Roland Allen, author of 'The Notebook: a History'

move slow and repair things

A reminder: Matt Goodwin lost heavily in spite of an almost total lack of tactical voting, not because of it.

The combined Green/Labour vote was 66%, versus 28.7% for Reform.

If Labour and the Greens split the vote 50/50 – a total coordination fail – he'd have finished third, not second.

Refugee status to be temporary as Shabana Mahmood rips up rules on UK asylum Home secretary announces 30-month protection limit, with refugees required to leave if their home countries are later judged safe

Children need stability: from that point of view, this is a horribly cruel change in the rules.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The cover of The Complete Persepolis by Marianne Satrapi.

Now would be a good time for anyone who wants to learn about recent Iranian history to read this. It is well worth your time and money (I am sure your local library has it if you don’t want to purchase it).

AI’s ‘memorisation’ problem: the novels it can’t forget Research that shows LLMs memorise more training data than previously thought raises questions about copyright infringement

‘The world’s top AI models can be prompted to generate near-verbatim copies of bestselling novels, raising fresh questions about the industry’s claim that its systems do not store copyrighted works.’
www.ft.com/content/e4b7...

Depressing, but thank you for posting.

It's to distinguish him from Sonic the Wombat

The next commentator to utter the word 'seismic' is hereby sentenced to having one (1) magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit their house.

Hannah Spencer walking into Westminster, sucking her teeth, tutting, and muttering "tell you what, you've had some cowboys in here."

That's really unfair to Adrian.

Would work equally well with a picture of Andrew!

Looks fascinating, congratulations!

It was left to each of us to figure it out. Corbyn had won with 14. Sultana had seven. There were independents. So while at a national level Jezza and Zarah would be jointly in charge, Corbyn would be the leader in the Commons. This was a work of some genius. Because Corbyn officially identifies himself as an Independent MP, Sultana is the only MP who claims to represent Your Party. So Jeremy is now the leader of a party to which he doesn’t belong. Politics as a piece of inspired performance art. It makes you proud to be British.

Oh God, it's even better than I'd dared to hope!

This from John Crace.

Owen Jones asking if the faction battles within Your Party are over. [They're not]

It's Corbyn we're talking about, so the 'faction battles' will never end. Down on his allotment the tomatoes haven't spoken to the carrots since the 1987 Manure Distribution Subcommittee Election ended in a deadlock over who got more horse shit.

And in answer to your question, I think the phone box offers more comic potential, no?

Time may tell. She shows promise, but his track record is frankly awesome: he was posturing in parliament for ten years before she was even born. If she's still at it in the year 2062, then I will concede that she's his equal.

(That said I will be 87 and may have other things on my mind)

Zero hour: Corbyn and Sultana duke it out in battle for the soul of Your Party After eight months of rows and rifts, results of leadership election offering ‘fundamentally differing visions’ are due

Jeremy Corbyn's ego is the strongest force known to science. Black holes, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, do not rival its destructive power. Alien astronomers on faraway systems watch with horrified fascination as it flexes and strikes.
Oof!

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Duke
Hawk
Monk
& Django

YES. So good to see someone whose profession isn't threatened by AI thinking clearly about people whose profession is. (I'm constantly disheartened by authors and bloggers who use AI Slop illustration...)

This economic idea transfixed Wall Street and Washington. It may be a mirage. Massive investment in AI contributed “basically zero” to U.S. economic growth last year, Goldman Sachs has calculated.

"Prominent economists, including from Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, calculate that the AI buildup was directly responsible not for 92 percent or 39 percent of gains to the U.S. economy in 2025, but as little as zero."

It's intriguing. Personally I pay my bouncer sixpence if he's just carrying a big stick, he only gets the shilling if he's in full men-at-arms rig.

From the OED definition of 'harness': The defensive or body armour of a man-at-arms or foot-soldier; all the defensive equipment of an armed horseman, for both man and horse; military equipment or accoutrement. Historical or archaic. c1330 Norreis & Surreis..With hors & herneis at Carlele mad samnyng. R. Mannyng, Chronicle (1810) 309Citation details for R. Mannyng, Chronicle 1470–85 Youre harneis & horses haue ben fayre and clene kepte. T. Malory, Morte d'Arthur ix. xlCitation details for T. Malory, Morte d'Arthur 1489 To make harnoys of yron and steel. W. Caxton, translation of C. de Pisan, Boke of Fayttes of Armes i. i. 2Citation details for W. Caxton translation of C. de Pisan, Boke of Fayttes of Armes 1508 All the harnes thai hade Baith birny and breist plade. Golagros & Gawane (Chepman & Myllar) sig. biiiivCitation details for Golagros & Gawane 1535 Let not him yt putteth on ye harnes make his boast like him yt hath put it of. Bible (Coverdale) 1 Kings xx. 11Citation details for Bible (Coverdale) 1591 A kind of harnish..composed of iron plates or stiffe bend-lether. H. Savile, translation of Tacitus, Ende of Nero: Fower Bookes of Histories i. 44Citation details for H. Savile translation of Tacitus, Ende of Nero 1606 Enoplia was a kinde of Moriske daunce after a warlike manner in harnois. P. Holland in translation of Suetonius, Historie of Twelve Caesars Annot. 5Citation details for P. Holland in translation of Suetonius, Historie of Twelve Caesars

Were they paying for security? Was there an event at Midsummer? (Or the distribution or collection of cash?)

The cover of the Thai language edition of the book THE NOTEBOOK: A HISTORY OF THINKING ON PAPER by Roland Allen.

Entertainingly different cover to the Thai edition...

Yep.

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding:

Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere.

samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

Not quite Kelman levels of rudeness (that's a high bar).

In 2005, as a favour for someone who was starting up a reading group website (pre social media), I read the PEOPLE'S ACT OF LOVE, dutifully posed my question to Meek, who was on the promo round, and he was so rude in return that I've not looked at his stuff since.

London's curse is its large landlords. See also: Duke of Westminster, the Crown Estate. But this is just plain evil.

A man sitting and looking towards the viewer of the engraving. The man leans his arm on a parapet and is surrounded by female personifications of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture as well as a winged angel with fanfare trumpets (Glory), Father Time with his scythe and the skeletal figure of Death clutching an arrow; a putti holds aloft a wreath and carries a palm. The image is part of a larger engraving, made around 1600, and nowadays at the BM 58490001 (Source: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/58490001 ).

This is how your email finds me.

Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments - BBC Arts YouTube video by BBC

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