I’m not doing much politics on here but I can’t resist a good #PoliticalMetaphorOfTheWeek
“A second revealing element was Vanceâs role. Many noticed just how bellicose he was in the Zelensky meeting, playing a combined Crabbe and Goyle to Trumpâs ageing Malfoy”
Substack - Lewis Goodall - Starmer says Trump is a reliable ally. The problem is nobody believes him
Finished reading: Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris đ
Enjoyed this a lot, although I’m always a bit frustrated by the gap between the history and the fiction in historical fiction.
Podcast episodes that I enjoyed in February - Micky Flanagan, moshing, Independence Day UK, the best single of all time, Dylan, Comic Relief, Jay-Z, Ken Dodd, Chaplin, Mengele, New Order, Flat Earth, Hattie Jacques etc
BBC - Micky Flanagan: What Chance Change? - episode 1, the 1970s - Micky Flanagan talking about class. He talks to a sociologist (I think) who says something like ‘school is an interruption to working class culture’
Decoder Ring - Whatâs Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit? The etiquette, science, and enduring appeal of a concertgoing ritual - the word ‘mosh’ possibly derives from someone mishearing Bad Brains saying ‘mash it down’
BBC - Independence Day UK - this is something of a curiosity. A 1996 “audio drama ‘midquel’ of the film Independence Day”. It’s fun to listen to both for the story, and to hear the radio personalities and sounds of the time
Word in your Ear - Alexis Petridis - esteemed music critic Alexis Petridis says that Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson is the best single of all time. I can’t see it myself.
Word in Your Ear discussing ‘Pledging My Time - Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members’ with author Ray Padgett - Bob Dylan is asked why he signs autographs left-handed. Answers “if I signed right-handed they’d analyze my handwriting and find out all about me”
BBC - Whats so funny about….Comic Relief - the highest rate of donation during Comic Relief isn’t when the comedians are on, it’s when there’s a musical interlude. I guess people can more easily listen to music and donate at the same time. The highest ever rate of donation was while Adele sung Somebody Like You
‘Fresh Air’ celebrates 50 years of hip-hop: Jay-Z - I like to hear successful people crediting their school teachers, both because its good that teachers get a bit of credit, and because it implicitly recognizes the luck involved in the person’s success. The happenstance of the right person having the right teacher at the right time. Here Jay-Z recognizes the impact that his English teacher, Miss Lowden, had on his life.
Sodajerker on Songwriting - Keven Rowland - the main guy from Dexys Midnight Runners talking about songs. He says he writes down the point he’s trying to get across at the bottom of the page before he writes the words for a song.
Revisionist History Guns Part 1: The Sudden Celebrity of Sir John Knight - part of the reason that Americans have guns is because, in 1686, a guy called Sir John Knight took his gun to a church in Bristol, although he seems to have left it at the door. On the podcast they say it’s a Common Law thing.
BBC Mastertapes - Paul McCartney - McCartney says part of the attraction of relocating to Kintyre was that it made it impossible for him to get to business meetings arising from the breakup of the Beatles
How Tickled Am I? - Ken Dodd - BBC - I regret not going to see Ken Dodd. At the time of typing this show isn’t available…but hopefully it will reappear at some stage
Dan Snow’s History Hit - Charlie Chaplin - Chaplin had his first real success as a ‘drunk act’. He sat in a box in the theatre and interrupted and interacted with the performers. His biographer, Paul Duncan, compares it to the old guys, Waldorf and Statler, in the Muppets
On the trail of a Nazi war criminal - History Extra podcast - Josef Mengele was, for a time, listed under his real name in the phone book in the Argentine town in which he lived
BBC book club - Philip Pullman - Northern Lights - I’d either forgotten, or I never knew, that the title of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy comes from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,”
Will Hodgkinson on 70s Singalong Pop - Word in your Ear - Middle of the Road, who had hits with Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep and Soley Soley, were for a time Sophia Loren’s backing band. The story goes that she started listening to their music after going to complain about the noise
Midnight Meets - Stephen Morris - “[Blue Monday] was great for DJ’s because it was so long they could put it on, then go to the toilet. So it worked on many levels”
Little Atoms 847 - Anna Funder’s Wifedom - interesting and persuasive suggestion that Animal Farm was, to a greater or lesser extent, a joint work by Orwell and Eileen O’Shaughnessy
Did our ancestors really think the world was flat? History Extra with James Hannam - Aristotle proved the earth was shaped like a ball, not like a disc, or any other flat thing
BBC Great Lives - Sophie Scott on Hattie Jacques - Hattie Jacques was nicknamed ‘Hattie’ either because she liked hats, or because in blackface she was supposed to resemble Hattie McDowell
Full Disclosure - Polly Toynbee - Ms Toynbee says something like “Ever since Ancient Greece people have been in love with the idea of democracy, but they have despised the people that do it”
Word in your ear - Robbie Robertson, Billy Connolly, Bridge Over Troubled Water and the âfake historyâ of Punk - Michael Parkinson’s last interview with Muhammad Ali didn’t go well. Parkinson’s dad was a big fan of Ali, and agreed it was a poor interview. Parkinson asks his father what he thinks he should have done differently….“you should’ve thumped him”
There’s more, much, more at
In a week of controversy, I hesitate to post this in case it sparks a pineapple-on-pizza level of division and rancour.
