Podcast episode about a 19th Century outfit called the British Israelites who went digging on Tara Hill to find the Ark of the Covenant
More sensible than QAnon, but less sensible than Flat Earth imho 🎙️
An odd coincidence of my social circle
My two best friends at university didn’t know each other - it was a modular course, and the American chap was only there for a year.
Anyway, the English guy went to work for Joe Biden, back in the late 1980s, I think….and the American is 90% sure he got legal advice from Barack Obama.
Magic Johnson used to shoot 200-300 three-pointers a day in the summer 🏀
I’m not sure I could physically do that
Finished reading: Fake Heroes by Otto English 📚
Great book.
Some of the targets are maybe a bit soft. For example, it’s no great shock to learn that John Wayne was a bit right wing, and not as rough-ty tough-ty in real life as he was on film.
Much of the book is debunking the film or Ladybird version of the heroes' lives. Those who prefer the Ladybird versions perhaps wont much like it.
Well played, Joe Biden.
The Crowdstrike thing reminds me of the time I brought down about 80% of of a mobile phone network for around half an hour
I will type that up one day.
Giving good epithet
This is good, particularly the bit ive put in bold.
It’s from Otto English’s “Fake Heroes - Ten False Icons and How They Altered the Course of History”
My serving suggestion would be to substitute in the name of someone more fashionable than Mother Teresa
Teresa gave good epithet and many of her quotations about love , empathy and humility dot Pinterest , Facebook and the pages of glossy magazines to this day .
Her most famous quotations include
" A life not lived for others is not a life " ,
" I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world" and "
I know I am touching the living body of Christ in the broken bodies of the hungry and the suffering ” .
Something peculiar happens to words when they are attached to the names of celebrated prophets. On their own and of themselves, many, like those above, might seem a little banal – trite even. But put a famous name like Mother Teresa’s beneath them and they are transformed into something of value
Currently reading: Fake Heroes by Otto English 📚
Annual-ish tweet / toot / post to say thay the blackberries seem early this year
Im not sure if this counts as a metaphor but i like it ⚽
“Southgate has seemed a little more drained than usual at this tournament, adopting during most of his public interactions the expression of a disappointed antelope being asked to explain calculus to a remedial group of angry toddlers.”
Peter Butterworth and the Wooden Horse
#TodayILearned that Carry On actor Peter Butterworth auditioned for a part in the 1949 film ‘The Wooden Horse’, which was about an actual wartime escape from Stalag Luft III
The wooden horse was a vaulting horse which concealed the entrance to a tunnel
Butterworth was rejected because he “didn’t look convincingly heroic or athletic enough”….despite being one of the actual vaulters in the actual prison camp a few years earlier
Via Otto English’s ‘Fake Heroes’
More here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete…
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. - Lenin
It’s Saint Swithun’s Day today
Saint Swithun is very much the British equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil
St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain St Swithun’s day if thou be fair For forty days ‘twill rain na mair
Oh, well….
I’d like to say ‘may the best team win’ tonight…but I’d rather England did! ⚽
I’m enjoying Alan Carr’s Changing Ends auto-bio-pic on ITV
I think I’m right in saying that as well as having a dad who was a football manager he was also related to Willie Carr, who was famous for the immediately banned donkey kick
I’d never seen the donkey kick until I looked it up this morning, but it was explained and diagrammed in the Golden Goals sticker book, which as a kid I studied with almost religious intensity ⚽
The video of the kick is here - youtu.be/DOS8T8Ypn…
People I have seen on the train between Salisbury and London
The two writers were in second class the other two were in first
We’re voting again today
There’s a local council byelection. It will feel a bit flat after last weeks hullabaloo and history-making
This morning, instead of putting coffee granules in my coffee mug, i put them in the pint glass that I use for orange squash
This does not bode well
never a penalty…but never mind! ⚽
I didn’t know this Guardian series existed, but I like it 📖
Where to start with…… - www.theguardian.com/books/ser…