Edgar Allen Poe being schooled in Stoke Newingon seems like the kind of thing I should have known about already.

Honestly, it’s just absolutely top tier. Can’t recommend highly enough

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms still delivering. Trial by combat is almost a Westeros cliché by this point.

Two noses dammit

Mandelson seems to be one of the few routes in to getting criticism of the Palantir deal on primetime. Good to see @zackpolanski.bsky.social raising it.

NEW: Google breached its own policies that barred use of artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance in 2024 by helping an Israeli military contractor analyze drone video footage, a former Google employee alleges

Palestine Action activists cleared of aggravated burglary re: Elbit Systems. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I've spent 27 years working in the criminal courts and in police stations. I promise you that since the advent of social media, it's white men - mostly older white men - who are becoming radicalised by social media and it's mostly white men who harass/abuse women online and send death/rape threats.

I guess it’s always been the case that you can wing it though a university education without doing the work but LLMs probably increase the average coasting grade. It’s another aspect of deskilling of course.

Oh boy, just found that Julian Bream's Masterclass series is on iPlayer www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Trying to bust out Luigi Mangione with a pizza cutter - nice to see some people still have ambition www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/n...

As others have said, when sentencing comes around we'll see how the treatment of this guy compares to the Palestian Action activists

Stark subtitling snark

Littlefinger's weird accent (whatever it's supposed to be) appears very suddenly in Season 2 Episode 3.

Rewatching Game of Thrones and it’s a relief to report that it’s still great TV. Not sure I’m going to persevere beyond S4 however.

Catastrophe for Rojava via @carneross.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/carneros...

Also Venezuela and possibly even Cuba? Can’t quite make it out, so I’m not sure about Cuba. Either way, the people who’ve been telling us for years that you can’t correctly talk about American imperialism or an American empire can take a seat now

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has an actual mummers’ dragon in it!

The UK proscription of Palestine Action is so insane that even the Trump Admin think it's a bit off www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The charter of the ‘Board of Peace’ does not mention Gaza at all but stresses the need for a “more nimble and effective international peace-building body”, suggests its scope would be far broader, and that the body could be used as a rival to the UN… www.ft.com/content/0ee7...

It does start off in a Slow Horses vein and I don't think I like it more when it moves on from that. Revisiting S1 was a joy, though.

Kiss Prudence

Not terribly surprising. DeepSeek is now in the top 3 globally capability wise after all.

This is beyond shocking - how can this be allowed to happen? Why on earth can’t they be released on bail? They have a right to a fair trial, appropriate medical treatment, & the removal of punitive Prison Service conditions. Govt’s ban on Palestine Action is simply intolerable

Watching S1 of the Night Manager again and Hugh Laurie as head evil bastard and Tom Hollander as his factotum is just top tier casting.

What flattering noise is this? open.spotify.com/track/759VrM...

Preview of Reform plans for HMRC right here

Edith Sitwell and Marilyn Monroe is one of the greatest meetings of all time. Brilliant pic too youtu.be/3cBdxWVgLE0

Getting all the Big Films out of the way asap. Jessie Buckley is brilliant in this, as you’ll have no doubt heard already

Absolutely bloody brilliant, loved it. Chalamet deserves all the prizes. A1+

"murderous turncoat" - quite a stylish epitaph when all's said and done

I am glad to be corrected on this point

Imagine being the person brave enough to leak this in the hopes that media attention could stop it and then the media just……buries it.

Different rules apply within the sphere of influence..

It’s really cold and the cat wants me to fix it and I CANNOT. Nb: the heating is on

OMFG of course this is what Aldwych means. Think some similarly ancient buildings fairly nearby on Fetter Lane were demolished at around the same time www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUdt...

Just realised that the York Society of Magicians (Jonathan Strange and Dr Norrell) is inspired by Thomas de Quincey’s Society for the Encouragement of Murder. I’m very slow on the uptake sometimes

I will never regret being part of the movement to free Alaa Abd el-Fattah, or writing the foreword to his extraordinary book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. Read his honest and heartfelt response to those playing politics with his hard-won freedom. #FreeAlaa Always. freealaa.net/alaa-response

Coming home to «controversy» over Alaa being in the UK is an unwelcome reminder of what a terrible place we’ve become

Entertaining the animals 🎶 BL Add MS 19352; Theodore Psalter; 1066 CE; Eastern Mediterranean (Constantinople); f.189v

Brb working on Misery Junction

Only 5 Lickelix in a box now; disgusting example of shrinkflation.

Does The Lion In Winter count as an Xmas film?

There has been a relentless, cacophonous campaign to stigmatise pro-Palestinian activists. But the inconvenient truth is that these are just ordinary people of good conscience who see the horrors of Gaza and simply cannot bear to stand by and do nothing. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Palestine Action activist on hunger strike taken to hospital as campaigners criticise ‘negligent’ treatment www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Define the worst person in the universe: He’s very very keen to die, but only if he can make us watch him do it. During the holidays.

Watching Eddington and couldn’t help but notice that the conspiracy addled mother in law is using a Thinkpad JUST LIKE THE JESSE PLEMONS CHARACTER IN BUGONIA. What is this sudden Thinkpad coding? What does it mean…?

Out of the 8 activists, 5 have been hospitalized and in critical condition.

So incredibly obvious yet so often overlooked

Bugonia! Loved it and feel that I can’t say anything about it at all