I only had it on for a few minutes, honest mister

Calm down, G.K. Chesterton.

I've now come to the view that Starmer has to go, not because he's in the Mandelson business (though he is) but because I can't see how else we're going to arrive in a world where I never have to hear about all this crap again.

Oh, now it's The Big Country. Grrr.

I turned it on this morning and it was some godawful gloopy nonsense by John fucking Barry. At least it wasn't Out of Africa, which they've played to death in the last year or two.

Opening titles of the 2023 film The Promised Land, juxtaposing the English title with the Danish, “Bastarden”.

Enjoyed the film The Promised Land, but can’t shake the suspicion that the English title fails to capture the nuances of the original Danish.

Ah, so other people doing that are just naive victims of Israeli propaganda. Good to know.

They’re fairly regular visitors over Coldham’s Common. A couple of summers ago I saw three or four of them apparently facing off with several buzzards, all circling around in the air, from time to time one of making a feint at the other group.

Who said leave Netanyahu out? But don’t make him your primary response. Israel is part of the conversation; “But Israel” is not an appropriate response to an attack on your fellow Britons.

Well, good. But then I don’t see what relevance your post had to Sam’s.

I think his point is that there is a lot of ambient, low-level antisemitism around (mostly, conflating Jews with Israel) that makes this sort of thing more likely.

Are you suggesting that attacking British Jews because of the actions of Israel isn’t antisemitism?

Maybe the people in the weird barbershops long for the day when a Farage government makes it possible for them to give up their fake businesses and launder their money through crypto instead.

But the programme is still on BBC Sounds – I've just checked, and there's no mention of the error at the start or the finish. Haven't listened to the whole thing, but I would be very surprised if it's been inserted into the body of the programme.

What is your accent?

Anyway, before all that, he was a good DJ who did a lot to expand BBC radio's rather narrow notions of popular music.

Very sad. I've always wondered how far his mental health problems were a product of his trip to Rwanda after the massacres – I have a memory of him on the Today programme talking about finding a well full of corpses, and sounding as if he was on the edge of a breakdown.

Advice from website to phone for help, which ends 'You can give us a call on' and then a blank space.

Cambridge Water's website won't accept the password I have stored, or allow me to use a new one. Looks like I'll have to follow their advice and phone them. What was that number again?

A white garment with some kind of food stain. Humiliating.

A pair of dirty hands rest on a car engine. Rough, tough, cool.

Here is an easy solution:

Food stains are humiliating, as they suggest you're a little baby who can't feed themselves.

Oil stains, such as those you'd get from working on your car, suggest you're tough, independent, and skilled.

Thus, simply cover your food stains with used motor oil.

which is why we all have gills, right? fucking dipshit

It's so funny to me that right-wingers love to pretend to love the Middle Ages and the Crusades and all that and then complain that the Pope shouldn't get involved in politics.

Because you buy it if you’re too poor to own a fridge.

To the Black Panthers, iirc

Indeed, but left authoritarianism. I remember in one of his novels he had a character thinking that the solution to crime was obvious – lots more police. It definitely felt like Fischer meant it. Now, that looks like an early indicator.

Depressing on two levels: 1/ Tibor Fischer is, or used to be, a pretty good novelist -
I had no idea he’d fallen so low. 2/ None of the responses to this betrays any awareness of that.

Niche complaint: Words and Music, Radio 3's Sunday night themed compilation of readings and records, has managed to feature exactly the same extract from The Wind in the Willows – the bit about the piper at the gates of dawn – in successive weeks, supposedly exemplifying entirely different themes.

Would recommend, if you get the chance, the 1985 BBC adaptation, written by Arthur Hopcraft (who did the Alec Guinness Tinker, Tailor), and also with some fantastic casting: Denholm Elliott particularly brilliant as Jarndyce, Diana Rigg as Lady Dedlock, Charlie Drake a very sinister Smallweed, et al

I was thinking yesterday about the contrast between the apparent kindness and sanity of my neighbours and the rage and bigotry I see unleashed on nextdoor.com

Belgium is Atlantis. I always knew it.

RFK Jr. Lied His Way Into Office and American Health Is the Victim He is pushing quackery as science as health secretary

Kennedy canceled $500 million in mRNA research and announced no new mRNA projects will ever be initiated—killing the technology that produced the fastest vaccine rollout in human history.