Tom Freeman

Male swan valiantly repels dangerous Canada goose incursion; female swan perhaps not overawed by this act of ostentatious heroism #NewRiverBirds

Data trying to fold arms casually in imitation of Riker dot gif

they're good wars Brent

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is being talked about in a whiny sarcastic voice.

Whoa, he didn't even offer her the Iran job

Timeline clense

Poor showing by Mercia here.

No idea if it actually works on that front, though. It seems to be pretty strongly inclined towards TV/film adaptations of books.

Have always loved reading and always hated compulsory fancy dress, so I'm very glad I didn't have to do WBD when I was at school. But... maybe the main point of it is to popularise reading to kids who aren't already instinctively drawn toward books?

Entry on "miscreant" from etymonline.com: c. 1300, "non-Christian, misbelieving, pagan, infidel;" early 15c., "heretical, unbelieving," from Old French mescreant "disbelieving" (Modern French mécréant), from mes- "wrongly" (see mis- (2)) + creant, present participle of creire "believe," from Latin credere "to believe" (see credo). Meaning "villainous, vile, detestable" is from 1590s.

Just heard someone on the radio say "miscreant", and oh it's a cracking word. I spent a minute failing to work out its etymology, and what if anything a "creant" might be, before looking it up:

By my mid 20s I had noticed that I would slightly struggle to read signs at a distance that my friends could manage ok. I got my first eye test and glasses at 41.

I feel (blurrily) seen.

You're absolutely right—that was not a command post, that was an elementary school. Those were not military leaders—they were schoolchildren. I said the opposite, and that's on me.

Also contains a superb piece of geographical trivia. After Great Britain and Ireland, which is the third most populous of the British Isles?

Grammarly needs to be killed with fire. (Or, if you fear its kvetching about the passive voice, "Someone with access to both fire and Grammarly needs to kill Grammarly with fire.")

Sinking a warship is just a submarine's way of making another submarine

I was very lucky to get this footage. So rare to see one of these in the wild #NewRiverBirds #bluey

🎶 Brave Sir Robin bravely ran away

I think the people of this country have had enough of assemblies of experts

I love sitting down to watch a boxed set and eat some iced cream, as well as other kinds of junked food

Couldn't get it out of my head, so now it's on here.

Imagine how excited Kemi Badenoch is about the Churchill remark, and how eagerly she's planning to use it at PMQs, and how there's no one whose judgement the British people trust more than Donald Trump's

Oh now I get it. Dubai is Golgafrinchan Ark B.

The first 10 years of the Tory government went to May 2020, and I wonder if anyone can remember anything happening around then that might have made the economy go all weird (apols for technical term)

Scorpion criticises frog, saying "the relationship is obviously not what it was"

If I were chancellor, when I stood up in parliament to do my spring statement, I'd just say "Boing, time for bed." Then of course the markets would crash and the economy would slump and I'd be fired, but it'd be worth it

If you want to know how the British print news industry ends (which is, de facto, amazingly still what supports most newspaper websites) it's the distribution channels getting banjaxed. When you lose "TG Jones" etc even people who want a paper can't get one. That'll be the real start of the ending.

Cache-misère? I barely know 'ère!

Polling average chart for UK political parties since 2015

As measured by changes in the party's polling, I think Labour's 2024 campaign comes out as the worst on record? A fall of about ten points. In 2017 the Tory lead fell by more, but their actual level only dropped a couple of points.

Trump's Iran endgame unclear after mixed messaging on war aims The US president laid out some of his objectives on Monday, but made no mention of what Iran's future might look like after the war.

The conceptual obstacle to supporting the war is that to do so, you'd have to know what its aims are. But it's just another Trump vibestorm www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Yesterday I happened to rewatch the Attenborough Blue Planet ep with the heart-rending dead whale calf, and... he's completely open that plastic-as-cause-of-death is pure speculation