Midlands, UK. Humour and interesting stuff. My toots may not all be original. I follow views without necessarily endorsing them, and I unfollow most non followers. I block those who just want to argue or abuse. Ex Cop. LCFC.
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2024-09-29T14:27:35Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col [@madrobin](https://mindly.social/@madrobin ) Please follow my new account as this account will be closing soon. @npub13cf…nrp5 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I have now moved to another account that is hopefully on a more stable server. You can find me now at. [@kibcol1049](https://mstdn.social/@kibcol1049 ) npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Boris Johnson’s memoir, Unleashed, is as readable as you’d expect says Alice Thomson in The Times. It’s classic Johnson: “all derring-do, jolly japes, alluring alliteration”. We hear about when he almost “carked it” from Covid; and gave “manly pep talks” to Prince Harry. He mocks the French for preferring suppositories over vaccines and likens Theresa May’s nostrils to “two black tadpoles”. Keir Starmer, he says, looks like “a bullock having a thermometer shoved unexpectedly up his rectum”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk argues that the “unusually high” prices it charges for weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy are justified because of all the money it poured into developing them, says Bloomberg. Which is fair enough, except for the fact that by the end of this year the company will have already made $65bn from those two drugs – more than its “entire research budget for the past three decades”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col “War has broken out at Peace News,” says Private Eye. In August, the pacifist magazine’s 4-person editorial team resigned and published a “final edition”, a diatribe, calling the mag’s trustees an “existential threat” quoting an email from 1 of the trustees calling them “evil fucks!!!” The board hit back with its own statement complaining they had “secretly and unilaterally” produced a “biased and false” edition. “A humanitarian pause is in place, but hostilities are likely to resume.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Austria’s far-right Freedom Party has won a national election for the first time. Provisional results suggest that the party, which has promised to turn the country into “Fortress Austria” and restore ties with Russia, won 29.2% of the vote, nearly double its count in the last election. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col You can always tell when they use fake dinosaurs in films. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Evgeny Lebedev has “employed 100's of people, owns lots of properties and controls 2 British newspapers”, say Miles Ellingham and Cormac Kehoe in The Fence. The son of a Moscow KGB agent, Evgeny spent his early years in a “comprehensively bugged apartment block” reserved for important Soviets, Nikita Khrushchev was a neighbour. His 1st family holiday was to Chernobyl, where Evgeny watched his grandfather shoot a duck, check it with a Geiger counter “and prepare it for dinner”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Politicians often promise what they can’t deliver, says Bagehot in The Economist. Normally that’s because they’re offering the prospect of “national glory or prosperity without pain”. Keir Starmer entered office with a pledge: to bring “calm”. Sadly for Starmer. “British politics is built for chaos.” Just 3 months after Labour secured its historic 180 seat majority, voters are in a “capricious mood”. According to some polls, Labour now sit just 4 points above the obliterated Conservatives. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Are electric eels louder than the acoustic ones? npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I had a pint in the Guinness Brewery 20 years ago, very nice. However a lot of the bars in the Temple Bar area only served Murphys! Very strange. 🤔 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col During Monet’s lifetime, Brits weren’t much impressed by his paintings of London, says Mark Hudson in The Independent. The Courtauld Gallery’s new exhibition of 21 paintings from the impressionist’s visit to the capital in 1899 shows just how wrong we were. The artist was bemused that British painters didn’t appreciate the thing he found most interesting about the city – the toxic fog that formed an “envelope” around its landmarks, as he put it – and was determined to do it justice. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Pints of beer, should be axed says Guardian columnist Elle Hunt, who says the 568ml measure is “simply too big to comfortably enjoy, by the time you reach the bottom, you’re inevitably left feeling sluggish and bloated”. I’m not entirely convinced this experience is universal, says the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon. In fact, I know of several people who are “fully capable” of drinking an entire pint at a single sitting. “Some, The Guardian will be amazed to hear, can even manage more than one.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col His dog hasn't got a cough, he's just a little husky. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col It's like "Back to the Future" in my wardrobe. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Swindon’s Magic Roundabout – 5 mini roundabouts encircling a central island – has won UK Roundabout of the Year award. The landmark, which opened in 1972, was singled out as a “white-knuckle ride” by the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society. Their chairman Kevin Beresford said: “Something just amazing happens when you approach it.” A local taxi driver recalls an American family paying him to drive them across it 8 times, having travelled specifically to “experience the magic”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col So-called “weekend warriors” who only work out on Saturday and Sunday enjoy similar benefits to people who exercise daily. A study of 90,000 British adults found that those who work out intensely only at the weekend are at lower risk of 264 diseases compared with those who do no exercise at all – roughly the same as those who hit the gym throughout the week. