My dad was a schoolboy in Newcastle at the time. He and his friends were evacuated. It was never something he talked about much. The picture reminds me of what he lived through.

I note that there is a Jamaican sprinter called Oblique Seville, and if you’d asked me before who or what that was I’d have said a typeface. Very quick out of the blocks…

Northern Netherlands painter Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Festoon with flowers, 1682 #womensart

11/11.

Light over Stob na Bròige, Glen Etive #Scotland #GlenEtive #Lochaber www.damianshields.com

We're going to see a lot of bullshit in the coming days and weeks about "causes of autism", and most will be based on flawed, over-interpreted observational studies (1/n)

I am listening to a certain group who were very popular at the time, who had no tunes of their own and incoherent lyrics. Some people attribute their success to their “attitude”. I think it has more to do with people enjoying the sound of angle grinders. In this paper I will…

I did the Great North Run a few years ago. Loved it. I wish I was out there today. Better get my trainers on. It’s been too long.

Something which apparently I imagined. youtube.com/shorts/Q563f...

Silly me. Won’t do that again.

Which reminds me of this absolutely real, though now seemingly discontinued, bus service between Heathrow Airport and Woking

Pondering whether there is a form of experience which is not “lived experience“.

Back once again for the renegade master

NEW ALBUM NEWS Public Works and Utilities, the sixth Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan album will be released on Friday 10 October via @castlesinspace.bsky.social.

Tonight at midnight…

one academic view i hold is that declared helplessness surrounding administrative tasks is both rude and non-credible

I wrote a Biographical Memoir of my PhD supervisor Hugh Mellor for the @britishacademy.bsky.social www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/m...

Quite cross about Isak, in a wholly irrational way. Money talks. Loyalty doesn’t. Players come and go, but the fans are beyond price. #NUFC

“The tide has again receded over the sand-flats. The remaining framework of a wooden ship is half-sunken in the sand. On one of the ribs a cormorant stands with wings lifted” Writer: EL Grant Watson Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

Good book, too.

🙌 🙂 Thank you Mark Ellen and David Hepworth for inviting me on their excellent podcast www.wiyelondon.com Word In Your Ear You can now watch the interview on full online 📡 🙌 #singersongwriter #podcast #musiclovers #london

Tony Skingle IS Elvis #IYKYK

Cooler than you, even while napping. Maybe even because napping. #catontheinternet

TFW you are 600 pages into a 900 biography and you realise the subject is a bit of a prat.

More details on the failed proposal to rescue Dundee. The plot sickens.

a quick trip to Wikipedia reveals this is the actual, literally true plot of the movie. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it

I'm hoping that the Satie-esque gags I shoehorned into this piece won't mean that I'm banned from writing for the LRB from now on. I've always been haunted by Peter Blegvad's story that he was 'sacked from Henry Cow for making a joke'.

I have solved a conundrum in musical history. Notoriously, Cabaret Voltaire’s Three Mantras LP has only two mantras. Meanwhile Ian Dury’s Reasons to be Cheerful has, apparently, only Part 3. So… these were obviously originally a split double LP. But someone in the production department blundered.

Still applicable. #nowlistening

Reacquainting myself with the oeuvre of Tom Lehrer. Good vicious fun.

hoping that when they say the LLM talks like a Ph.D.-level expert, they mean "holds indecipherable decades-long academic grudges expressed largely in the form of questions that are actually more of a comment"

Oh for heaven’s sake. Your social ontology inherently relies on fuzzy categories that are mutable and contested. Go and read some Hegel and don’t come back til the owl hoots.

John Burn-Murdoch has broken into my apartment and is charting my personal decline across key metrics in red paint over the walls

Warwick1A

Your analysis is flawed.

Gene Tierney and Gene Pitney: not the same person. See also: Marc Almond and Marc Riley.

… made with the highest British attention to the wrong detail …

I prosecute and defend the most serious sexual offences in our courts. The overwhelming majority of offenders are British-born. Overwhelmingly the victim is someone known to them, either a partner or relative. Anybody purporting to care about protecting women might start there.

My usual magical thinking that not checking the cricket score will ensure that I get the cricket score I want has failed. But, all things considered, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the teams, it was the right result over the five test series. I now need to rest, never mind the players.

So what I do is, I wake up, and then I spend an hour scrolling social media that makes me depressed and angry, and then I'm set to start my day.

Cat on the internet

Read about an entirely different culture war to take your mind off culture wars closer to home. Archaeological finds have led to a bit of a political ruckus in India as they challenge the idea that the Aryan north had to civilise the Dravidian south www.bbc.com/news/article...

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

A corner that held them. (Whitby Abbey)

The Really Popular Book Club is back on 29 July. Join us to discuss Terry Prachett's 'Guards! Guards!' with our special guest, best-selling science fiction writer, ‪@unamccormack.bsky.social‬. 📅TUESDAY 29 JULY 2025 ⏰7PM to 8PM 📍 Hosted online 🎟️ Free, booking required: loom.ly/uZSCuxw

Last night brought the shock news of Ozzy Osborne's passing, just weeks after he and Black Sabbath reunited for a Villa Park homecoming show. Richard Franks traced the Aston roots of the rockers for us earlier this year.

Not much joy around here is there.

Explain the proof of Fermat’s last theorem. Carefully.

I am reading a book about Yoko Ono. What The Beatles should have done, right, is sack John and get Yoko in on spoons. They’d still be touring now. No one ever listens to me.