Sometimes I love my job. Got Rowan Williams writing on Leonard Cohen this week.

Well done to Sky for correcting this bit of ignorance. As shown extensively in the Epstein files there's plenty of proof that being rich doesn't mean you have any great insights into the world.

"Say there are 650 MPs, and five per cent of them have links to paedophiles..."

Incredible finish to the South Africa-Afghanistan match

Good. The objections to this scheme are overblown, and largely amount to "we should save a 1990s branch of McDonald's from demolition" when you actually look at the plans in detail.

Time for my increasingly frequent, 'there's a clear Trend on this chart' joke

Well 👀

think I'm correct in saying that constitutionally you can't change prime minister during a Winter Olympics

Alarmed that I'm closer to Arsenal fans than cricket fans 👀

If you are using the phrase "full speed ahead to uber-woke, net-zeroist, rejoinerism", especially if you are of the left, a loved one should take your phone off you and send you to Baden-Baden or somewhere for a month.

Malcolm Tucker: ...I am not the story here! Jamie: You kind of are the story, Malcolm. They spelled your name right and everything.

Naomi Wolf thinks the NYT Mayor election was really a tie, and has a weird theory about how it was stolen. Though I am not sure this would make even her top 5 conspiracy moments

Pushed by Reach newspapers on social media feeds: the death of Michael Sundin. Which happened in 1989. As if it’s a news story. So that you click.

Going to be bleak when we find his name in the files

Damnit. Meant to pick up some Albert Bartlett potatoes but accidentally got the Stephen Bartlett ones and they won’t shut up about why women are bad

Six down. USA bowlers be like #TheCricket

There was a name for this, at this point in the internet’s history: Sneakernet, when if you had a large block of data to transfer, it was faster, cheaper and easier to yank the hard disk out of your computer, get a cab to the other office and plug it in there.

Very late nineties, I did occasional spot illos for a big Fleet Street newspaper, and they would take the actual artwork by fax. As in: I’d go to the newsagent, pay 50p, and fax it over. Not roughs. The art. That was it. It would be reprinted in one of the biggest selling papers. From a FAX.

I was thinking about when I left art college and first started doing illustrations for a magazine. They would send me the brief by fax, but I didn’t have a fax, so they’d send it to the post office fax machine, and I’d walk over there. I’d then walk back to fax them my roughs. FAXING. CAN U IMAGINE

“Would you rather pay £676 for 52 weeks of the Daily Express or £180 for all of the BBC?” would be quite a good whisper campaign (this thought prompted by @politicanimal.bsky.social’s observation about the Sat Ex’s £3 cover price).

I feel this. I recently bought this without having clocked the page count (780, I think) and as a result I was slightly surprised when it thudded onto the doormat. I’d have gone for the epub but there doesn’t seem to be one.

On this day in 1992, George H.W. Bush sent a memo to all White House staff about how fat his dog was

the Spectator accidentally recycled a subhed from a previous day’s article about Tehran

We should only ever have dreadful lowest common denominator things that suck. Every penny spent on making Crossrail nicer than the Victoria line was wasted.

Quite

This is how I ended up staring out Prince Naseem in a west end hotel lift in the late 1990s

Whereas I react to the Coachella line up like a Labour MP knowingly tipping Al Carns

Mad that the Pet Shop Boys wrote about Mandelson's treachery (in the guise of a break-up song) back in 2002. Starmer should have listened to it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l88m...

Good old Shat Parp.

This really shouldn't surprise anyone.

Similarly, I keep seeing fake claims about Epstein and Farage that are demonstrably false. Yes, Farage is mentioned 40 times but the files are quickly and easily searchable (www.justice.gov/epstein). Why not take five seconds to do that before spreading disinformation?

“Cryptographic nonce” etc etc

DO YOU LIKE WHITSLING I DON'T KNOW I'VE NEVER WHITSLED

An underrated point, I think.

@hotdinners.bsky.social hello. Have you heard anything about Paradise in Soho closing?

I'm on a train from Bristol to London. As we left Bristol, I noticed the government today published its Fuel Finder API, sharing real time prices at petrol stations around the UK. I'm just arriving in London, Here's the app that I made using AI while en route. fuel-finder-replit3507.replit.app

Information Commissioner launches formal investigation in X / Grok over use of people's personal data to create sexual images of children without consent. (The government will continue to post through it, no doubt.)

Work trepidation is interesting: in the past, I've hit Send on emails that were going out to a million subscribers, or final approval on magazines with hundred-thousand print runs. But I'm still apprehensive about hitting Send on a newsletter going out to 100 or so colleagues this morning. 🤷🏾‍♂️

This American Life has been doing exceptional reporting on the American crisis. Today's episode is incredible, and incredibly shocking: a collection of narrated 911 emergency calls involving ICE agents. Obviously don't listen if you will find it too hard going, but if you can, you should.

Allons y!

Jeffrey Epstein gave up I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in 2012

It's a tangent, but Shriti Vadera writing emails entirely IN BLOCK CAPS is exactly what I would have expected.

Who leaked this Number 10 discussion to Jeffrey Epstein? And are there consequences for the leaker? It’s an internal discussion re. getting markets moving in the aftermath of the financial crisis. No doubt of great interest to Epstein and his financial market clients.

Have found it quite underreported in the UK that the Norwegians are speedrunning a total collapse in approval for the monarchy. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

That is a brilliant commission. Robinson is quietly one of the world’s best living writers, and is particularly apt for this type of question.

What a piece of writing from Marilynne Robinson.

“Thanks, Meat Cat”

me, emotionally writing an essay on the use of force by federal agents: ok but what if i packaged this in the most insane way possible www.theverge.com/policy/86857...