I'd just like to belatedly apologise for killing music with all that home taping I did in the 1980s.

I share my father's recollections of Kristallnacht almost every year on the anniversary. This year, with Trump's Brownshirts arresting people across the country, the similarities are stark. open.substack.com/pub/marissar...

#nowplaying Excellent songs including by Donovan (Lord of the Reedy River alone worth the price of admission), Harry Nilsson and George Martin and produced by P McCartney. Some of Paul’s granny music but also weird folk, exquisite arrangements and singing. Purchased from a charity shop last week.

He explicitly encouraged the Capitol riot

Outstanding. Man (boy) of the year.

It’s unfair that Trump gets to sleep through his presidency and the rest of us have to be awake for it

The BBC is apologising for its Panorama edit. It shouldn’t. First, the narrative is true: Donald Trump *did* incite the Capitol riot. Second, the apology won’t appease those attacking it. So why not at least stand for something? Wrote this on it earlier this week: inews.co.uk/news/world/b...

initially thought that this was a shadow being projected on his face. didn’t realize he was in blackface

America president are moron

Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...

Thank God

this looks like a trick daffy duck would put up to get bugs bunny into "the oval office"

In Our Time was a great place to learn about new things, and it often sent me back to re-examine things I hadn't read in years.

A lovely piece that makes me want to go and listen to In Our Time all the time. (And yes, it does acknowledge Melvyn Bragg isn't perfect.) www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/m...

LIVE LAUGH THE OVAL OFFICE

i closed out my column this week with this preemptive jab at basically every commentator currently looking for ways to say that last night didn’t count

5 November 1905 | A Pole, Tadeusz Mróz, was born in Krakow. A painter. In #Auschwitz from 25 April 1942. No. 33153 He was shot in the camp on 27 May 1942. --- Watch a short video about Block 11 and its yard where shooting executions were held: https://t.co/VBgDxkWLMa

Just pausing for a moment on 'you go to a grocery store, you have to give ID" like wow free country, gotta show your papers to get fucking cereal

Mamdani: "New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant."

#nowplaying Super-creepy new purchase that didn’t arrive in time for Halloween.

The first time I posted this, Zohran was down 30 points. We had never met and we were in a room full of famous people. Absolutely nobody knew who he was, so we were able to talk Onion headlines uninterrupted for ten minutes. This was five months ago. Now he's one of the most important people alive.

Train worker hero credited with saving lives in the Huntingdon knife attack named as Samir Zitouni.

My favourite movie with my name in it

"Guardrails are easily destroyed. Restoring them will take time — because they have to be repaired by each of us, one person at a time, making small but important decisions about how we want to live." - excellent piece by @radiofreetom.bsky.social

Dick Cheney’s legacy is that he turned 9/11 from a national tragedy into a global disaster. He did so through a mixture of arrogance, stupidity and greed and blighted the last quarter century.

What an absolute hero Samir Zitouni is - doubtless he saved lives that day www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A total and utter hero

had to revisit Clube da Esquina in honor of Lô Borges. perhaps the most *all timer* of all timers on my record shelves, an album I could listen to any time, any day, and feel my spirits lifting. RIP 🕯️

Goodwin says "it takes more than a piece of paper" or birthplace to make somebody British. This is not often applied to Fred West/Ian Huntley, Kim Philpy, etc So how it is applied to British-born people from the majority + minority groups who commit crimes + who don't is rarely/never made clear

#nowplaying 🎃

A response worthy of Jeeves to Wooster.

William Burroughs' celebrated cut-up technique let him down at Halloween.

#turnacharityintoahorrormovie Childen In Feed

#nowplaying “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy … [continues]”

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

You can tell Bluesky needs more classic film peeps just by scrolling the answers! (observation, not a rebuke) By my standards Vertigo isn't even that old, but ignore the haters—on a big screen you have rarely seen anything so beautiful.

Minority representation on TV causes outrage From the new Private Eye, in shops now.

An America centibillionaire is using the $44 billion media platform he owns to stoke political violence in the UK in cahoots with a Malaysian shitposter but Americans are supposed to believe that a handful of six figure grants by George Soros to anti-racist NGOs will end Western Civilization.

I met Don McCullin at an exhibition of his work 15 years ago and his obvious despair at the horror and futility of what he witnessed was profound.

Extraordinary, shocking images all taken by one man. Just astonishing, really. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Facadism in 1952 (cartoon by Saul Steinberg)

Trump Media announces Truth Social will offer prediction markets through arrangement with crypto .com Not sure the grifting gets much worse than the majority owner of company offering predictions markets is the world leader who can most influence events www.sec.gov/Archives/edg...

I especially enjoyed the bit about the Brontës/the Beatles. The Brontlës?

A Christmas treat for everyone who's enjoyed his hilarious antics in politics.

This amazing account from 1945 of the trial and sentencing of William Joyce - Lord Haw Haw - contains this description of fascists: "unhappy egotists, insisting on their own peculiar revolts and heroisms". www.newyorker.com/magazine/194...

What a disgrace. And what an embarrassment for @cnn.com.

Billy Cobham joyous at the Union Chapel last night. Great to see the musicians so clearly enjoying themselves.