I'm probably going to let my kids have social media when they're 14, as long as it's with a meal at a nice restaurant

I'm a sceptic, but this is a worthwhile read.

okay but what if a 10-year-old thinks moby dick is better than middlemarch, what then. where are they supposed to go

I just love this. Surprising and profound.

Oh, and it's still not 'soccer'.

The government know perfectly well who *should* be banned from involvement in UK social media. But that would take a little more courage than legislating against school-age victims.

An effective law is one that has a cat's chance in hell of actually working and doesn't make everything worse. Otherwise it's just sparkling commsbollocks.

Well, the PMs mission to alienate every age demographic moves on apace. Probably the only slice of public guaranteed to be progressive voters in a few years time have now had their phones snatched off them...

Star City is a great watch. A 'Better Call Saul' kind of swerve. Very little relation tonally to For All Mankind, but better for it. Good scripts and performances all round.

Guys, if I make one of my silly little observations about ways some people behave & it doesn't apply specifically to you - a person I don't know - and I forgot to add the caveat 'not you, obviously, you're special' in my limited character count, you can just imagine I whispered it x

I put this into What3Words and now I’m stuck in a nuclear bunker in east Mongolia

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN VERY CLOSE TO A DEAL WITH EURASIA

👇

Christopher is loooooong boy.

Ernst Röhm, distracted by sight of a face-eating leopard approaching. 1933. Teachable moment to media fetishists of Ein Britisher Volk: 'One of us' is a goalpost on castors to them. If you don't know who the next 'foreigner' will be, then it's you. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_o...

And 14 years since I followed her example and did the same! :-)

We can either drift back towards the flawed but functioning rules-based order a short ferry ride away, or else vanish down a grotesque far-right plughole in isolation. I've always found a little swallowed pride preferable to terror and bestiality, but each to their own.

I'm happy to belong to a place that for millennia has experienced several seasons in one day, and yet still manages to be surprised when the weather changes.

One of the smaller consolations of age is knowing which columnists to avoid reading, on account of the time spent being proportionately more valuable and irrecoverable.

hehehehe!

Captain, my Captain 🫡

There's a lot on here about reading and its signalled virtues. About libraries and their value. For my family, it sat at the end of the street. Someone's gift. An open door. We were a bit too lowly for these affectations that now gild literacy in an age of clicks. That open door was gift enough.

This sounds like the worst aftershave ever

Laundered cash - the gargantuan dark matter of our global financial system. The unknowns that the authorities seem content to remain so. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

LATEST: Scientists invent a method to produce a tiny electrical charge from each retailer email requesting 'customer experience' feedback or a comparison site rating. Global energy crisis averted.

INT. JEFF BEZOS'S OFFICE. DAY.

My husband just said 'I organised our battery drawer last night'. Woo steady on, Casanova. I've written enough romance novels to know where this is heading.

Why can’t the young people of today dress like this? If they did they’d get a job and be able to afford a house.👍

Happy 8th birthday to this, from @orkneylibrary.bsky.social

Back at the Hoose to watch 'Suffolk Fishermen Behaving Badly' :-)

The path from Eighties popster to bond villain is worryingly narrow. One persian cat short of world domination.

The extent to which you make excuses to stay is the extent to which Musk was correct about you.

Fisherman's Pi?

Waiter, there's not enough internet in my slop.

New post. Please read and share open.substack.com/pub/joemcgan...

The Right: “We just really want migration reduced to sustainable levels.” Migration promptly falls off a cliff edge. Also the Right: “NO! NOT LIKE THAT!” Instead of celebrations, we got fannywobbles - and that tells you everything you need to know about the decades-long migration debate.

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

For the unpatriotic, those are: Paddington, Winnie the Pooh, Rupert and Sooty. WE SHALL REMEMBER THEM.

No, we wouldn't want to reopen the political issue that's been a national disaster and that most people hate, because that might be a national disaster, and most people might hate it.

I got "Anarchist Rotarian" if you must know.

Guardian are running a list of the 100 best “is Britain now ungovernable” articles next weekend

Or, by the looks of it, as soon as the acid has cleared out of his system...

I'm enjoying the "Top 100 Bluesky responses to a top 100 cultural list bait of all time, of all time."

At risk of stating the obvious, many of the politicians of the last decade have enjoyed positive approval before contact with high office, followed by plummeting ratings afterwards. The trick is not to be the sum of desperate hopes, but an earner of grudging respect. Punch-in-the-mouth management.

All of this. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“The eyes are the nipples of the face” Anna Faris - 2008

This leadership shit, even now, is still not as important as the fact that FIVE MILLION QUID HAS BEEN PAID TO THE LEADER OF ONE OF OUR BIGGEST POLITICAL PARTIES

Bread and SirKeirses

This is the charge. Not personal malice, like plenty of others display. A failure to match the hard trade-offs with the necessary honesty. Any PM who finally turns the tide must be the sin eater for a decade and more of collective delusion. That's the chalice. If you dare not drink, then pass it on.