Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

#WakeUpAmerica & #ReleaseAllTheEpsteinFiles !

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

Lords Heseltine & Kinnock seem more alive to these self-evident truths than most members of the Commons. Similarly, I find thinkers with direct lived experience of far right dictatorship, Greeks of a certain age for example, crystal clear about what’s happening now.

Politics isn't working. It's time to call time on the broken culture in Westminster and have a fresh start with a fair voting system. Add your name to @electoralreform.bsky.social‬'s call to #MakeSeatsMatchVotes action.electoral-reform.org.uk/page/3782/pe...

A few photos from Monday's walk. It was a really lovely day. After days of strong winds, it was nice to go out and not have your head blown off.

Shrooms from yesterday's walkabout.

Sherds! We've had rain, and the river level is higher, so there's even less bank to search, and yet these little beauties keep on popping up.

A recent arrival... 'The Egyptian Venus' by Reginald de Glossop, published by The Regency Press in 1946. I don't know exactly what it's about (though I can guess), but the cover drew me to it.

Gary Lineker is a legend, he spoke out when no one else on TV would. Gary Lineker on Gaza, "It's the worst thing I have seen in my lifetime. Constant images day in, day out of children losing their lives."

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

“The second anyone suggests that a man whose entire political career has been devoted to attacking migrants and making discriminatory comments about non-white people, might be a racist, all hell breaks loose” Enough. Farage is a racist menace. We must say so. www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/nigel-fara...

Lucky for Nigel Farage that he never met that bloke who took bribes from the Russians, otherwise the media would be all over it.

Locking everything up last night, hubs called for help. One of the teeny tiny baby meecers was in the back porch. She'd let herself in when he went outside to check on Meecehaven. Took a while to help her outside, but she seemed to enjoy herself. We certainly did.

Me too!

A hideous, and for traumatised British Jews profoundly unhelpful, expression of allyship & agreement with a violent, racist, serial criminal & former member of an avowedly anti-Semitic organisation from the *Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs* and so, as Sunder says, the Israeli government. 1/3

I received a refund a couple of days ago from Amazon for a returned damaged book. I was a bit baffled, as I don't buy books there any longer (unless they're absolutely not available anywhere else). And I haven't sent anything back for ages. Turns out, I sent it back seven and a half years ago!

Lovely book post! ... 'The Jewelled Hand', a collection of 24 tales by Australian writer Lionel Sparrow, just published by the wonderful @valancourtbooks.bsky.social.

And another Marjorie Bowen up for pre-order, this time under her pseudonym Joseph Shearing... The Fetch (which was published in the US as The Spectral Bride), based on a real-life legal case but with a sinister twist. hauntedlibraryblog.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

There's a new title up for pre-order... Sheep's-Head and Babylon, a collection of eighteen stories by Marjorie Bowen. You can find out more here: hauntedlibraryblog.blogspot.com/2025/10/shee...

🌳Vast areas of our most vital habitat are at risk of being lost forever. Will you join Dame Judi Dench and @wildcard.land in calling for Forestry England to restore their Ancient Woodlands lost under timber plantations? you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/br...

A few photos from yesterday's walk.

Found the gate that leads to winter.

Sherds! There's hardly anywhere left above water now, but the river just keeps on providing.

A few more shrooms, including the large number of honey fungi we found growing in the intake enclosure that used to be part of Lynrock mineral water plant.

A few of the shrooms we came across during today's walk.

We returned to the river today. It was definitely coat and hat weather, but the sun was shining and the sky was blue.

Doing Putin’s bidding? That is Trump’s America, don’t let it become Farage’s Britain. We need a new inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee into Reform and Farage's links to Russia.

Thou shalt worry less about Tylenol causing autism and more about Donold causing fascism.

No wonder the tippy top of the GOP wants to keep this a secret. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

And the final lot of shrooms...

And more shrooms...

More shrooms...

We saw quite a few shrooms, including this gorgeous fly agaric with its tomato-red cap.

We walked along the river from Watersmeet in the direction of Lynmouth yesterday. It was a lovely sunny day... cold and crisp.

I didn't think we'd have much luck finding sherds, as almost all of the riverbank we search is under water now, but we stumbled across these yesterday... Literally, as the larger one appeared when hubs trod on it. It's probably the neck of a Victorian ginger beer bottle.

The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

Everything Farage does - claiming migrants eat pets, bigging up dangerous AntiVaxxers, the data-grabbing DOGE - is a tribute act to Trump, just as the US proves it doesn't work. It's like a bad Elvis impersonator busking on a Clacton seafront

Margo giving me the 'love looks in exchange for nibbles' treatment. ❤️❤️❤️

I can't believe papers have gotten away with destroying lives for so long. That's why I've signed the petition, set up by Hugh Grant and other phone hacking victims, to demand fair, independent regulation. Join me:

Can we finally accept that all the AI hype is, and always has been when it comes to LLMs, a scam? Scaling was never going to solve the numerous problems, and the promised returns are never going to materialise. All that money wasted on a pipe dream.

"Pretending to like you is EXTRA!"

Another new arrival... 'The Woman Who Did' by Grant Allen, a 'new woman' novel published by John Lane in 1895.

A recent arrival, and the book that I'm currently reading... 'Lady Audley's Secret' by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a sensation novel originally published in 1862 (this edition 1893) that I'm absolutely loving. I am particularly fond of Robert Audley, easy-going aristocrat turned detective.

We have exported our greatest domestic product: stupidity

Nora... Our little fluffy squish. ❤️❤️❤️

Margo... She always looks like she's up to something. ❤️❤️❤️

Flora... being her cute self. ❤️❤️❤️

Nigel Farage announces plan to deport legal immigrants. Will split families. Will resisters end-up in concentration camps? Plans to deny welfare benefits to those who worked, paid taxes. Produces false financial savings numbers. Will the next road to Auschwitz go through Clacton?

In the late 19th century, millions of migrants left Germany as a result of religious persecution, economic hardship, and political uncertainty. Among them was Nikolaus Schrod, a cabinet maker from Frankfurt who - along with his wife Bina - moved to London to start a new life in the 1850s. 1/3