Chilli is better with broccoli in it
Happy 'Boys from the County Hell's day to all those celebrating it today
On the first day of March it was raining
It was raining worse than anything that I have ever seen
I drank ten pints of beer and I cursed all the people there
I wish that all this rain would stop falling down on me
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother wake me early in the morning
The Pogues (or possibly Pogue Mahone when this originally came out, I don’t remember) - The Boys from the County Hell
I’ve got a rail trip coming up, and I can’t decide who to take along with me
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Wifedom by Anna Funder
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Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
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Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
They’ll be coming along in audio book form….I can’t afford two train tickets.
#TodayILearned that 'Bouncing Babies' by the Teardrop Explodes has been streamed 516,716 times, but 'I can't get Bouncing Babies by the Teardrop Explodes' by The Freshies has only been streamed 24,393 times
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2025/16772316772303-3.jpg" width=“300” height=“300” alt=“A vinyl record label featuring the text “bouncing babies” and “The Teardrop Explodes” with a yellow triangle design.">
#TodayILearned that in VS Code there is a command called “View: Toggle Locked Scrolling Across Editors” which sync’s the scrolling between two windows (or are they called panes). Anyway it’s v handy for comparing two chunks of code #VsCode
I finished Ghosts over the weekend. Lovely show. I was simultaneously touched and slightly disappointed at the ending.
I’ll probably give it a couple of years and then watch the American version
I tried out the instance of Deepseek that’s being hosted by Nvidia
It’s still reluctant to answer questions about Tiananmen Square
Unshortening a shortened URL with powershell....as of February 2025 anyway
There are a bunch of pages on the internet giving code to expand shortened URLs, but none of the ones I tried seem to work.
I suspect this might be because it’s changed over time….but this seems to work…atm!
((Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing âUri 'https://bit.ly/3D0xStd').baseresponse).RequestMessage.RequestUri.AbsoluteUri
Correctly gives:
https://newsthump.com/2025/02/16/master-negotiator-donald-trump-to-end-ukraine-war-by-simply-giving-russia-everything-it-wants/
David Hepworth in this week’s Radio Times
What makes 2025 a unique year is what wonât be happening. Nobody is currently making or even planning a James Bond film. Itâs said the rights holders canât agree on the gender, let alone the identity of the next actor to play 007. But the reason nobody is in a rush to regale cinema-goers with a further tale of how the fate of poor suffering humanity is in the hands of a sinister cadre of power-crazed tyrants flipping a coin to see who gets Mars, is this: itâs all come true and we all know it.
I’m looking forward to listening to this
Alan and Ray are the comedy writing partnership who created Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son
You have to be very old, very British and very nerd-y to have known that. Guilty as charged, your honour.
On a lighter note, some poor soul has watched all 40 of the lowest-ranked films on Rotten Tomatoes
Nazi photo of Salisbury Cathedral
I found this on archive.org.
It gives me the chills. It’s an unusual view of the Cathedral, which sets up a certain dissonance, but more significantly it was part of a pack created for the Nazi invasion of the UK.
I wonder who took it, and when.
I think the house in the foreground is Rangers House. It’s on one of my running routes
A new entry for The Meaning of Liff, IT Workers Edition
Fugglestone. Noun
The state of mind when your old password is still locked in your muscle memory, and one half of your brain realises the old one won’t work any more but the other half doesn’t yet realize that it’s got to remember the new one
#TodayILearned that Rose Madder isn’t just the name of a Stephen King book
Wikipedia says that
Rose madder (also known as madder) is a red paint made from the pigment madder lake, a traditional lake pigment extracted from the common madder plant Rubia tinctorum
If I had a pound for every time I had to look up how to do Ctrl-Alt-Del on a remote machine I’d be slightly more wealthy
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2025/img-20250211-1140462.jpg" width=“347” height=“600” alt=“The image features the words “Ctrl - Alt - End” written in a stylized, possibly hand-painted font.">
“I’ve been waiting for the collapse of capitalism my entire life. Now it’s here, I’m not sure I like it
AJP Taylor in the early 1970s, quoted by Will Hodgkinson…in between discussing the New Seekers, Slade etc
I’m trying to learn how to do cryptic crosswords….largely through the medium of cheating extensively.
