Unfortunately, due to a clerical error, all the money we raised was used to purchase a blind dog for the guides.

Just me, or was today's blue even more obscure than the usual NBA guff? But googling made it easy. #stupidgame Connections Puzzle #1073 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩

What’s the opposite of nominative determinism?

The fourth and fifth bullet points are equally alarming.

Incredible to think that AI can now write as badly as some of our worst human authors. What a time to be alive.

Very proud of Magdalen student Angus Barrett. And the poem is truly chilling... www.magd.ox.ac.uk/news/magdale...

Clive Myrie: your name please? Mastermind Contestant: Colin Jones CM: Occupation? MC: Postman CM: And your specialist subject? MC: Brian Cox CM: Your 90 seconds on the physicist Brian Cox start now. MC: The what? Oh shit.

Why does Keir Starmer look like he's just hoisted his bosom while gossiping with Cissie Braithwaite?

Honestly feel the republication of this by penguin classics is like a kind of bat-signal to a certain kind of reader that all is not lost, literature-wise. Mad things are still possible.

I'm somewhat convinced by the data showing that smartphones (via reduced in-person socialising) have reduced fertility, but a point that this piece doesn't address at all is people were once far more culturally coerced into having children. Isn't it better not to do that? www.ft.com/content/fba3...

Don't-break-the-spine game, final boss. It's John Cowper Powys's 1932 novel A Glastonbury Romance, published in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, in July. "A very earthquake of a book," wrote the Times, whose reviewer had just dropped it on their toe.

The Penguin Book of the International Short Story, coming next month, edited by Rabih Alameddine and John Freeman, inc stories from Ted Chiang, Can Xue, Scholastique Mukasonga and dozens more. Delighted that Alameddine has heroically included one of his own stories.

Policing people's follows is back back back, baby!

Here's the online, full-fat version of my rundown on the six shortlisted titles for the International Booker Prize. Which "will charm many readers but may not be weighty enough to win"? Which has classic sitcom elements, even though it's about prisoners being hunted and shot?

huh Keywords > 18 May 2026 I found 1 of 5 🟩🟩🟩🟩 7✗ 🟨🟨⬛⬛⬛ 9✗ 💡 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🔥 Play streak 2 keywords.bagpuss.org

Huge thanks to all the fabulous publishers who’ve donated prizes for our Big Book Quiz at Belfast Book Festival. There are limited spaces left but if you fancy winning an absolute haul of gorgeous books and having a great night out, snap up a place quick via Crescent Arts Centre’s website.

looked up some of the cartoonist's other work and they all seem to be like this - usually the same couple and they're just saying a thing. the thing is never a joke, it's just a boring sentence.

Ok this cartoon came up in my IG timeline and I’ve read it half a dozen times and still can’t work out what the joke is. I’m sure I’m missing something blindingly obvious. (For one thing, who’s speaking when both characters have their mouths closed?)

therapist: tell me what happened dog: he threw the ball and I went to chase it therapist: go on dog: he hadn't thrown it, he just pretended therapist: how did you feel dog: humiliated? he laughed, can you believe that therapist: let the feelings out dog: it can never be the same between us

"In previous decades, the world’s fertility rate went down because couples had fewer children. Now the main reason is that there are fewer couples": fascinating and, I think, persuasive by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com:

new favourite sub-reddit has just dropped

I’m sorry but I can’t let this go. That look was not from the Another One Bites The Dust video, this is a nonsense card.

Morning. Rise and shine Kenny. I've got us both a nice glass of OJ.

Got a notification from a medieval copyright lawyer

Aside from the value of reading JNT on JHP, open the tweet below - looks like when you tag someone now, their name appears rather than their full Bluesky handle?

Books lists? You want book lists? Here’s the only one you need today: my rundown of the International Booker Prize shortlist in today’s Guardian, ahead of Tuesday’s winner announcement. Accept no substitutes. In print (in abbreviated form) today, online soon.

Peanuts postbox topper

If you’re an angry anti-intellectual in 2026 you can relax because most people aren’t reading anything. You have nothing to fear from people who like Thomas Mann

I think the best way to enjoy this list, which contains lots of predictable choices (made as it was by committee), is to find a book you like, click to see who voted for it, and then look at the voters' other top 10 choices. You might find something else you like that you haven't read.

Books lists? You want book lists? Here’s the only one you need today: my rundown of the International Booker Prize shortlist in today’s Guardian, ahead of Tuesday’s winner announcement. Accept no substitutes. In print (in abbreviated form) today, online soon.

"It's a reminder that the world was given to us, and it can also be taken away." Me on Melissa Harrison's The Given World, a literary mirrorball reflecting multiple aspects of a place, with grown-up subtlety (except for one character) and descriptions that make you see the world differently.

Bibliophile alert: M John Harrison’s new novel The End of Everything has EIGHTEEN blank pages at the end. Yeah, you heard. (This should not be possible, since book pages are done in batches of 16 or 32; so there never needs to be more than 15 blanks.)

I bet they took to X, formerly Twitter, to do it.

"It's a reminder that the world was given to us, and it can also be taken away." Me on Melissa Harrison's The Given World, a literary mirrorball reflecting multiple aspects of a place, with grown-up subtlety (except for one character) and descriptions that make you see the world differently.

Good to see some traditions upheld in our uncertain times: people continue to 'slam' things in newspaper headlines.

"But many voters in Makerfield who have spoken to the BBC believe Burnham will face a difficult challenge this time round." [Reads article, finds that four of the five constituents they spoke to support Burnham] 🤷‍♂️ (I know the two statements aren't strictly incompatible, but it's an odd framing)

Me reading the description of today's green category in Connections #stupidgame

Subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz355bs

Discovering there's a tier below "As Seen on TV"

Tadpole Self is currently gaming on our new bigger, brighter TV.

This one made me laugh Keywords > 14 May 2026 I found all 5 words! 🟩🟩🟩🟩 2✗ 🟩🟩🟩🟩 2✗ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ✓ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1✗ 💡 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4✗ 🔥 Play streak 1 🏆 Complete streak 1 keywords.bagpuss.org

On an 80s school exchange I was asked repeatedly by a pretty French girl what I thought about ‘Napoleon’. I tried to be as positive about his contribution to history, political culture and military strategy as an Englishman could, to no avail. Eventually worked out she was saying ‘Paul Young’.

A former colleague of mine, if asked "Do you know the time?" would always answer "Yes". 🙄

A teacher who would flip her lid if anybody pronounced the colour turquoise as ‘tur-koise’ instead of ‘toor-kwa’. She was one Benson & Hedges short of a full pack.

Well, happy 230th anniversary to Edward Jenner carrying out the first successful vaccination against smallpox, opening up a field of science which has saved a number of lives too unfathomable to count, and which continues to be uncontroversial and widely accepted to this day

…I am trying to understand what went on in my mind over two decades – the miasma of thought, of appetites and instincts, the little tremors of fear or shame; all those inner movements and emanations, those dimly perceived undercurrents that have agency... 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/14/a...

... I had just started a new job, I was very young and nervous and my boss was Very Grand. "May I ask a question?" I asked one day. He regarded me coolly. "Haven't you done so already?" 😜

Someone once misused 'begs the question' in the presence of my old tutor. He was so excited by the opportunity to correct them that he looked like he was about to die.

“Garde oignon”