You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Nor can you reason someone out of the emotion they are currently feeling.

Film producer Franklin Leonard: “When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. It’s not.”

Red hat! Alas! Alack! (6)

There’s a record store in Mexico that sells recordings of German art songs below cost, to get customers through the door! It’s called Los Lieder.

Surgeon: Your wound is now all sewn up, but no one it to touch those stitches until you see me again! Me: Okay then, suture self.

She’s on the edge (5).

Marcus Julius Philippus, aka Philip I, was the emperor in 248AD who presided over the opulent celebrations of Rome’s founding 1,000 years before. His disastrous reign ended when he was killed by his own troops 2 years later. The current US President is presiding over the US’s 250th anniversary.

During Prohibition in the US it was possible to buy a brick of compressed grapes and yeast. The instructions that came with it said: “Do NOT soak this brick in 3 gallons of water and leave to ferment for 3 days. If you did that it would turn into wine, which would be illegal!”

The Duty of Australians, by Henry Lawson: “Tis our duty to the stranger … when he’s foreign and his English very young ... to give him our last spare moment and our pleasure to defer – he’ll be father of Australians, as our foreign fathers were”

@500songspodcast.bsky.social Why is every second person in the first ~100 eps called Berry? We have Richard, Chuck, Jan, Gordy … I’ve probably forgotten some.

Yellow-tailed black cockatoos have the most beautifully mournful cry in nature. youtu.be/iQVJMpaVFuc?...

Lookout, cheeky bird! (8)

You won’t be held accountable in the afterlife for your actions, because there isn’t one. You are however accountable for your actions in the here and now. Have you made other people’s lives better overall? Will people be sorry when you go? You have the opportunity now to affect that; use it.

You want me to have your back? But won’t you miss it?

Keep water around split atom (4)

Reasons to be cheerful #7: Fascists: another one bites the dust! And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust!

Reasons to be cheerful #6: As I look through my bedroom windows today, there’s not a cloud in the sky. Literally.

Reasons to be cheerful #5: I never have to use Microsoft Office again, just cancelled my subscription. The free apps in MacOS are perfectly fine, indeed better for my modest needs.

Reasons to be cheerful #4: Those sickeningly plutocratic tech bros trying to live forever, won’t.

Reasons to be cheerful #3: Australian sparkling Shiraz is as good as ever.

Reasons to be cheerful #2: Being under 6 feet is preferable to being 6 feet under.

Reasons to be cheerful #1: we didn’t happen to evolve to feed our babies like birds do, by throwing up in their mouths.

Why is the cupboard I keep all our pest stuff in, always full of cockroach poo? There is no food in or near it! Do they just like living dangerously?

You should be looking for Dark stuff in the universe. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I’ve never metaphor I didn’t like.

We have Mesmerise and Vulcanise. Who exactly was Pulver?

When does a joke become a Dad joke? When it’s fully groan.

Blokes’ winning threat (6)

Four artists are a Quartet, nine a Nonet. So naturally Monet is a singular artist.

It turns out that ALL natural history museums are in fact artificial. Huh.

Working on breaking bog, urinal (9)

I'd enjoy some four person "tennis" in "Siberia", if you'll pardon the doubles on tundra.

Last time I went into the lab they put me in a glass dish - I was Petrified!

Woe be gone, woebegone Wobbegong !

Surely, for internal consistency the word should be “dundant”?

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Vale Tom Lehrer, one of the greats of satire and I guess pretty much the last. Sad that things became so awful in his lifetime they were impossible to satirise. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Leh...

With Gilead taking over the world, here are a few characters to look out for, and what to do with/about them: OfElon - Straight into Te Slammer OfErn - Make Fronds OfOzzie - Bear With OfLloyd - Meet with Pink OfAlec - A Prick OfRick - Dammit!

A fuel elides disaster (6)

There is plenty to go around; the problem is that it doesn’t.

alien graffiti can be pretty hurtful 😔

With the venerable Vera coming to an end, I hear they’re working on a prequel set during WW2, called Aloe Aloe.