It’s the 189th anniversary of the birth of one of the oddest of Victorians – which is a high bar, because Victorians were deeply weird people, but this was poet and flagellation enthusiast Algernon Charles Swinburne 🧵

Didn’t take a photo of lunch because I’d spent hours cooking it and I wanted to eat, but here’s the centrepiece: flowers grown by She Who Is Not Called Mrs Coates in a beautiful @saskiadanielceramics.com vase (getting its first outing)

Featuring Jesus, a Bunny, and a character feared dead returning after a few days. The Big Lebowski is an Easter movie

Been advised to get on lots of social networks to get more followers for silly history. Actual footage of me grappling with the functionality of Threads

It’s the 189th anniversary of the birth of one of the oddest of Victorians – which is a high bar, because Victorians were deeply weird people, but this was poet and flagellation enthusiast Algernon Charles Swinburne 🧵

That time The Mirror thought that nuclear armageddon was nigh but we’d still get to finish their 8 pages of Easter puzzles

304 years ago, on the 5th of April 1722 (an Easter Sunday, like today), Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen arrived on Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. His visit resulted in the death of a dozen islanders and left more wounded. The next foreigners to arrive didn't show until 1770. #otd #history 🗃️

Peeling potatoes to the Project Hail Mary soundtrack

Happy Easter!

Even an Edward Gorey Dracula one (based on his stage play)

It’s the 68th anniversary of the fatal stabbing of mob enforcer Johnny Stompanato. Famously, it wasn’t a rival mobster who did him in in some creative, Godfather-like way, but Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane, who stabbed him for beating up her mother. Probably... 🧵

Two goldfish walk into a bar. the barman asks “why the long faeces?”

Well, if it’s 4 April, it must be... yes, of course: the fifth anniversary of the publication of a paper which told us much more about the branched annelid Ramisyllis multicaudata and its many, many arseholes than we knew before 🧵

Random news from history today: a cartoon I first heard of yesterday ended on this day in 1953, which isn’t important, but I’d always wondered where the word milquetoast came from, and it’s a strip called The Timid Soul, and the guy’s (unsurprisingly) named after milk toast

Dreadful man, that Coates. Don’t know why you let him on

If you’re after a bit of ear-massaging over the Easter weekend, you might enjoy the Six Things podcast. Guests bring six things they find joyful, amusing, fascinating, comforting, magnificent, or just downright bizarre. Available on your favoured ear-massaging platform. pod.link/1873642106

*updates book list*

Incredible picture: Orion snapped this high-resolution selfie in space with a camera mounted on one of its solar array wings during a routine external inspection of the spacecraft on the second day into the Artemis II mission. Credit: NASA

It’s the 68th anniversary of the fatal stabbing of mob enforcer Johnny Stompanato. Famously, it wasn’t a rival mobster who did him in in some creative, Godfather-like way, but Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane, who stabbed him for beating up her mother. Probably... 🧵

230 years ago, on the 4th of April 1796, Georges Cuvier delivered the first paleontological lecture. He discussed skeletal remains of Indian and African elephants as wel as mammoth and mastodon fossils. Cuvier is sometimes referred to as the 'founding father of paleontology'. #otd #history 🗃️

Four years ago today, and June Brown’s obituary gets very dark very quickly.

DID YOU OFFER THE HORSE SOME CAKE, WAFFLES

I got so invested in this, I want to know if the horse got its cake

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

Can’t remember now who I saw on here the other day saying “see Project Hail Mary on the big screen”, but: thank you. Damn, you were right

It was at 8pm, Eastern Standard Time (admittedly I'm posting this in BST!) on the 3rd of April 1956 when the CBC broadcast, live from Studio 1 on Jarvis Street in Toronto, the play Flight into Danger - the play which begat Airplane! and, arguably in a way, #DoctorWho...

Extraordinary

In other news from history today, it’s now the 209th anniversary of the appearance of Princess Caraboo, and I don’t want to make people read* a third thread in one day, so… (*can’t be arsed posting)

This BBC News Online piece will be the most effective publicity my new documentary about Flight into Danger gets. So if you have enjoyed the programme, think you may enjoy it, or are just a kind soul, if you could please share this anywhere you think it may be worth sharing, I'd be very grateful!

Absolutely terrific.

Happy 16th anniversary to Chris Kamara’s finest hour to all those who are celebrating. “I don’t know, Jeff!” youtu.be/tAN8g7Fd2Cw?...

This is very good and entirely accurate existentialcomics.com/comic/648

forgot the most important of the genre

Are the shadow cabinet taller at sunset?

Well, if it’s 3 April, it must be... YES, OF COURSE – the 10th anniversary of a 28-year-old man in the Netherlands being ‘inspired’ by Jackass and endangering his life by swallowing the wrong kind of fish while shitfaced

It's time to repost this Easter masterpiece

Alas! The 71st anniversary of the death of Fanny Feast (Please don’t make any jokes here about how it’s amazing what they can do with ice cream flavours these days. I’m not here for that sort of smut)

Ooh, a QT from a big account! No doubt joining in with the fun and not just making dismal, po-faced points abo- Ah

It’s Good Friday, which means it’s time to examine one of the odder bits of this country’s frankly silly history. You know about the pretty much dead 5 November tradition of stuffing an old pair of tights and sticking a face on it to get money? Well... 🧵

Avoiding the news because of… you know, means I’ve seen very little SPACE!, but this (via www.instagram.com/p/DWnO3IgjUrv/) is wonderful

This is really good - more nuanced than the headline suggests (talking about what AI is good at, for example). And there’s a footnote at the end which knifes Matt Goodwin, and who doesn’t love one of those?

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one” - what a glorious monster Ignatius J Reilly is

Unimprovable opening to Private Eye’s review of Matt Goodwin’s ‘book’

I reposted something earlier which said we should take a more nuanced approach to AI, and we should, but if you’re asking ChatGPT to write your best man’s speech, you may as well get a ouija board and ask the ghost of William McGonagall

The lesson here is use Matt Owen, or you’ll end up like Matt Goodwin.

Dramatic scenes at BBC Breakfast.

Roses are red Clare Balding’s a presenter

Well, it’s 52 years since that man at the Oscars got “probably the only laugh ... in his life by stripping off and showing his shortcomings”

Roses are red Quite happy, the clam