I’d recommend these websites
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The Guardians Quick Cryptics - tells you which letters are correct
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Fifteensquared - answers, and equally importantly, explanations
I forgot to remember that setting:
$ErrorView = ‘NormalView’
….gives you useful stuff like the line number of the code that’s failed in Powershell 7
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city - Charlie D on my hometown
An annual-ish tweet / toot / post in honour of Charles Dickens' birthday
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city; and when he had put up the horse, and given the hostler to understand that he would look in again in the course of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he set forth on a stroll about the streets with a vague and not unpleasant idea that they teemed with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To one of his quiet habits this little delusion was greatly assisted by the circumstance of its being market-day, and the thoroughfares about the market-place being filled with carts, horses, donkeys, baskets, waggons, garden-stuff, meat, tripe, pies, poultry and hucksterâs wares of every opposite description and possible variety of character. Then there were young farmers and old farmers with smock-frocks, brown great-coats, drab great-coats, red worsted comforters, leather-leggings, wonderful shaped hats, hunting-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in groups, or talking noisily together on the tavern steps, or paying and receiving huge amounts of greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky pocket-books that when they were in their pockets it was apoplexy to get them out, and when they were out it was spasms to get them in again. Also there were farmersâ wives in beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding shaggy horses purged of all earthly passions, who went soberly into all manner of places without desiring to know why, and who, if required, would have stood stock still in a china shop, with a complete dinner-service at each hoof. Also a great many dogs, who were strongly interested in the state of the market and the bargains of their masters; and a great confusion of tongues, both brute and human.
Mr Pinch regarded everything exposed for sale with great delight, and was particularly struck by the itinerant cutlery, which he considered of the very keenest kind, insomuch that he purchased a pocket knife with seven blades in it, and not a cut (as he afterwards found out) among them. When he had exhausted the market-place, and watched the farmers safe into the market dinner, he went back to look after the horse. Having seen him eat unto his heartâs content he issued forth again, to wander round the town and regale himself with the shop windows; previously taking a long stare at the bank, and wondering in what direction underground the caverns might be where they kept the money; and turning to look back at one or two young men who passed him, whom he knew to be articled to solicitors in the town; and who had a sort of fearful interest in his eyes, as jolly dogs who knew a thing or two, and kept it up tremendously.
But the shops. First of all there were the jewellersâ shops, with all the treasures of the earth displayed therein, and such large silver watches hanging up in every pane of glass, that if they were anything but first-rate goers it certainly was not because the works could decently complain of want of room. In good sooth they were big enough, and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly enough, to be the most correct of all mechanical performers; in Mr Pinchâs eyes, however they were smaller than Geneva ware; and when he saw one very bloated watch announced as a repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of striking every quarter of an hour inside the pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished that he were rich enough to buy it.
But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had at school, long time ago, with âMaster Pinch, Grove House Academy,â inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged withinâwhat happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open; tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like handposts on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond; and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name, whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any form, upon the narrow shell beside his bed at Mr Pecksniffâs. What a heart-breaking shop it was!
There was another; not quite so bad at first, but still a trying shop; where childrenâs books were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe stood alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat-skin cap and fowling-pieces; calmly surveying Philip Quarn and the host of imitators round him, and calling Mr Pinch to witness that he, of all the crowd, impressed one solitary footprint on the shore of boyish memory, whereof the tread of generations should not stir the lightest grain of sand. And there too were the Persian tales, with flying chests and students of enchanted books shut up for years in caverns; and there too was Abudah, the merchant, with the terrible little old woman hobbling out of the box in his bedroom; and there the mighty talisman, the rare Arabian Nights, with Cassim Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dreadful sum, hanging up, all gory, in the robbersâ cave. Which matchless wonders, coming fast on Mr Pinchâs mind, did so rub up and chafe that wonderful lamp within him, that when he turned his face towards the busy street, a crowd of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he lived again, with new delight, the happy days before the Pecksniff era.
He had less interest now in the chemistsâ shops, with their great glowing bottles (with smaller repositories of brightness in their very stoppers); and in their agreeable compromises between medicine and perfumery, in the shape of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither had he the least regard (but he never had much) for the tailorsâ, where the newest metropolitan waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by some strange transformation always looked amazing there, and never appeared at all like the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped to read the playbill at the theatre and surveyed the doorway with a kind of awe, which was not diminished when a sallow gentleman with long dark hair came out, and told a boy to run home to his lodgings and bring down his broadsword. Mr Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing this, and might have stood there until dark, but that the old cathedral bell began to ring for vesper service, on which he tore himself away.
