Apposite for the moment to bid farewell to India's B'wood singer Asha Bhosle who passed today. This was a hit in the late 90s; a tribute to her by the diasporans who made home in Britain. It's so 90s. Rest easy Asha Bhosle. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBn...

How can I take University Challenge seriously if its makers think hyphens and en-dashes are interchangeable?

It is almost, almost, impressive just how Labour have taken the massively dysfunctional and incompetent Home Office and managed by dint of policies and rhetoric to make it even more dysfunctional and incompetent. It is a true testament to how hostile they are to migrants. archive.today/07Hdr

About time the International Ornithologists' Union's Working Group on Avian Nomenclature sorted out the English name of the whitethroat, if only to stop British Merlin users from thinking its name is greater whitethroat. How did the Clements list settle on greater whitethroat?

We cannot be beaten. #WorldBollardAssociation

all the crew members have exited the vehicle, feeling well, and are even eating a little food.

How are the golf commentators on Radio 5 Live succeeding so effortlessly in not noticing the birdsong? The birds are louder at times than the commentators?

Hello. I just found out that a death metal band has covered John Cage’s 4’33”, and now I need you lot to know that a death metal band has covered John Cage’s 4’33”. youtu.be/voqCQSDAcn8

I was a lab manager of an equipment resource and knew a centrifuge technician in Nashville who had Beckman knowledge that was *geological*. He had a satellite phone that could get a signal anywhere and got worldwide calls as he was the only human still working who knew how fix certain machines.

The Finnish word for an auction, huutokauppa, means “shout market” (or “shouting shop”) * read on for more of my favourite Finnish words (a thread in honour of today being Day of the Finnish Language)…

'Heart of the Dragon, Socotra, Yemen' by photographer Beth Moon on her fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees of the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa #WomensArt

Roman concrete at last!—on page 207. And only a page after the most recent appearance of the Tarquins, the family gift that hasn't stopped giving for the last hundred pages or so.

Had forgotten how readily Private Eye falls for the old primary-energy fallacy.

"focused on defence"? WTAF?! that was never in the founding principles or its operational remit. I've no problem with defence applications being part of the portfolio, but this looks like HMG trying to subvert the entire intent of the organisation

HEAVER [hee•vur] sb. A crab.—Folkestone. 'Lord, sir, it's hard times; I've not catched a pung or a heaver in my stalkers this week; the man-suckers and slutters gets into them, and the congers knocks them all to pieces.'

I'm reviewing Sapiens, one page at a time! It's a little bit fact-checking and a little-bit soul-searching combined into a lot of feelings... ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...

Progress in ornithology 1908-style, celebrated at the Jubilee Meeting of the British Ornithologists' Union (on its 50th anniversary): 'in 1872 there were only about 30,000 stuffed birds and bird-skins in the British Museum, while now there are 500,000'

1/7 I’m a Green Party councillor for City Ward #Sheffield. It’s a densely populated urban ward. I’m going to talk about digital advertising screens, which doesn’t sound exciting, but please bear with me. I want to explain why I spend time objecting to so many of these. Since 2023, I’ve …

Day 5 no. 2—Friday Night in Loughborough, The Wave Pictures (c/w bonus Walton on the Wolds in the song) youtu.be/ELXYXtIQLwA?...

Day 5—A place in the title: Vesoul, Jacques Brel (with dozens more in the song as a bonus) youtu.be/tVKWiseNGUU?...

Folkestone, Kent - March 2023

There's a list, probably out of date now. www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/the-eu-...

The group is the largest independent forecourt operator in the UK, but should you want to avoid contributing to the payment of that fine, you can use this handy map of their sites: www.motorfuelgroup.com/locations/

Today's refusal by Italy for US jets to use Sigonella Air Base in Sicily has brought back memories of events at the same base in 1985, when Carabinieri & US troops (led by Oliver North) faced off after US planes forced an Egyptian airliner carrying the hijackers of the Achille Lauro to land there.

From 1973, The Last House Standing at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, from one of my photographic projects at Myrtle Street Art College, I was working then as a black & white printer at the commercial photographers, Elsam, Mann and Cooper in Princes Road @yoliverpool.bsky.social @daveyph.bsky.social

Ainsdale, north of Liverpool -18 miles of sand dunes from Liverpool north to Southport including Birkdale Golf Course, Natterjack toads, Sand Lizards, many different spiders and many many varieties of mushrooms But no evacuations of the type you may well be referring to!

I have a feeling Reform might not yet be the well oiled Welsh election winning machine the press has made them out to be

The words of Dutch. Enough to surprise you.

And, no, it's not where the Curies were buried.

A friend took her toddler to our local church messy play and they made Easter biscuits that included small Jesus figurines. The prominent JESUS IS NOT EDIBLE sign over the craft table unintentionally kicking off the next Christian schism.

Usually avoid books with 'INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER' on the cover but glad I made an exception for this. If you only read the chapter featuring The Two Tarquins™ you're going to be ahead.

This actually looks like good old fashioned artisanal plagiarism, not least because the August 2025 Guardian review wouldn't have been in LLM training corpuses in time for the Jan 2026 NYT review. It's interesting that the NYT writer thinks he can partially deflect blame by implicating AI, though!

This Amazon user review of MattGPT's book is 👌🏽 "The writing is aggressively mediocre. There is not a single sentence in this book that will stay with you. Not one image, not one idea, not one moment of genuine insight. Goodwin writes like a man terrified that clarity might expose him."

Do you know how to piss in a urinal? For chrissakes don't forget to check what is happening. Don't mention it.

An answer to a question that's been laughing at me now for years. Long and short of it? Orwell wasn't that bovvered but preferred it spelled out. www.darcymoore.net/2022/12/30/n...

Never underestimate the uses to which you can put a David Peace novel. Spotted this in a local chazza this a.m.

When fusion power to the grid was still about 20 years off—this from the foreword by Nobel laureate George Thomson FRS to J. D. Jukes's book 'Man-made Sun', published 1959.

Matt Goodwin just said on GB News that he believes his book will be “one of the most important books in contemporary history”. Imagine having to carry that ego around every day.

The update, which was added to Wikipedia’s guidelines late last week, cites the tendency for AI-written articles to violate “several of Wikipedia’s core content policies” as the reason for the ban.

'Wilberforce and other abolitionists argued that the cruelty towards enslaved girls and women […] made it impossible for [enslaved women] to bear enough children to replace dead and worn out enslaved workers.'

Biggest comeback of the year just dropped

Perhaps we shouldn't be tipping all our existing books on 1066 into the shredder just yet. www.marcmorris.org.uk/2026/03/king...

It is too.

It would be nice if people remembered this piece of wisdom from the greatest economics tweet in history (and the one I am most insanely jealous of not having written, especially because it was a reply to me).

Didn't know ornithologist James Fisher, who died at age 58 in a car crash on the M1, was on his way home from his London club when he crashed—with more than double the then (1970) legal limit of alcohol in his blood, and that this 'could have played some part in the accident'!

‘Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves’ 📚 Pablo Neruda, Lost in the Forest 📷 my own #BookWormSat #poetry #forests

For ⁦‪@SciTechgovuk‬⁩ Lord Vallance says: “"It is not right to portray this as a massive cut. It's not, it’s about managing a budget responsibly". He added that the UK was and would continue to be the second biggest funder experiments @CERN.🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...