Big shout out to the lovely person at the Corby Passport Office who processed my application in double-quick time and the very kind gentleman on the helpline who sorted the fact that the automatic reader hadn't picked up my middle name on my birth certificate. Star performance all round.

23rd November 2025 10.52

Brexit keeps on giving ... just discovered I can no longer enter the UK on my Italian passport - no ETA visa if you have dual citizenship. Madly getting my UK passport application together in the hopes of making it to the family get-together in mid December. Never ends.

11th November 2025 07.19

Since 1990, the emissions share of the richest 1% has increased by 13%, and the richest 0.1% has grown by 32%, while the poorest 50% has decreased by 3%. policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/cl...

And all the rest of you still active over there are keeping it going. Posting your substack? You're keeping X followers happy there. Intervening with your liberal commentary? Laundering the crazy content, convincing X followers that it's a normal platform.

It's not even released yet, but this is the funniest film trailer I've ever seen. On an obscure note of no consequence, my Portuguese teacher alerted me to this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4aL...

Experts are such a drag! You propose a nice simple answer to a big problem and they’re all like “that approach has been tried many times and invariably failed” and “the problem is more complex than that” and “what about the disastrous unintended consequences?” and blah blah blah.

A useful reminder: A Human on a Bicycle Is among the Most Efficient Forms of Travel in the Animal Kingdom | Scientific American share.google/PItKvNJhK84F...

15th October 2025 18.00

The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…

The strike in Italy are massive. There's at least 100 different ones across the country under the banner of "Stop the Genocide, We Are all Global Sumud Flotilla" www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2025...

Sarah Mullally is named as first female archbishop of Canterbury

Good morning

30th September 2025 06.20

You guys, so many Romance girlies are reading "On Tyranny" that they've broken the Goodreads recommendations algorithm. 10/10; no notes. #romancelandia

Revealed: ‘Corporate capture’ of UN aviation body by industry

This is a shameful press conference, a rambling lying Trump running down his predecessor, egged on by a clutch of craven so- called journalists from both sides of the Atlantic

18th September 2025 06.47

ouch

So it turns out this is really not a great time to read a book about how Augustus was able to grab every single rein of power and make himself emperor over a compliant populace and an ineffectual senate.

This is the Platonic Ideal of a Bluesky thread

27thAugust 2025 06.06

Now here's a bit of green ecclesiastical history I did not know: monks built the first public electricity scheme in the Highlands - and it was hydropower.

The WSJ reports Trump has ordered Smithsonian museums to conform to his preferred view of history. Here’s what that means for the reality based world.

It's here: An absolute beast of an episode. The story of the worst speech in post-war Britain - how it came to be, what it said, and what happened afterwards.

New podcast from two women with a shared intellectual project: classics from the ancient world to now…theatre, architecture, history, film, you name it

Excellent Stephen Collins cartoon from The Guardian www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath Some costs aren’t costs.

1953. Molesworth invents AI.

And in the more artistic categories, nobody dared take on the might of this marvellous carved vegetable whale. They were quite right not to.

ID verification requested for access to adult material and direct messaging - hoping their definition of adult material is accurate and limited, and considering I don't use direct messaging, I'm going to skip it for now ...

Bonanza for VPNs coming up I would say - BBC have blocked access to non-live radio from abroad. I'd be delighted to pay for a subscription to have full access to their radio 3 schedule as until yesterday, but no, they simply cut me off. And no classical music podcasts at all. Great!!

Well said!😊

Carola van Dyke, contemporary fibre artist based on the UK south coast, who is inspired by close observation and appreciation of nature #WomensArt

Finally, some good news about AI. DuckDuckGo now lets you hide AI-generated images in search results techcrunch.com/2025/07/18/d...

Hey, anyone wants some guilt?

Scenes from freelancer life. Me yesterday: oh help, still no work, won't be able to afford that holiday. Me today: oh no, how am I going to get this mountain of work done? Come on brain ..... how am I going to survive days glued to the laptop?

Just flagging up a long-established charity with local roots here that needs help after landlord chucked them out. Definitely value for your donation if you want to help. www.gofundme.com/f/una-scuola...

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

The toll taken by overgrazing: @irishrainforest.bsky.social, of (grim) interest to you? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

When we moved into our new fire station, we noticed that hummingbirds were getting trapped in the apparatus bay. We would find them exhausted on the floor! My crew devised a resuscitation protocol and successfully revived them with sugar water. Once they filled their tanks, we placed them outside.

"Siamo in grado di documentare come Gergiev abbia creato in Italia una rete fitta di società – intestate a prestanome e del tutto invisibili alla supervisione fiscale – che gestiscono un patrimonio immobiliare da oltre cento milioni di euro" www.linkiesta.it/2025/07/il-s...

Reading a lovely letter posted by @englishmaninbx.bsky.social which reminded me of this one - seen many times but... it's excellent.

5th July 2025 06.01

3rd July 2025 5.07

Paul Klee Sur un motif de Hammamet, 1914.

88 MILLION HECTARES. This is the extra land farmers have had to use due to reduced efficiency from global warming. A new study published in @nature.com with support from Dr. Paul West, makes clear that farming has become dangerously less efficient. Read the article to learn more: bit.ly/4eiCk4z