enough. Slightly harder to sell when the same government is quietly running the research and then locking the results in a drawer. Transparency for thee. Spreadsheets for me. What the actual!!! Source: [The National’s FOI report] thenational.scot/news/267057…

In 1752, Britain simply deleted eleven days. People went to bed on Wednesday 2 September and woke up on Thursday 14 September. Parliament moved us onto the Gregorian calendar to line up with most of Europe, and the 3rd to the 13th just... never happened. Imagine your birthday being cancelled by an Act of Parliament. And the most British bit? The tax year still ends on 5 April because of the calendar shuffle. The Treasury had no intention of losing out. Some things never change. What the actual!!! 🤯

“Sometimes the room goes quiet not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve mentioned what everyone was avoiding.” At a dinner table. In a group chat. That little pause after someone asks the question nobody fancied answering. Obviously, an awkward silence doesn’t make you right. You still need your facts. But keeping everybody comfortable isn’t much of a substitute for an honest conversation either. I’d rather hear “how do you know that?” than “you can’t say that.” One starts a discussion. The other saves everyone the bother of thinking.

MI5 admitted it gave false evidence in three sets of court proceedings over the Agent X scandal. An inquiry found that one senior officer knowingly lied. The officers concerned dispute its findings, MI5 accepts them. The BBC reported that X, an informant, coercively controlled his partner, known as “Beth”, and attacked her with a machete. It also reported that MI5 helped him go abroad while police were investigating him. Beth received a substantial settlement this year. On 3 November, the High Court declined to bring contempt proceedings, saying another investigation would be unmanageable and duplicate the inquiry’s work. It pointed instead to a possible police investigation and a prosecution decision by the CPS. That isn’t a finding that nothing happened. It isn’t a clean bill of health. And it certainly shouldn’t be the point where everyone quietly stops paying attention. Secret work does not mean accountability should be optional. Source: [Court ruling and case background] centreforwomensjustice.org.u…

The British pavement dance deserves a medal. You are walking towards someone. There is plenty of path. And yet, with the timing of a military display team, you both step the same way. Then the other way. Then the same way again. Now you are locked in a tiny, polite wrestling match with a complete stranger, muttering “sorry, sorry” while neither of you can remember how walking works. The only escape is the full body freeze, the awkward laugh, and that little sidestep as if you have just invented personal space. If they ever add it to the Commonwealth Games, I am available. I have put the hours in.

Lord Ashcroft’s new poll for the Mail on Sunday has Labour on 31, the Tories on 26 and Reform on 18. Cue champagne in Tory HQ. Small detail, though. This isn’t the usual “who would you vote for?” approach. Respondents score their likelihood of voting for each party from 0 to 100, with a threshold of 50 and turnout weighting. Ashcroft says his approach tends to find Reform a few points lower than other pollsters. He’s also a former Conservative deputy chairman. That doesn’t automatically make his numbers wrong. It does make reading the methodology rather more useful than admiring the headline. Farage has been calling this week’s polling “jiggery pokery”. Ashcroft’s camp points out Nigel wasn’t complaining when they had Reform nine points ahead. Fair. Annoyingly fair. Politicians love a poll until it stops loving them back. Source: [Poll results and methodology reporting] dailymail.com/news/article-1…

November 1970, Oregon. A 45 foot, eight-ton dead whale is stinking out the beach. The highway department’s solution? Twenty cases of dynamite. Half a ton of the stuff. The beach erupted, blubber rained down, and a three foot chunk flattened the roof of Walter Umenhofer’s new Oldsmobile. His verdict: “My insurance company’s never going to believe this.” Plot twist: the state’s insurer paid him full retail value eleven days later. Imagine filling in that claim form. Accident, theft, fire… airborne whale. What the actual!!! Source: [Contemporary newspaper report] theexplodingwhale.com/eviden…

“Stop shrinking to fit places you've outgrown.” Quieter in meetings. Polite about rubbish behaviour. Laughing at jokes that genuinely aren't funny. All that effort to make everyone else comfortable, and what do you get? A sore neck from all the nodding. If a room only likes you when you're half yourself, it's not your room. Get your coat, love.

Who answers the door at quarter to four? With the river coming up the stairs and June hammering on the glass, you’d want to be the neighbour who does. Wake the Whole Street, my new blues-rock track as Rose Static, is out now. 🎸 youtu.be/qAnmYBDM35Q

You can play against a stranger online. But if you’re under 16, the government plans to stop you talking to them. “Behind you!” Apparently that’s where the policy gets complicated. The under 16 social media ban is planned for spring 2027. Restrictions on chatting with strangers in games are also planned, but don’t have a start date yet. Protecting children matters. So does asking how these checks work. The government acknowledges more adults will have to verify their age too. That doesn’t automatically mean handing over a passport, but it does mean another check between you and something you used to just use. Can we discuss whether this actually works without pretending everyone asking questions wants children left unprotected? Source for reference: [Government online-safety fact sheet] gov.uk/government/publicatio…

Rehearsing my coffee order for the entire queue. Twelve people. Silently mouthing it like I'm prepping an Oscars speech. Get to the front. “Hiya, can I get a... um... a... the brown one?” Every. Single. Time.

I wrote a love song for the person who steals your toast and somehow still gets invited back for breakfast. 💙 Making Room for Two by Rose Static. The official lyric video is out now 🎶 youtu.be/i-vcz2jUPuU

Energy independence. Lovely phrase. Slightly odd name for a bill banning new North Sea oil and gas exploration licences while we still need oil and gas. Existing fields can carry on, so no, nobody’s switching the whole North Sea off tomorrow. But Labour MP Graham Stringer calling imports over domestic production “crazy and perverse” does rather puncture the sales pitch. Meanwhile, a leaked EU negotiating draft reportedly wants UK payments and restrictions on deporting European offenders as part of an electricity-market deal. Britain hasn’t agreed to those demands. Important distinction. Still, between importing energy and negotiating the price of access, “independence” is doing an impressive amount of heavy lifting. Sources for reference: [North Sea bill reporting] independent.co.uk/news/uk/po… [EU negotiating draft reporting] independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho…

In 1958 the US Air Force studied a real, top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon. It was called Project A119. The point? A flash visible from Earth to impress everyone during the Cold War. A young Carl Sagan worked on modelling the dust cloud. Not a better telescope. Not a nice flag. A nuclear explosion. Grown men. With funding. What the actual!!!

“If your peace needs everyone to agree, that isn’t peace. That’s a hostage situation.” Some people don’t want a conversation. They want an audience that claps on cue. The second you disagree, suddenly you’re “the problem.” Guard your opinions like your house keys. Not everyone who knocks deserves to come in. What the actual!!!