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col "How do you find anything in here?" npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I think my car has elected a new Pope. That would explain the White smoke from under the bonnet. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col A mysterious white substance smeared on Bronze Age mummies in China turns out to be the world’s oldest cheese. A super-stinky sample was first identified as a dairy product in 2014, but a new study has revealed the mysterious matter to be crumbs of 3,500-year-old kefir cheese. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col How to fall asleep in a living room chair. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col If you're ever being chased by a taxidermist, don't play dead. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Standing in line sucks, I wish this woman would just hurry up and pick a suspect. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col A new species of “ghost shark” has been discovered in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, says The Guardian. Also known as a spookfish or chimera, ghost sharks don’t have scales and their skeletons are made completely of cartilage. Lead researcher Brit Finucci gave the new long-nosed species the scientific name Harriotta avia, in honour of her grandmother Harriotta. “Sharks and ghost sharks are, ancient relatives of fish, I was naming the animal after an ancient relative of mine.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col A Russian missile touted as the “world’s deadliest weapon” blew up on the launch pad on Saturday, says The Daily Telegraph. The Sarmat RS-28, known as “Satan-2”, detonated while being refuelled at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome 500 miles north of Moscow, leaving a huge crater. This is thought to be the 4th failed launch for the rocket, which has a range of 11,100 miles and can hold a whopping 16 nuclear warheads – giving it an explosive yield 50 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel’s airstrikes will only get worse, says Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. The main aim of the operation is to push Hezbollah away from the border. But that didn’t work in 2006, and it won’t now. More rockets are being fired into Israel than ever. Having failed in destroying Hamas, Netanyahu is now deliberately creating a second front, knowing that a “forever war” is the only thing keeping him in power. If he isn’t stopped, Lebanon will become a “2nd Gaza”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The Ministry of Defence is ramping up plans for a mass evacuation of British citizens from Lebanon, amid intensifying rocket fire and airstrikes between Hezbollah and Israel. Around 700 troops are deploying to nearby Cyprus to assist the roughly 10,000 Britons who live in Lebanon, all of whom have been told to leave immediately. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col There was a great program on TV last night at 3am about the importance of getting a good nights sleep. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are on track to do fewer interviews and press conferences than any major presidential ticket in modern US history, says Axios. In Harris’s first 59 days as a candidate, she and her running mate faced non-partisan questioners a total of just seven times – compared to 70 for Donald Trump and JD Vance. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col An Italian organisation that sends anonymous inspectors to pizzerias around the world has said a restaurant in Chiswick makes the world’s 5th best pizza. Napoli on the Road was rewarded for its “melt-in-your-mouth texture and very high digestibility”. According to the confusingly named 50 Top Pizza, 50 Kalò near Trafalgar Square has the world’s 23rd best, while Stile Napoletano in Chester took 94th place. Top spot went to a restaurant on Manhattan’s Lower East Side called Una Pizza Napoletana. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col No anyone with common sense feels the same. Ridiculous. ☹️ npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col “One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col ☹️ npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col straight over my British head. I can't identify American accents. ☹️ npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col It made you forget the real issue I suppose, the chance of horrific death. 😱 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Lego business cards, says The Wall Street Journal, are bespoke minifigures for its employees to hand out at conferences and the like, with their name on the chest and their contact details on the back. The miniature models are a big hit with collectors, and individual pieces sell for as much as $1,000 online. But Lego has announced the compact calling cards will now be restricted to certain top executives after a rapid growth in the workforce led to an untenable jump in employee requests. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Letter to the Guardian: npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Local idioms says Upworthy, can be enjoyable. Italians blinded by love, are said to have their eyes “lined with ham” (avere gli occhi foderati di prosciutto). In China if not good or bad, it is “horse horse, tiger tiger” (mama huhu). And for threats – along the lines of “your goose is cooked” – it’s hard to beat a Swede. The phrase nu ska du få dina fiskar värmda means “now your fishes will be warmed”, while nu har du satt din sista potatis translates as: “you have planted your last potato”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The Labour Party conference isn’t off to the best start, says Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph. It began with a video about Tory cronyism, a decision that's shameless, stupid, or both. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said she accepted free Wimbledon tickets because she was there in a work capacity. “Is Novak Djokovic joining Ofsted?” David Lammy got the crowd to chant back at him: “Britain is back!” But then tried to do the same with the cry “Climate matters!” No one joined him. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Last week 2 squirrels boarded a train from Reading to Gatwick and the conductor went “straight to Defcon 1”, evacuating the train and shunting it onto the sidings until specialist operatives could be rushed to the scene. The same when 2 emus escaped in Suffolk and brought “chaos” to Hadleigh. The council was quick to respond to complaints on social media, assuring petrified locals that “other agencies” would be brought in. “What agencies? The FBI? They’re birds, for God’s sake. Not dinosaurs.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col 😱 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Fortunately we've come a long way since Klinger from M*A*S*H dressed like a woman to show that he had a mental disorder. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The closer you get to nature, the further you get from idiots. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col So a stress ball isn't for throwing at people who stress you out, apparently. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col 'Enola Gay' - OMD. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Charlotte Owen is the No 10 adviser unexpectedly given a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian. You've heard of her, probably because you’ve read some “creepy, innuendo-laden thing” about the “mystery” or “enigma” of her relationship with the former PM. There is not “a single nano-particle of evidence” for any of these theories. Yet still the journalists soldier on, frothingly circulating rumours because she is a woman, “youngish and blonde”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The New York Times, continues to be utterly clueless about life in Britain. In a correction under a report on the Emmys, the newspaper apologised for misidentifying the accessory Scottish actor Richard Gadd wore with his national dress. “It was a sporran, a pouch traditionally worn with a kilt,” they clarified. “Not a fanny pack.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Larry the Downing Street cat, according to the Secretary of State for Scotland, is “the most miserable animal you’ll ever meet in your life”. Ian Murray said he and his cabinet colleagues were desperate to get a picture with the famous feline when they first arrived in No 10, but couldn’t get him to play ball. “Without putting too fine a point on it,” he said, “Larry the cat is a little shit.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col If you see a toilet in your dream, don't use it. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Don't judge me by my social media posts. I'm much worse in real life because there's no community standards. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col A “Golden Lettuce” has been genetically engineered by Spanish boffins to contain 30 times more nutrients than usual. It has enhanced levels of beta-carotene, an antioxidant that helps the body produce vitamin A, says New Atlas. This is crucial for healthy vision, immune function and cell growth, and thought to protect against Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and some cancers. Beta-carotene is more common in orange vegetables, hence the lab-grown lettuce’s golden hue. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Keir Starmer’s £167,000 salary may sound a lot to most people, says John Rentoul in The Independent, but some of his predecessors trousered far more. Neville Chamberlain’s pay packet in 1937 would today be worth a whopping £815,000. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is a bizarre new reality TV show, says Naomi Fry in The New Yorker. It follows a clutch of Utah women affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and whats dubbed MomTok, a corner of TikTok where young Mormon wives document their lives alongside “hot-mom content”. The star is Taylor Frankie Paul, who in 2022 revealed she and her husband were swingers. There’s plenty of sex, botox parties, and catfights – though they “always put God first”!!! npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col AI chatbots can help talk people out of believing in conspiracy theories, says Axios. Researchers from MIT and Cornell found that interactions with bots can reduce a person’s belief in whacky claims by about 20% on average. There’s just one problem, according to Robbie Sutton, a University of Kent professor who specialises in the subject: “The very presence of these chatbots will inevitably become the focus of new conspiracy theories.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Thanks, it's very interesting. 😃 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Yes, again the Middle Ages did some 'filling in' and manipulation to fit their desired narrative. ☹️ npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Much of what people supposedly “know” about Christianity is actually rather hard to find in the original Bible, says The Economist. There was no apple in Eden, for example – that confusion appears to have stemmed from a translator’s pun, as the Latin words for “apple” and “evil” are almost identical. And the word “daily” in the Lord’s prayer is “pure bunkum” – there’s definitely a Greek word before “bread”, but no one has a clue what it means. