So I went out to buy 3x 8gb usb2.0 flash drives for $10~15 and apparently this is not a thing any more, ok.

Foods my dad has discovered in his widowed 80s: — pasta generally — UK-targeted Thai curries (“they’re not really a curry”) — Korean (again assume super-mild not fucking Nongshim/Buldak-spiced) — fa-gee-tas

Only bad people go after Paul Ford. I’ve observed this rule for more than a decade and it’s never been wrong once.

The depressing thing about Farage and Tice and Lowe is that they are so clearly the narrow-minded weirdo antagonists from Simon Pegg / Edgar Wright productions, which in turn draws from a very British comic tradition that includes Low’s Colonel Blimp.

The backup plan is to sign new tariffs on Epstein Island, a legally exempt zone recognized by the entire American business and political elite.

Simon Jenkins has a lot of bad takes but I think he’s right that “the Royal Family” was a creation of the late queen (a young mother with young children thrust into the role twice over) and that peaked in the 80s and what follows Charles will be much smaller and more tightly defined.

I was stuck listening to the current president this morning while the car was being inspected. Forty excruciating minutes; he is so far gone.

This is just really embarrassing for these guys. Your intellectual hero is an amphetamine casualty from the Britpop years. It would be less ridiculous to be queuing up for a lecture by Ginger Spice.

My job is basically pointing out the worst things that can happen when you use a technology. Some of my clients need that information to be politically neutral, but the need for political neutrality doesn't take account of the current US govt being an actual nightmare machine.

A funny thing about the blessed Oxford University Diary is that it marked 30 January for Charles King and Martyr (which is early in Hilary term) but he absolutely deserved it, you cannot do what he did and not end up deaded if you lose.

I am fucking annoyed that Gemini with three pointy-toed kicks found the name of the lovely coffee shop on Bateman St in Soho in the late 90s (The Blue Room, which became Milk Bar) because Google Search used to be able to do it.

I left a showing of ADAPTATION feeling defrauded by everyone involved with that film.

H: I did love you once. O: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. H: You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. O: I was the more deceived. H: Get thee to a nunnery. (hoooooo boy)

the skeleton key here is that the entire country is experiencing what liberals and leftists did in 2017-2021

pank ache

That was a fantastic trip though. Randomly ended up staying at TCD, bumped into some of the Irish Times web team at a cybercafe, saw Brian Friel’s “Translations” at the Abbey, bumped into the IT web team again at the film institute, went clubbing and got adopted by a bunch of lairy Northsiders.

It is funny to have to explain Ivor Cutler to Americans because you have to do it every time, they always forget. “What is this?” “It’s Ivor Cutler.”

"I'm sad all the time and I don't know why" isn't a polling category and also doesn't sound serious, but "the economy is bad" does.

Texas University of OpEd

and of course the first question you have is "how could we possibly have been beat by these people." but how much better would you be at appearances if appearances were the only thing you ever saw.

Instead we have one that starts from suspicion. Settlement should be a sensible process of integration that recognises a migrant's future as being here: but under this policy it's a hostile, exclusionary, decade-long++ trial. It presumes that a bureaucracy can judge who deserves to belong. It can't.

grok: degenerate chatgpt: reprobate gemini: ??!? claude: person of quality (the most complicated category)

Watching the replay of the team ski jumping and holding the Radenska-fridge-stocking brilliant @katewagner.wehwalt.net close to my heart.

An eye-opener that might interest @jamellebouie.net is that as the grandfather clauses wound down in western NC white people were genuinely alarmed that white boys were leaving school illiterate while Black boys could read and they genuinely believed literacy tests would be applied in good faith.

This is lovely, with a definite subtext that all restaurant sticky toffee puddings exist in the shadow of the one you can buy from the Cartmel Village Shop.

A thing I will say from having gone to Haworth is that the moors there are more inherently malevolent than the North Yorks moors. They are the Hindley/Brady moors of the M62.

“Every man has a property in his own person” in the late 1600s is both radical and hiding it

If you bought a Secretly Canadian record you may be secretly Canadian. secretlycanadian.com

Listening again to this song (which is technically The Sundays’ sendoff) clarifies exactly why I hate how the narrative of space exploration got put in the hands of Elon Musk, a joyless incurious shit, the opposite of this.

Policy by Pub Bore. He's just that spittle-flecked Hate Guy in the corner of your done-up bar saying that modern beer is horrible and anyone under 50 is lazy and a loser. As beatable a politician as there'll ever be.

The media desperately wanted to give the right a cultural moment and the problem is that they have no culture.

also, just… joy! it can be so powerful. i was smiling through the whole thing

Still feeling good about my theory of 2026 being The Year Of Rancid Vibes

This is entirely correct / back in the day I was picked to ask Kermit a question at a Thing (all the questions were scripted but askers were allowed to embellish a little) and in the moment I was absolutely talking to Kermit, who is real.

Since everyone of a certain age has the warm fuzzies about The Muppet Show it’s funny to look at some of the guests on the original run. Peter Ustinov! Brucie taking on Statler and Waldorf! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4GI...

The political trade press presumably knows to some degree that the late night sloptastic posting sessions are done by staff and has a sense of who precisely has the keys to the socials but will not say more.

When my mother died I needed to be beside the sea and my dad wouldn’t take me there though it is not far so I got the bus to Saltburn and had a Dracula Special ice cream (b/licorice) and soaked my feet in

The telltale signature of Stephen Miller — the thing he worked on during his four years in exile — is weaponizing cross-departmental bureaucracy and chain of command. It’s like a crypto mixer.

Claude is so bourgeois that JD Vance exclusively uses it to workshop his fashy shit

I mean this is a joke but claude is high cultural capital and chatgpt is low cultural capital. In this essay I will…

fwiw meal planning in the dreich months often means “potato in oven” which gives you an hour consider what you want on potato even if some nights the answer might simply be butter and pepper www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPsY...

(Why yes I am watching the Muppet Show and it is a lot of fun.)

2026 is when we start finding out what Musk and his curs stole and who they gave it to in exchange for what. This shit will show up in the scariest places.

I have kecap manis and harissa and all kinds of hot sauces but my most niche pantry staple is probably Henderson’s Relish.

The behavior of our big beautiful billionaires over the past several decades is psychologically what I can only describe as "Crying out for consequences." They can't stop themselves and deep down they need to be stopped. They need it as much as we do

A silly little story: 20 years ago the WaPo sent a big team to the Winter Olympics and that included Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog.bsky.social) who wrote the “Tales from Turin” blog, which was a thing of wonder and is now depressingly hard to find in the archives. www.cjr.org/behind_the_n...

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

"rich dipshit owner doesn't understand the industry he's bought into and clumsily destroys what made it good" feels less like a narrative unique to the washington post and more like the music that's been playing in the background of all our lives for at least 40 years

It Was Tweets https://ftrain.com/it-was-tweets

crab rangoon, mab rangoon