Drew Struzan, an artist whose talent for realistic portraiture and inventive composition captured the magic and adventure of films by directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Frank Darabont in some 200 posters, died this month. He was 78.

New post just out: "Never again?" On how the radical right are trying to change our collective memory about World War Two as part of their assault on the postwar order. And why that memory remains a critical defence against nationalism. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/n...

Nothing on the BBC Radio news this morning. Nothing I could find on their website. This is an MP from the party whose lead in the opinion polls normally ensures them wall-to-wall coverage. She spouts racist nonsense for which even she feels obliged to apologise. What on earth are they playing at?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/h... Plagues of the Grande Armée uncovered by WGS

Brilliant gig by Richard Hawley at Mandela Hall, QUB last night.

People who have come to the United Kingdom legally, played by the rules and made it their home do not need to “go home”. This is their home. I've written to Kemi Badenoch to give her the chance to reject these divisive calls from her frontbencher Katie Lam.

Just a reminder that jumping on fly agaric does not turn you into a super powered-up plumber - we repeat, does not turn you into a super powered-up plumber! That is all.

“Food allergies in children dropped sharply in the years after new guidelines encouraged parents to introduce infants to peanuts, a study has found… a 36 percent reduction in all food allergies, driven largely by a 43 percent drop in peanut allergies” in children under 3 years old.

Did a new one

For the first time, researchers have restored some vision to people with a common eye disease by using a prosthetic retinal implant. The treatment could improve the lives of an estimated one million people in the U.S. who lose their vision to the condition if it's approved for broader use.

There's an AWS outage this morning impacting lots of services; it started around 07.30 UK time. People who use services like Alexa as their alarm clocks have just had a helpful reminder that using a device reliant on connectivity to carry out a task that doesn't need connectivity is not a good idea.

Happy retirement to Marissa Callaghan. Our international women's team slipper and Cliftonville legend. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/articl...

👏 "We've lived here all our lives. And I have never felt so unwelcome in my own hometown as I do since your party came into Caerphilly." "With all the rhetoric that you bring in, I have to say to my sons, please don't go there. Please don't do this." "I blame you for that."

Really great @stephenkb.bsky.social column today. on.ft.com/3KOUh07 Key para.

New WHO report finds 1 in 6 bacterial infections were resistant to antibiotic treatments. Data from over 100 countries warns that rising resistance to essential antibiotics poses a growing threat to global health. Read more 👉bit.ly/438Ta1u

Sadly, we are without this for tonight's game against Germany #gawa

The Faroe Islands—population just 55,000—beat the Czech Republic 🤯 An astonishing result. The territory's population is smaller than the capacity of six Premier League stadiums, yet they've just won a third straight international game 🇫🇴

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a... When one considers how obsessed the techbro class are with sci Fi and in particular Iain Banks, you can't help but conclude they are thick as mince to miss the point. They are the archetype of the villains Banks populated his post scarcity, socialist utopia with.

30 pages in and already hooked.

Autumn has arrived in Dundonald. Virginia creeper and Quercus rubra going glossy red.

Conor Bradley has magic in his feet. He and Galbraith just linked up so well tonight. Every surge forward greeted by a wall of sound. And Trai Hume? What a finish from Mr consistency #GAWA

archive.ph/2025.10.10-1... Love the batshit eschatology here. Regulation and taxation are the 'Antichrist'. Must have missed the bit in my evangelical upbringing where Jesus embraced radical libertarianism and slavish devotion to avarice.

Introducing our Microbes of the Month for October, Cyberlindnera hibernica and Barnettozyma discipulorum! The two novel yeast species were discovered from forest soil samples collected in County Cork, Ireland, by students at University College Dublin.

"15 years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now Poland is growing twice as fast as we are," says Kemi Badenoch. Any ideas what may have happened in the interim?

This morning I turned on my phone only to find that it had changed my user name to Shirley, and when I tried to enter a simple Google query it came out as "Do you like gladiator movies?" Then I realised it was in Airplane! mode.

NVIDIA and OpenAi: Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“ @bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Your own personal Negus, Someone to look at your wares Someone who cares.

Source: NPR search.app/pfdmn SynBio and AI really could be a perfect storm.

Traces of life in the fountains of Enceladus? We really need to send that submarine burrowing down through 100km of ice to the ocean below...

If someone as close to Jeremy Corbyn had taken Russian Bribes as Andrew Gill is to Nigel Farage you would never have heard the end of it.

Okay, funny bookstore category

As heroic Moldovans ignored threats of violence and huge financial inducements to vote for being European, one of Farage’s closest political allies pleads guilty to taking Kremlin money for political interference. A reminder of what is at stake.

Betrayal of Britain: the case of a corrupt and treacherous Reform MP exposes how Russian tentacles reach deep into our democracy. My @theipaper.com column inews.co.uk/opinion/russ...

⚡️Russia using 'shadow fleet' tankers to launch drones towards European cities, Zelensky says. Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" of oil tankers are being used to "launch and control" Russian drones over European cities, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sept. 28, citing intelligence reports.

You are not a patriot if your associates sell out your country to Russia. You are not a patriot if your associates brag about annexing Commonwealth territory. You are not a patriot if you advocate for policies that impoverish & weaken your country.

This is huge: “A drug that provides near-perfect protection against H.I.V. with shots just twice a year will be made available at $40 per patient annually in low- and middle-income countries, offering new hope… making lenacapavir a realistic choice in countries with constrained resources.”

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Mrs R: "There was a woman on the ward today who didn't want to take paracetamol. We've had to explain that we're not giving it to her because she's got a fever and we want her to feel better, but because she's got a fever and if we don't get her temperature down then her baby is going to die."

Paracetamol / acetaminophen has actually been observed to inhibit The Rapture. First made in 1878, and there has been no Rapture since those times. #science

We need a rapture tracker like the Santa tracker. He must be in Australia by now and making His way across.

A lot of sensible people get squeamish at labelling Nigel Farage “far-right”, but his policy of cancelling the legal status of tens of thousands of settled immigrants can not be politically described as anything else. Reform are campaigning on a policy of cruelty & xenophobia.

Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain. They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city. Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.

Spend today turning 1.2 kilos of these and elephant garlic from the garden.....

Basically, the American left should start lecturing other people once it has delivered universal health care, statutory maternity pay and proper trade union rights.

open.substack.com/pub/jmarriot... Great, though scary, read.

oh bravo @privateeyenews.bsky.social 🏆

Someone pointed out this likeness to me a few days back. I mean...wrong 'un.

Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity 2004: A year 2010: ~ a month 2015: ~ a week Now: A day ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