"An ingenious inventor is keeping his secret in some remote farm building between Market Harborough and Peterborough" I've blogged before about the C.W. Allen and the phantom airships of 1909 . It turns out that excitement was running so high that the Daily ...

Liberal England returns to the phantom airship panic of 1909.

What with all the AI stuff, it’s linear algebra that ought to be trendy now. Athena-style psychedelic posters of Sylvester and Cayley.

edstone spontaneously arising from the water while thus spake zarathustra plays

the Militime has come

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

Dennis the Menace DJ's at the Disco Dancing Party while Biffo inexplicably dances with his clone.

Beano Book 1981

100% this. It doesn't take a team of to mandarins to discover this. You could probably have got it from five minutes with a midrange LLM

Biffo engages in Cultural Appropriation and is beset upon by one of Beanotown's Local Racists. LOCAL RACIST: Har-har! Come back here and I'll pull your hat over your eyes! BIFFO: Not likely!

Beano #1540, January 22, 1972

Eating leftover curry and foolishly ate a whole pepper that was so spicy that I had to get up from the table to walk it off like a footballer who has just been on the wrong end of a nasty tackle.

A colleague didn’t recognise me in my glasses so I tried to joke “I’m Clark Kent” but accidentally declared “I’m Ken Clarke”

by no means the main take to be had here (indeed takes 1 to 25 should be along the lines of "fucking hell Keir"), but worth noting just how quickly moral rot can spread - all of this obviously happened because Trump won and the government needed someone morally rotten to step in to help them

Manchester, 1976, photo by John Bulmer. The shoes!

Bonkus of the Conkus has been an intrusive phrase in my head for a solid four days now. it's partially because, obviously, very funny combination of words. the other reason is that Olive Oyl's reaction reads exactly like a Naomi Wolf tweet.

A dear friend is on holiday in Tasmania and found these Doctor Who masks sitting in a rafter in a Hobart antique store.

They were apparently made by someone from Madam Tussauds for an ABC promotion (which raises so many questions).

$4000 for the set.

Very sorry to hear that Ian Watson has died. A great, greatly varied writer, not honoured enough in his own country.

Very sorry to hear that the great Ian Watson left us today. I last saw him at Eastercon a year ago, where he bought me a magic wand to go with my elf ears. He will be much missed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Wat...

Nichest thing I collect is pics of adverts for French marriage prep classes in French churches, which inevitably have a deep deep air of Frenchiness I can't quite articulate

Mike Batt wrote some first-rate glam rock stompers.

Glad the astronauts are back safely. When I was growing up, crewed moonshots were one of those marvellous things I’d just missed out on experiencing, like steam trains, and it feels miraculous that they’ve started again.

Prize crossword No 29,978 Prize crossword No 29,978

Nice Guardian Prize Crossword today from Kite - found this tricky at the start but enjoyed the theme www.theguardian.com/crosswords/p...

Ludlow and Tenbyry Advertiser: Tenbury Wells road slip MP Harriett Baldwin pushes for solution. At least eleven people in a line, pointing at a hole in the road.

It’s… it’s… beautiful. The Busby Berkeley of synchronised pointing.

www.ludlowadvertiser.co.uk/news/2600950...

Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson - Wikipedia

I had never heard of Joe ‘Mr Piano’ Henderson before. I now quite want to watch the film that he scored, Jazz Boat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_%22...

The King's Daughter - Official Trailer - Exclusively in Theaters Jan 21st YouTube video by Gravitas Ventures

It’s the 11th anniversary of the release of a film in which Pierce Brosnan plays Louis XIV, who wants to kill a mermaid in order to cheat death, but his secret daughter makes friends with it. Or at least, it would be the anniversary if the film hadn’t been shelved for a full seven years...

Viz 355

East Coast Viking: I have sailed the volga, the dneiper, seen the wonders of Constantinople and the Arabic world

West Coast Viking: I am in Norfolk :(

Shane has somehow lost his expensive dental work in the transition to the afterlife, which seems unfair

'Dr Who death threat to bairns'. The British Safety Council weren't happy with Planet of the Daleks (Aberdeen Evening Express, 9th April 1973)

A man sitting at a working desk, reading, and simultaneously looking something up in a second book. He is also wearing a corn of flowers.

Two easy working improvements from the year 1537:

1) a dual monitor setup to read and write faster
2) a flower crown to look notably cooler while doing the reading

#skystorians

Terry Major-Ball’s autobiography ‘Major Major: Memories of an Older Brother’ is a very entertaining slice of not-particularly-well-off postwar middle-class British life - well worth getting hold of.

Anniversary of the 1992 UK General Election, whose result unhinged me for quite a while. (The Major government has rather risen in my estimation over the last few years.)