Florence and the Machine Covir Bandes: Siena and the Devyce Milan and the Contraptioun Orvieto and the Mechanism Venyce and the Gadget Gubbio and the Whirligig Spoleto and the Apparatus

If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

I made a “how do you do, fellow kids?” joke to someone in their mid 20s who, it turns out, was too young to have heard of that meme. So “how do you do, fellow kids?” is now an example of “how do you do, fellow kids?”

The spirit of the age: someone ought to do something, but that someone isn’t me, it must be someone else’s responsibility, my responsibility is only to point out that they’re doing it wrong.

"Now on ITV: 'Peer Review' - hosted by Mary Beard. 15 senior academics locked in Piddleston College, Bantshire University seek to find which of them is actually Reviewer Number 2"

Thinking about the rock voice: Robert Plant, Ian Gillan, David Coverdale… it’s a fine thing, the rock voice. Bring it back.

I’ve podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/1Vuh...

Some cheerful Kurdish rugs

Sheffield Hallam University complied with Beijing demand to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project on supply chains and forced labour being dropped. It was reinstated after threat of legal action but chilling effect remains www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Tiepolo, Virtue and Nobility Putting Ignorance to Flight (at Dulwich Picture Gallery). Take that, modern world.

This week on Wonkhe: Higher education institutions are linked together in all kinds of ways. Jamie Warner sets out to calculate how the effects of one insolvency could ripple across the sector

I installed the Wikipedia app on my phone, so for a whole range of everyday queries I can entirely bypass the slop & shilling cocktail that search has turned into. Strongly recommend giving it a try if you aren't way ahead of me.

Huge thanks to @drjaimeashworth.bsky.social for this perfect reference! Of course, John Berger already thought about this. bsky.app/profile/drja...

Genuinely such an interesting long thread on why these suits look crap and yet how a particular type of crap suit has become a cultural signifier for right-wing men.

Crikey - Bagehot is going to upset and outrage a lot of people with this. Takes (the proverbial) balls of steel to go up against conventional wisdom like this.

For 61 years the #BBCWorldService has been broadcasting the latest in science via its weekly Science in Action programme. That dies in the next half hour, with this final edition, reflecting on the fall in trust in expertise driven by malign interests over recent years.

Magisterial

There was an old ruler called Ozzy Who built a big statue just 'cos he Thought he would never Not be known for ever And now it's two legs in a cozzy

You will never persuade me that I could like the Brontës. I have tried. I have tried again.

He wants to go to a church where they speak Latin.

I really, really hope that the Tolkien estate wake up tomorrow and choose litigious violence, in the manner of Ents who have decided to be extremely hasty.

Post a perfect album from 1989.

Standing stones are so fascinating because nobody knows how they stood up, or why stones haven't stood up for thousands of years.

Cornell also currently selling the e-book version of this at $26.99, which is pretty good: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Elon Musk: "It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die" 29th October 2025. 2 million views in its first hour.

They revoked Wole Soyinka’s US visa? I keep typing reactions and deleting them. Another new low.

Irresponsibly posting my location on social media.

The government of Jamaica has set up a portal for contributing to official relief efforts. I will update this thread if anything analogous opens up for Haiti, Cuba, or the DR supportjamaica.gov.jm

The state of politics has prompted XTC’s No Thugs in Our House to mind.

Baseball: 6 and a half hours! I’m so tired. Cricket: <paternal arm round shoulder> ah lad, what you need is intervals for lunch and tea.

Diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls…

#RIP the great Jack de Johnette, aged 83.

I will always be grateful to David Bellos, especially for his outstanding translation of 'Life: A User's Manual' by Georges Perec, as well as for his biography, 'Georges Perec: A Life in Words'. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest biographies ever written.

'The Rev Clive Foster said Windrush scandal survivors were questioning whether “history is repeating itself” as UK politicians target legal migrants.' Essential, timely reading.

October Sky Holly Dyrland 2024

Back in 2006 I answered an open call from The Guardian to write briefly about the greatest album you've never heard of, and I wrote about Les Nubians www.theguardian.com/music/2006/n...

This is a lovely article, showing that the spirit of enquiry and the thirst for new knowledge persist in a world where stupidity is so popular. www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...

Dave Ball. Like any 80s kid I danced to Soft Cell. But I remember him most fondly for this. RIP

So anyway America, we’re all wonderin: what time is love?

A genuinely great record, which cuts to the bone. It can still reduce me to tears. Nothing Matt Johnson did afterwards came close, sadly. But to make one really great thing is more than most artists ever do.

I am watching Call My Bluff and I know the 70s were dreadful in extenso, I was there, but they were also _delightful_ in moments.

If I were a printer, I’d start a anarcho-techno provocation called The Unjustified Ancients of Mu-Mu.

This is one post where you *should* read the comments!

New post just out: "On the edge" On my unexpected week in hospital and five things I learnt about the state of the NHS. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...

I was just in a bookshop and the young man at the till was talking to his friend about a really great show he’s binge watching at the moment, even though it’s _really old_, he’s loving it. Northern Exposure. And yes it was really good. And yes I am, officially, really old now.

“Small boys in the park, jumpers for goalposts, hmm, isn’t it?”

"I've just come from Timbuctoo on my horse, Rumpelstiltskin." "Your horse is called Rumpelstiltskin??" "That's right. I've been through the desert on a horse with gnome-name."

Leslie Beatles, after whom the pop group named themselves, recorded all their famous songs first, though he is not often remembered today.

‘He is a toad. He is toxic and terrible. “Shut up,” he tells a shopkeeper. “You tart,” he says to his landlady’s daughter. “Fat miser,” he calls the cousin (“Flabby Anne”) whose handouts he relies upon for income.’ Me on Pamela Hansford Johnson’s 1959 comic novel The Unspeakable Skipton:

This is the kind of gameshow, along with Call My Bluff, that I miss. That said, Only Connect is in the Great Tradition of entertaining difficult things. I always feel somewhat amazed when I can work a question out.