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Starmer has received more than £100,000 worth of freebies since becoming Labour leader, says The Guardian, more than any other major party leader in recent times. Rishi Sunak declared no personal hospitality whatsoever, apart from honorary membership of the Carlton Club worth £2,595. And all Jeremy Corbyn accepted during his five years as Labour leader were two sets of Glastonbury tickets, worth about £450 each. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail, says hours after it emerged that Keir Starmer had failed to declare on time that his wife Victoria received more than £5,000 worth of clothes paid for by a Labour donor she sat on the front row at London Fashion Week “dressed head-to-toe in swanky clobber”. It had been loaned to her by a designer but at a time when your husband has just taken away the winter fuel allowance for millions of low-income pensioners “No wonder she’s been dubbed Lady Victoria Sponger.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Tens of millions of teenagers will have their Instagram accounts changed as part of an overhaul to improve safety and mental health. In the next two months, all users between 13 and 17 in the UK, US, Canada and Australia will be migrated to private “teen accounts”, which have parental controls as well as content and messaging restrictions. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Millions of teenagers will have their Instagram accounts changed as part of an overhaul to improve safety and mental health. In the next two months, all users between 13 and 17 in the UK, US, Canada and Australia will be migrated to private “teen accounts”, which have parental controls as well as content and messaging restrictions. Sadly a lot of children, under 13, knowing they had to be 13 yrs old, stated they were. If this was a few years ago they now appear to be 18 yet are still 15/16. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Are people born with photographic memories, or does it take a while to develop. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col He told his girlfriend that he had a huge crush on Beyoncè. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Business admin company Vera has compiled a list of the most-Googled text abbreviations. At the top were SMH (“Shaking my head”), POV (“Point of view”) and NSFW (“Not safe for work”). Other relatively well-known ones include TL;DR (“Too long; didn’t read”), IYKYK (“If you know, you know”) and LMAO (“Laughing my ass off”). Among the more random entries are AFK (“Away from keyboard”), IIRC (“If I recall correctly”) and OOTD (“Outfit of the day”). npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col You may have noticed assorted multimillionaires huffily declaring that they’re leaving the UK to avoid Labour’s tax regime, says Marina Hyde in The Guardian. The “indisputable star” of this group is the Pimlico Plumbers founder Charlie Mullins. The 71-year-old – a man with so much dermal filler one can only assume “even he lacks the drain rods to address it” – has told various newspapers he is moving to Marbella and Dubai, “truly the biathlon of relocation for the international arseoisie." npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The Tory leadership campaign has been a “spectacularly dismal” affair, says Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Still, we are at least down to the final four. The frontrunner, Kemi Badenoch, will almost certainly win. Then there’s Robert “Generic” Jenrick, and “Tom something”. And last on the list is James Cleverly, described to me by one senior Conservative MP as “a walking affront to the Trade Descriptions Act”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col How long is it normal to have a rest between putting each sock on? npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I have to stop saying, "How stupid can you be?" Some people are taking it as a challenge. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I've always wondered why lemonade is made from artificial flavours and furniture polish is made from real lemons! npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Once “to be hatless was to be half-dressed”, says Sam Kashner in Air Mail, for decades it was a Borsalino. Invented in 1857 when the Borsalino brothers, added two dents into a soft felt fedora. By the mid-1900s the Borsalino was worn by everyone from Al Capone to Humphrey Bogart. But hats then went out of fashion in 1961, when JFK became the first president to be inaugurated hatless. As one of the Borsalino heirs remarked: “A man has lost the pleasure of taking his hat off in front of a lady.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Keir Starmer came into power promising to “reset” Britain’s relationship with Europe, says Jon Stone in Politico. But the EU is “starting to wonder whether he really means it”. His “swift rejection” of EU priorities, such as setting up a youth mobility scheme and rejoining the Erasmus student exchange programme, has gone down particularly badly with European officials and diplomats. “People are starting to think it’s a bit of a facade,” says one senior EU official. “The answer is always ‘no’.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col “The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Dear Diet npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Two astronauts conducted the first-ever privately funded spacewalk this morning. Billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman and mission specialist Sarah Gillis were each outside their Space X capsule, Crew Dragon, for 12 minutes. “From here,” said Isaacman, “Earth sure looks like a perfect world.