In "Soft: A Brief History of Sentimentality", Ferdinand Mount draws on literature and history to reclaim the power of emotion in an age of irony, writes Hannah Rose Woods. https://bit.ly/4qMqhTb

Using my free will on Monday night dinner for one and a glass of 1990 Rivesaltes for pudding

Would like him to have to personally explain this deranged nostalgia for good old-fashioned British football hooliganism to a group of elderly Conservative voters

I genuinely don’t know how to deal with the constant drip drip effect of feeling like the world has gone stark raving mad. It’s like water torture.

“Copyright growing pains” is one hell of a euphemism for the biggest IP theft in history

This is dreadful news

Oh this looks so good

when the interview goes well: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

The idea of inheriting tremendous wealth

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

Transcend your enslavement to the passions and live according to the dictate of reason alone with this one simple trick

Wikipedia is what the internet was meant to be and one of the few online places that hasn’t got worse. It’s a miracle

for all people mock it wikipedia is genuinely one of the wonders of the modern world

In Swedish, a word for what you eat to bridge the gap between meals (or while waiting for the main course to cook) is stödmacka. It means "support sandwich." A similar word in Norwegian is ventepølse, or "waiting sausage."

IDF sniper from Chicago who says he killed Gazan teenager just for trying to retrieve his brother's corpse: “They’re thinking, ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon' and all that, but they were wrong. That’s what you have snipers for.”

Morning coffee

Watering my parents’ greenhouse while they’re on holiday, and it’s just disproportionately nice that their tomato plant has grown a sleeping cat

O to meet a nice man in a jumper eating a teacake in a National Trust cafe

I hate this so much

I also get why holding ministers to higher standards than the previous government is a good look but it would help if the hair-shirtist approach was matched with an ambitious political project because otherwise it just looks like another version of “the beatings will continue until morale improves”.

Honey, weve all been there.

Ought to have mentally prepared myself that I’d be unlocking the cathedral to this

When I was at Anglia TV about 25 yrs ago, a girl in our office sent out a team email that said, “It’s been a crap Monday, who wants to come to my flat for a smoke?” Sadly she sent it to everyone in ITV. Melvyn was one of the first to reply with “That sounds lovely but sadly I’m filming in Newcastle”

I need it www.inigo.com/sales-list/c...

I turn on my TV and a TV presenter is asking a Govt minister why they are talking about rolling out free childcare when the big issue is asylum hotels. This is objectively insane.

In the 1930s, Listerine cigarettes were created. The tobacco was infused with the same antiseptic oils used in the mouthwash for a "cooling and soothing effect." Listerine cigarettes were evidently not very popular because there is almost no record of their existence.

Lol

Today’s office

This is why I have no patience with the “but you don’t understand, this tech can automate coding tasks!” sigh-ers. If there are any circumstances under which your technology can operate *specifically* to encourage a teenager to take his own life, it ought to be pulled until you fix it.

I said goodbye to one of my favourite ever colleagues on their last day today. Just a profoundly great person to work with, who I’d never have got to know if we hadn’t worked together. And I’m so glad we did, but urgh we do not talk enough about the grief of losing a very good colleague!!

Another Russian fake video with deep faked audio has Jane Austen scholar Dr. Gillian Dow stating Jane Austen would have definitely would have wanted to assassinate Chancellor Merz.

Don’t upset the torment nexus

‘The easiest mistake to make in historical re-enactment is to create an era that never quite existed, by playing too closely to period. At Beamish there is a real thoughtfulness given to how every age is a palimpsest’ – @hannahrosewoods.bsky.social on the Living Museum of the North

So the BBC isn't going to broadcast Hozier's set because he's calling for exactly the same policy as the UK goverment – a Palestinian state and a meaningful peace protest. Spineless, craven, contemptable.

But why does he look like he’s leaving Silicon Valley for a widowed Austrian navy captain

Did you now

This is the best product listing copy I’ve ever read

In the night we reached 300 signatures. A rapid rise but also a clear statement from the community that this is a retrograde decision causing widespread worry about the future of research - not just of the BBC, but almost anything within its century-plus global and cultural reach. Please join us.

in britain the anchorites of asda dwell by the sacred stones, solemnly intoning the words “that’s asda price”, and performing the necessary ritual (the double bum slap) three times a day to bring about the great rolling back when we will all be redeemed

Once again thinking about Potoooooooo

It’s so nice and relaxing when the paralysing anxiety of sitting down to write a book each morning is suddenly replaced by the paralysing anxiety of ever stopping writing at night

‘The easiest mistake to make in historical re-enactment is to create an era that never quite existed, by playing too closely to period. At Beamish there is a real thoughtfulness given to how every age is a sort of palimpsest’ – Hannah Rose Woods visits the Living Museum of the North

I had a completely marvellous time reviewing Beamish Museum for Apollo Magazine

STOP GROWING, MAN!

Today is the 47th anniversary of this clearly unimprovable photo, from a story so absurd that it shouldn’t be true, but is: the day a team of workers from British Waterways pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and all the water emptied out

"surely you mean..." no I didn't surely mean the thing you wrote which is less succinct and not as funny.