The Beta Band at the @930club.bsky.social last night were an absolute delight. The reunion tour was announced shortly after we moved to DC and it felt incredibly lucky to be able to catch them here. One of those dream gigs I'll be thinking about for ages.

Passengers eager for entertainment between trains could check their bags with a Red Cap and enjoy cartoons, short subject films, or newsreels in the 300-seat theater. A large illuminated clock above the screen helped people keep track of the time so they did not miss their trains.

43 years ago today, readers the world over opened their newspapers and gazed upon cow tools for the first time. happy birthday cow tools. you look great.

Cool how one of the most prevalent tech stories now is “here’s how to be a creep and/or convincing fraud.”

#crispsandwichday observances are scattered throughout a *lot* of the calendar in my house, if I'm being completely honest about my eating habits. But I'm delighted to join in the official celebrations and see more people experimenting with the artform today.

Imagine if they made a beer taste like a ball of marzipan dunked in prune juice but it was literally the best thing ever.

Good afternoon from @theshirkersrest.bsky.social where #CrispSandwichDay is in full swing!

I'm always stoked to say our dark lager is our biggest seller. The past six months it's been 42% of our volume. It's a regional thing that not many people in NZ really think about, but NZers love dark lager, which is why we called it Kiwi Dark. 4% abv, 100% NZ ingredients

Green hop beers are like Oktoberfest beers. It's a mark on the calendar as the year passes. A reminder of the end of summer. A style that seems constrained. However it's also a delightful celebration of a style of beer - like CAMRAs Mild May - that keeps things interesting & long may they prosper.

The first of seven collaborative beers between Northern Monk and myself, Extra Extra Special Bitter. 6.2% Golden Promise w/ crystal malts and crystal rye, hopped w/ Fuggles, Target, East Kent Goldings. Serious business. The whole series is based on pub beers. This out now, in pubs and bottle shops.

Yep

Here’s a Halloween treat from 1963, featuring Rowlf on THE JIMMY DEAN SHOW. Rowlf was Jim Henson’s first breakout character on a national scale, & it’s a joy to see how much fun Jimmy Dean seemed to always have in any of their interactions - most often just downright tickled…

Speaking as a native Wellingtonian and adoptive Melbournite, this tracks.

"New Far Side comics" was definitely not on my bingo card for this week. They're not bad! www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/

Mad Enough to Blog It™️

BLOG POST: On filleting an old copy of Punch to find out what it can tell us about the status of beer in 1986. 🍻🍺 boakandbailey.com/2025/10/beer...

I was going to skip replying to that New York Times op-ed, but I failed.

Whenever there's an acquisition / merger it's worth saving a copy of the announcement press release to see how quickly they contradict its claims about preserving autonomy, or continuity in leadership, or other such soothing assurances. This one didn't quite make it to its first birthday.

Only 11 days til CRISP SANDWICH DAY Phil! vole.wtf/crisp-sandwi...

I feel the same way about chips / crisps in sandwiches as I do about ice cream in beer (particularly stout or fruit sour): more people should try the combination more often.

Didn't think this piece could get any dumber, but they changed the headline from "How to Save Beer" to this.

For months we followed what happened when a company forced AI into the world of craft beer. Legal threats, people quitting, and beer judges in revolt over being told to use AI. "It is attempting to solve a problem that wasn’t a problem before AI showed up" www.404media.co/what-happene...

Plenty of excellent bookmarks and new additions to your RSS readers in here, folks. And speaking as someone who computes 'batting averages' for beer awards when I can, I love the "Winningest Winner" and "Publisher of the Year" categories.

Snallygaster 2025 was an excellent time — and a vastly better-than-usual use of that stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue. I mostly made myself a fresh-hop festival-within-a-festival (thanks to @dcbeer.com's helpful list), with various dark and wild and dead-straight-lager things filling in the gaps.

This is me belatedly importing a tradition from The Bad Place. Back when "Beer Twitter" was fun, this was an occasional observance, created by @aleofatime.com's podcast partner. No holiday-by-media-release nonsense, just the pure shared joy of great globs of ice cream in delicious dark beer.

I would like to just take a moment to invite you to enjoy Cake's 1996 mega-hit 'The Distance'. It's likely that you know this song, perhaps even love it. But just take a moment to revel in the utter masterpiece that it is. Surrender yourself to it. You deserve it.

Remember, folks: any night can be #stoutfloatnight

A could go either way on container deposit schemes in general — but implementing one in D.C., whose metro area extends in to two states that aren't joining the program is madness. I think this is one of those "do it nationally, or not at all" situations. Australia's state-by-state system is a mess.

It's easy to love fresh hop beer season in the Pacific Northwest, but a bit harder to see the labor and communities that make it happen. For @vinepair.com, I offer a taste of the multicultural history that roots PNW hops, and the mistakes we can't seem to learn from. vinepair.com/articles/wor...

Since I can't dm you a photo, @jacobsberg.bsky.social, everyone can have a sneak peak at what I've been setting up on the tasting bar at work.

Fresh hop beer located, autumnal weather engaged. Both of these things make me very happy — or at least go a long way towards soothing the things that don't. This is my second pint, with a tiny taster of its regular-recipe sibling by way of comparison. Lovely stuff.

I refer to fresh hop season in Aotearoa as Craft Beer Christmas. It's one of the two beer seasons that I love (the other is lager season, which we're just moving into).

I love fresh hop season. It's huge back home in New Zealand, and I miss it dearly. I'm very envious of the West Coast U.S. experience, but I'm starting to see a few pop up here around D.C.. I'll report back once I've tried a few...

An Open Letter to @npr.org: Our Streets Are No Accident medium.com/@lanrickbenn... h/t @howdoyou.guide @jessiesinger.bsky.social @poolontheruf.gg @tomflood.bsky.social #BikeTO #WalkTO

The barstool barricade continues to drive me insane in this country. Every time I see a proper Service Area I want to high-five whoever put it there. I should compile a bunch of examples of places that do it right. It's not hard.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it

Delighted to report that Trader Joe's knockoff Tim Tams — with their deliriously circuitous name — are pretty legit. They even come in the same mathematically-inexplicable set of eleven.

Relatable.

"Children don't remember what you try to teach them," Jim once said. "They remember what you *are*." Look a child in the eye when you speak with them. Don't talk down to them. Love and support them. And remember: they're smarter than you think. Oh, and make them laugh. ALWAYS make them laugh. /7

Jim Henson would've been 89 years old today. Commemorate his life and legacy by celebrating creativity, diversity, imagination, peace, and just plain silliness. Walk with me a bit while I talk about Jim and his work--and leave your comments about what he means to you. Right this way. /1

Nationalise it. Or build a publicly-owned no-fee version. It's basically critical infrastructure, at this point. Relying on private actors to provide it is too much like outsourcing your actual cash.

If you like my work, and believe in a better/more independent media future, please fund it! Fingers can't exist unless readers continue to pay for it. And right now it's just $48 for the first year! That works out to just $4/month! Grab the deal before it's gone: www.fingers.email/upgrade?offe...

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

Just got sucked into @neal.fun's "Not a Robot" neal.fun/not-a-robot/

Todays partial solar eclipse. Luckily the clouds stayed away until after maximum eclipse. From South Canterbury, New Zealand Lunt LS80tha and Grasshopper 3 camera #eclipse

Something of an accidental mini-Oktoberfest for us yesterday; all three @lostlagers.bsky.social / Right Proper 'Senate' beers — recreations of old recipes from DC's historic Heurich brewery, in the Biergarten behind the founder's mansion.

Always fun to see my home town in unexpected contexts.

If the labels were clearer, they'd probably sell more...