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col If alcohol damages your short-term memory, imagine what alcohol can do. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I agree with most of the comments. I also think there is a big element of "Wish Fulfilment", we want something to be true, so we are more likely to believe it. Like aliens flying around Earth. A lot of people wish it was true as they must be advanced specis. Therefore, too readily believe UFO's are alien spacecraft. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Why does the information age produce so many uninformed people? npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Over 90% of the things you worry about, never happen. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Doctor: "If a train was coming down the hallway towards you, what would you do?" npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The best thing about my dogs is that if you act like something great just happened, they get all happy and start celebrating with you. My dogs are always ready to party. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col As a kid I watched the Wizard of Oz and wondered how someone could talk without a brain, then I started to follow politics and it all made sense. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col "Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion." npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col He'd be a terrible superhero he'd be at home, see the signal calling him in and think, "I literally just sat down, do it yourself." npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Nobles from across the Holy Roman Empire met for crisis talks on a summer’s day in 1184, but they literally ended up in the toilet. Between 60 and 100 members succumbed to a spectacularly foul demise in an ancient church in Erfurt. The ageing floor beneath their feet suddenly gave way, sending them plunging into the building’s noxious cesspit below. Many drowned in liquid excrement, others were fatally wounded in the fall, while several were asphyxiated by the evil-smelling odour. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col During her labour, the nurse asked her, "How about Epidural Anaesthesia?" npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Foreign aid is often taking money from poor people in a rich country, and giving it to rich people in a poor country. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col All of Britain’s hereditary peers are to be removed from the House of Lords within as little as 18 months. New government legislation introduced today will axe the remaining 92 seats in the upper chamber reserved for the hereditaries, in one of the biggest constitutional changes for a quarter of a century. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Kids these days: "Shut up Mum!" npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col This year’s Social Attitudes Survey shows over the past decade, the proportion of people who say they are proud of Britain’s history has fallen from 86% to 64%. Perhaps praising the Royal Navy for helping end the slave trade, rather than having been involved in it in the first place or we should marvel at our role in the Industrial Revolution instead of castigating ourselves for “being the perpetrators of global warming”, might help to change that. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I always prefer the English spelling of "diarrhea", which is "diarrhoea" because it really looks like you've lost control of your vowels. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Sometimes you have to hug the people you don't like, just in case you need to know how big to dig a hole in the woods. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Films are so unrealistic. In this one a guy used his computer to access an alien ship to save the world and not once did it ask him if he wanted to upgrade his Adobe! npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col The US election may require some interpretation, says Nesrine Malik in The Guardian. At the Democratic National Convention, Nancy Pelosi was introduced as the “Mother of Dragons” – a reference to Game of Thrones. Kamala Harris herself has been anointed as “brat”, in homage to pop star Charli XCX’s album of the same name. Then there are the “wife guys”: men like Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and her running mate Tim Walz who are “not ashamed to talk up their wives” and “take a back seat”. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col I respect people who wear glasses. They paid good money to see me. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Me: I will go to the end of the world for you. npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col ☹️🥺 npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col Here’s a striking statistic, says Rory Sutherland on Substack: “If you quit smoking at the age of 35, you are likely to enjoy the same life expectancy as if you were a life-long non-smoker.” After that, for every year you smoke, you lose three months, on average. “Shit,” I remember thinking on my 35th birthday. “From now on every cigarette counts.” npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col There are two types of people: npub1arxnvxhruyu2fd50m3zfzj0ukaqelc4vcedwtglncw8438vfzw8qd755kr Col AI could soon be marking children’s homework. A new £4 million government scheme aims to train artificial intelligence tools to grade pupils’ assignments, freeing teachers to use their time more productively. They may be pushing at an open door: according to a survey by Teacher Tapp, almost half of teachers are already using AI to help get through their daily to-do lists. The Department for Education says it will make a store of training data available to AI firms.
