The slug on the office window has been there a few days. Birds haven't touched it, not because they can't get a foothold on the glass, but because they know it is a Chinese spybot.

While the school spam machine has been halted, there's now a flood of car finance calls (wait till you don't see my driving licence). I try with creative language to effect removal from the list: "Is that how you speak to other people on the phone?! I'll report you!"

A Chinese mum wants to attend the piano lessons I am giving her daughter. "How's she going to learn if I can't practise with her at home?!"

Or, why the X84 from Leeds to Ilkley taking 80-100% longer at some times of day is a political choice

Michelsen in 1861: The Turkish Almanac (Takvim)

On the GUS version of Eric Ball's Resurgam

I respectfully suggest that we have more owls in Leeds, and older ones too. Our owls date back 400 years. #Leeds400 🦉🐏🦉 A small sample:

I saw a unique thing when I was walking the dog this evening. A kestrel stealing a mouse from a barn owl, in flight. They were a fair distance away, light wasn't great at 8pm and images are cropped. Thread. 1/4

We need a lynx on the allotment to cope with the mice. Cats are so needy.

It turns out that one's mobile network's spam filter has halted the incessant flow of ads and other messages from school. Must ask them to unblock.

Whitaker, History & Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven (1805), on a new development along the road from us

Road safety training for Shire Oak Primary today seemed to be about crossing from one safe pavement to another - held ironically on Grove Road where people regularly park and drive on the pavements - fighting the last war

Yorkshire Dales National Carpark

There'll be a homophonic singsong during the plant sale at Hollin Lane Allotments on Sunday, at some stage after the official opening time of 14:00. Tea & cake available. Here's Hormone Derange:

Power cuts in LS16 caused by our unsuccessful AI-powered search yesterday for an efficient bus route to Skipton, which consumed roughly 3% of total UK electricity supply. One issue insoluble by Weaver: bus drivers unable to distinguish between West & North Yorkshire.

GP: We have sent a message to your account. Me: No trace of it on the two of your three CRM systems offering this functionality. Please clarify. GP: ...

Cyclists wearing hi vis doesn't significantly improve rider safety for much the same reason that training dogs not to eat homework wouldn't achieve significantly more homework getting handed in.

Sonny had been ill for a while youtu.be/6hhtQHNecgM

A puzzle. Clearly a friend of Otis and Silica.

Burst water main providing lengthy dam-building & water-ballistics edutainment - say no to nationalisation! - Will our supply go off when you try to fix it? - No idea. - Haven't you got maps? - They got lost when we changed offices.

Contemplating the first sundial ever to have a beer bottle as gnomon & the motto "Time, gentlemen, please"

How have I lived so long without encountering Pogo Possum? It is said that Walt Kelly is drawing here on James 4:1: From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

Persuaded a small Italian boy in the playground at 8.30 this morning that the English word for his robot spaceship was not supersonic but supermoronic

Am I the last person to notice that Wes Streeting is being styled to look like Tommy Robinson?

Pubs are gastro or gone, so the Homophonic Headingley 'Horus is building up a network of quasi-public houses with piano & fridge for next Christmas's wassailing. May also go off-piste with a compressed Wagner Ring.

Plus ça change. Still haven't seen anything about the Southampton (state) children's home, back in the 70s, back to which children fled because the managers were farming them out to people even worse than themselves. Allegedly.

Trying to think of documented examples of pre-C20th European travellers encountering a curious native expression which on closer inspection turns out to be a corrupted loanword from their own language.

Hadn't seen under Leeds Station - seems like a massive failure of imagination to fill it all in for a mall on top, but what do I know www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeNv...

This is really good jamesbreckwoldt.substack.com/p/how-manche...

Never know who you'll meet in Holbeck youtu.be/A35fYtfD99g

I just grabbed these screenshots from the Census in response to somebody suggesting that nearly everyone has to drive in poor northern towns (where I grew up, incidentally). The numbers who don't have cars can be staggering, not that you'd know it from a lot of transport discourse

Two men crouched by their routers near the centres of two British cities, trying to get enough connection for a phone conversation. Let me sell you a landline.

Diary date: come and see me play the trombone at the village fête at Clifton (Otley) on Sunday July 12th

What? A clever politician? www.scmp.com/week-asia/li...

At a party, I approach the gent who resembles the Ancient Mariner: - So how are your potatoes, with this cold May? Etc etc. Eventually he looks round conspiratorially and draws me closer: - I'll tell you what. Every allotment has one. - One what? - The Allotment Cunt.

An idiot's guide to running a steam engine by Stanley Graham and Newton Pickles (scroll) ltp2013.oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk/www.pluggy.m... Stanley is sadly a Lancastrian deity

The opposition is apparently still discussing one's opening goal last Saturday - "a screamer" - & one's pride is only slightly diminished by the fact that none of the horde was older than seven

Will Self on Keir Starmer in The Times

The infant prefers the pre-S05 Futuramas to post-S09 Simpsons

Record for the fastest response to a Yorkshire Almanac rights request now shared by Craven Museum at Skipton Town Hall & @thespectator1828.bsky.social, both of which got back personally, constructively, & immediately yesterday. The old regional press is, on the other hand, something of a nightmare.

Horrible stuff and spreads like a triffid. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

AI fiction commentary translation challenge

Tide of change: it's now normal to have a big lunch in a library (Art Library of Leeds Central) but no one in restaurants reads books.

A review of the Yorkshire Almanac from a contributor. Rachel Reeves hasn't yet commented.

Drawing your own plans with tape measure, ladder, graph paper and Photoshop is certainly fun & apparently sensible. This might have been the price, on top of the council fee, for a few bits of paper for a new back door:

Crows also persecute kites in East Africa

He doesn't seem to see the roads

I thought that Starmer was kicking the can onto another road by devolving prohibition of pavement parking, but someone in Leeds Labour says it will be a handy local wedge issue to split the socially & environmentally responsible wing of the Green Party from the rest www.instagram.com/reel/DYKT_Es...

#PavementParking forces people walking and wheeling, including pushing prams, into the road making them vulnerable. It’s time this was stopped, and this YouGov poll shows overwhelming support for enforcement @walkridegm.org.uk

A Yorkshireman goes into a vet: - My cat is addicted to sex. - Is it a tom? - No, I brought it with me.