We need a labeler here that lets everyone know.

ACTUALLY WENT TO THE 2026 WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

Congrats!

Congrats!

Wildly Different by Sarah Lonsdale

Rebel Women Between the Wars by Sarah Lonsdale

🎶 Happy Paperback Publication Day to me...🎶 🎵

Delighted to report that Wildly Different: Five Women who Reclaimed Nature in a Man’s World, and Rebel women between the wars: Breaking Boundaries 1918-1939 are both out between beautiful soft covers today. Thank you @manchesterup.bsky.social

Oldest joke is probably the sumerian one. “A dog walks into a bar and says ‘I can’t see a thing’. I’ll open this one.’

A revealing Ringo interview from 1976. Worth a listen. YouTube video by Stickey Lashes

This is very good.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVgU...

What’s the oldest thought, Jo?

Or the oldest joke?

Photo of laced leather foot covering, filled with straw to give bulk..

Have just seen what is claimed to be the oldest known shoe in the world. Perhaps 5,000 years old or more. In Yerevan, Armenia.

Having already seen the oldest butter in the world, in Cork, I’m thinking of starting a minor obsession.

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914 – 1944) was a British agent in France in the Second World War who served in the Special Operations Executive. She became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during WW2. #CelebratingWomen

Trump approval falls to 35% as rating on handling prices hits a record -46 Our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds the president's overall job approval at a new low, Democrats leading by 7 on the generic ballot, and a majority says the Iran war is not worth the cost

I love record unpopularity for Trump, it's everything he deserves. But too many people, especially political & media elites, treat it as mission accomplished. Trump & co are still in command of the American state, using it to violate human rights, wage needless war, & destroy public health & science

Wondering how Congress can tolerate Trump and all his demented lieutenants forgets that Congress itself consists of Trump’s demented lieutenants.

It’s like wondering how a guy working for Michael Corleone could put up with Michael killing his own brother when he’s the guy who shot him…

Yes. Saving filmwork in progress to backup drives is like saving Word files to non-workable PDFs. During 4 years editing my film “Liberty Street: Alive at Ground Zero” I lost 7 months of work on a sequence culled from 225 hrs of footage when a drive burnt out. To start again was inconceivable. Gone…

I had friends loved to excuse every form of lameass behavior by saying: “He’s/she’s going through a rough time.”

This was even applied to editors sitting on my work.

I’d say: “I’ve been going through a rough time since 1954 - sorry - it’s not an excuse for being a jerk.”

Not a popular reaction…

offline friends be like here’s something new i wrote in case you, personally, want to drop everything for 30 minutes to read it 🙏

It used to be that when I sent someone a book, saying “Don’t expect you to read it - just wanted you to have it,” there was a subconscious lingering glimmer of hope that maybe - possibly - perhaps - in an idle moment - they would give it enough of a glance to fake it.

Bye lingering glimmer!

You learn brutally about simulation editing a film with thousands of crucially modulated cuts in your 90 minute timeline. You work it daily on your screen. Looks great. But if the drive containing the files to which all of your cuts refer unplugs, the film is gone: it’s all horrid empty red blanks…

If your commander-in-chief is being excluded from military operations (coz he’s a lunatic) and blocked from accessing the nuclear codes (coz he’s a lunatic), you’re overdue for a new commander-in-chief.

The Trump regime should not be treated like a normal administration. Saying nothing & acting business-as-usual in their presence is just granting them unearned legitimacy.

My photo shows a Paleo-Babylonian clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform text, still partially enclosed in its original clay envelope. The clay is pale orangey-brown in colour displayed against a grey display case background. The outer envelope has been broken open, revealing the inner tablet beneath. Both surfaces are covered with densely packed wedge-shaped characters, which record a contract for the sale of a house purchased by Mannum-balu-Samas at the price of 1/3 shekel and 15 grains of silver. This is followed by the names of the numerous witnesses including the mayor Sin-magir and the courier Apil-ilisu. The same text is repeated on the envelope in the event of a dispute, which was broken to inspect the internal document. It is dated 32nd year of Hammurabl's reign, 10th month, c. 1750 BC. The clay envelope measures 87 mm (height) × 55 mm (width), while the inner tablet measures 64 mm (height) × 43 mm (width). On display at the Museum of Antiquity in Turin. Collection number MAT 740.

A 3,750 year-old contract for the sale of a house recorded on a clay tablet, still in its original clay envelope!

Museo di Antichità, Turin
📷 by me

#Archaeology

We're hiring!

The Aristotelian Society is recruiting a new Managing Editor. This is a demanding part-time role suitable for a current graduate student to undertake alongside their studies.

Deadline: Monday 18th May 2026. Read more here:

mailchi.mp/9ec3fa312725...

There is something essentially terrifying about McCoy Tyner

Forces of Nature! McCoy Tyner / Joe Henderson / Henry Grimes / Jack DeJohnette Live at Slugs'

👇🍟

Queueing at the box office in Blue Island - Illinois in 1943

📷 by Jack Delano

Great shot.

In RKOs 1942 HERE WE GO AGAIN, Fibber McGee & Molly try a 2nd honeymoon.

My guess is that Delano’s photograph is better than the film they are lining up to see… but it was apparently successful.

Delano, a Ukrainian, was also a composer, a filmmaker, and a producer of educational TV.

Sapho
Emily Dickinson
Donna Leon
Virginia Woolf
George Elliot
Margaret Fuller
Simone Weil
Abigail Adams
Charlotte Brontë
Teresa of Avila
Agatha Christie
Gertrude Stein
Daphne DuMurier
Susan Sontag
Shelagh Delaney
Mary Shelley
Simone de Beauvoir
Patricia Highsmith
Edith Wharton
Harper Lee
Carole King

ICE detained the wife of an active-duty U.S. Army Sgt. First Class after she showed up for an immigration appointment in 📍 El Paso—then still threatened removal despite legal protections.

Her husband (27 years active duty) said it plainly: ICE is out of control.

If you live in Virginia, tomorrow you have a huge opportunity to make it clear to the GOP that if they want to win, it won’t be by changing the rules and redrawing maps. At least, not without a fight. Vote YES on the redistricting vote, and push back!

It’s important to remember that the goal of lawsuits like the one brought by Kash Patel against the Atlantic isn’t to win, it’s to cost the Atlantic as much money as possible only to drop the suit before discovery, and as red meat for the MAGA base by simply filing it.

Today we remember the horrific tragedy of the Columbine shooting. 27 years later, it is a disgrace that gun violence is still the leading cause of death for children in America.

Goose on a roof in a planter w starling quizzing it

More on this evolving situation later. (WTF Bonnie, & where is Clyde?)