She’s so incisive and humane. I’m looking forward to reading the new text. I hope it works.

First ever!? Hopefully you didn’t repeat your father’s Furry Boot joke on arrival.

It’s a crowded category, but I thought what Trump said after the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner was even worse. There’s not a shred of empathy, humanity or basic decency in his body!

Interview: Sorcha Groundsell, star of new BBC crime drama An t-Eilean set in Western Isles The Western Isles actor is at the helm of "An T-Eilean", the first major crime drama to be filmed in Gaelic.

It’s good news that award-winning Gaelic drama An t-Eilean (The Island) has been commissioned for a second series, with filming in the Western Isles starting in the spring. Here’s my interview with talented leading actor Sorcha Groundsell! www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/entertain...

From Le Monde …

The cultural destruction of this US government is extraordinary. I get the sense that they destroy simply because they can, as if they reflexively hate everything not made by them or in their image.

Trans athletes may not have fitness advantage in women’s sport, landmark study finds Findings suggest physical performance in trans women converges toward that of cis women over time

you don't say? at some point we're going to acknowledge what every study ever on this subject has said, right? right? www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Most marketers are LLMs ... and need to improve their training set

You may like my post on a similar topic from about 2 years ago ... creativedifferences.substack.com/p/most-marke...

My granddaughters’ rats enjoyed their Burns’ supper.

Someone who shares part of my name and (horrors!) some of my distant relatives can go f*** himself.

The Real Big Tent Food, climate, and why rejecting purism ≠ rejecting responsibility

Thin Ink's 1st issue of 2026: I’m reclaiming the word foodie & rejecting purism while I’m at it.

Loving food has brought me joy my whole life. But in recent years it’s also come with guilt: Not vegetarian enough. Not climate-perfect enough. Not “doing it right.”

news.thin-ink.net/p/the-real-b...

Q1. What took you so long?

look at how little effort it takes for someone on the conservative grievance circuit to destroy a life

millions of college kids have half assed an assignment at the last minute, you eat the F and move on

but the effort to push trans people out of public life will use whatever it can get

I am often too embarrassed to order in Spanish with my awful accent. But any time I do, the meal is twice as good!
In Orlando, a lovely lady gave me extra in a to-go box. Told me, when I wanted it, to take it to the hotel coffee shop and ask them, in Spanish, to microwave it. They did, happily!

That this man was ever elected will be an eternal shame to our country. There appear to be no depths to which his ego cannot drag him down.

Does anyone know if there’s an English translation of “Oma. schreit der Frieder” published?

Wish I had my phone with me on my morning walk. Somebody had stuck a sticky note on a Cybertruck … “2025 Winner of the FiFA Design Award.”

I’m old enough to remember when a ‘remote conference’ just meant a conference where all the participants were aloof, mentally disengaged or emotionally repressed

Seriously? That’s not even shocking, just miserable.

Photo of a rock surface completely covered in multiple lichen species. Colours include orange, yellow, grey, white and black.

Lichen collage. On lakeside rock, Northwest Territories, Canada.
#lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Hey, if you’re a Seattle/WA author with a book coming out next year and you have a firm pub date, please let me know for potential inclusion in the Seattle Times’s 2026 book preview. (Space is limited but I’ll do my best.)

Drop a link either in replies or at my email: thisispaulconstant@gmail.com.

Cool!

Sounds like something Simone Weil could have written. Beautiful.

I have seen one in the Redmond Town Center car shows. Maybe the same one? Super cute.

We have a friend staying with us and I said, of course she can read & borrow any books she wants.

“I like biographies."

And I now realize I have thousands of books but maybe only 6-10 biographies. I just don’t read them much.

Any suggestions?

I find it weird when US politicos criticize Europe for lack of “free speech.” Personally, after 25 years and as a US citizen, I see (and feel) more constraints on expression in the US than in Scotland.
Perhaps I should say, different constraints. What is acceptable varies greatly across the water.

Europe is under siege Menaced by Russia and China, abandoned by America.

Noah Smith uses the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to presage the current woes of Europe.

www.noahpinion.blog/p/europe-is-...

May be of passing interest @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social

Three-year-old child forced to serve as her own attorney in Tucson immigration court More than a dozen undocumented minors were forced to make their case in front of an immigration judge as the Trump administration ramps up removal proceedings.

The moral collapse of US governance is breathtaking.
coppercourier.com/2025/12/05/c...