David Rafferty

I grew up on the 90s reaction against an 80s TV culture where moral education was seen as one of the main points of TV. It’s weird to see that viewpoint return.

I take your meaning as being not “I think this is shit” but “Other people think this is good and they’re probably right but I hate it anyway.”

In that case: Ursula Le Guin. I didn’t like her beforehand, read the first Earthsea book, found it rubbish, and won’t read another.

He was right, Kels. We won’t be silly enough to be part of the US occupation forces, even if they give us somewhere easy like Nebraska.

Correct, he should talk in the traditional way: in his own language but very slowly and with lots of hand gestures to really make clear he thinks Jabba is stupid.

The Simon And Garfunkel 'Sounds Of Silence ' album cover except they're being chased by a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica.

Simon And Garfunkel next. #totp

A bit like when the Australian cricket team wanted the TV companies to turn down the stump mics between balls and so started giving free advertising to the sponsors’ competitors.

“C’mon boys, let’s do this one for Westpac.”

Them: So how do we get to victory?

Her, sucking teeth: Well I wouldn’t start from here.

For some reason Condoleezza Rice is in Trump's "Saving College Sports" roundtable and she looks delighted about it

The other question: does their presence make Australia a belligerent? Are Australian forces now legitimate targets for Iranian forces?

Guardian headline: “Bob Carr, ‘a masterpiece’ and a hornet queer fantasy”

And this, kids, is why we need Oxford commas…

Geelong taking the Carlton approach to kicking inside 50. Not sure that’s the right model. #AFL

Incredibly early, but Petracca looks like he’s setting himself for a 2016 Dangerfield-level first season at a new club. #AFL

This is the picture you get if you mash up Matt Berry and Ange Postecoglou.

Is it perhaps that the US hasn’t been on the defensive in any war it’s fought since Korea and so just doesn’t think about how to do it?

Generic dress up or, if there is a nod to books, it’s mostly manga.

This is an absolutely true statement, but they’re not in a position to measure effectiveness. They simply can’t know the extent of what they’ve achieved until after the war, and probably not even then.

Oh, cool. So we’re a belligerent now. 🙃

Screenshot from Guardian: Hürzeler had called out Mikel Arteta for Arsenal's time-wasting beforehand and he did not hold back after witnessing a game in which he said there was "only one team who tried to play football". He raged about how the Arsenal goalkeeper, David Raya, went down injured three times and insisted the authorities had to have stronger rules to help referees or the future of the game would be undermined.

On Brighton and Hürzeler: if there was only one team trying to play football, they did a spectacularly bad job of it. I saw a Brighton team which defended really well (more than Arsenal being crap) but which had no idea what to do with the ball.

One of the few places left in the world where “the festering labouring underclass will rise up and tear us limb from limb” would still be a genuine fear.

The crowd shots have been a highlight of the first half.

Spurs are the Essendon of English football.

a woman with long hair is standing in front of a window and says it 's me . ALT: a woman with long hair is standing in front of a window and says it 's me .

Sorry. I turned on the TV when Carlton was four goals up and now we’re behind. #AFL

Nineteenth-centuryists (#C19th) - I'm looking for novels in the first half of the century where the rural English poor are racialized as "savage", "dark" etc. I know English rural examples from journalism/non-fiction, and fiction about the urban and "Celtic" poor, but fictional examples useful!

There’s usually a shortcut for this in Roman history: nine times out of ten it’s in Mommsen.

The Butter of the Pelennor Fields
Minas Syrup
The Land of Ragout

Journey in the Duck?

I keep wishing for the return of Geocities, a place where you could put a button that just buttoned or obnoxious bright flashing words or where it was acceptable to put black text on a dark grey background and think 'yeah, that'll do'. Gosh I loved Geocities. What a mess of a place it was.

Here's the article if you want to check it out: doi.org/10.1086/366973

51.1: After Caesar had fallen upon warlike nations and at great hazards conquered them, and when it was believed that he had attacked the Germans even during a truce and slain three hundred thousand of them, there was a general demand at Rome that the people should offer sacrifices of good tidings, but Cato urged them to surrender Caesar to those whom he had wronged, and not to turn upon themselves, or allow to fall upon their city, the pollution of his crime. 2 "However," said he, "let us also sacrifice to the gods, because they do not turn the punishment for the general's folly and madness upon his soldiers, but spare the city."

Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger 51.1-2.

My undergraduate teacher was the guy who debunked the “the Romans ploughed salt into the ground at Carthage” story, which was exactly like this.