Alan Allport

much like an LLM, i usually don't know what i think until after i've said it

I mean Orwell talked about this. Hop picking in Kent could be a lark! If you were doing it for pocket money for a few weeks.

Anything can be fun when you’re essentially doing it as a hobby and could stop any time

Damn and I thought I went off on tangents

“People admired, feared, and liked him, in that order” (or something to that effect)

Shoutout to @alanallport.bsky.social whose fine "Advance Britannia" I've just finished. Alan, you've handily topped the high bar you set with "Britain at Bay" in this work. It offers superb context for important events sadly neglected in 20th cent. Yank education (e.g., the '43 Bengali famine) 1/2

Van Hollen: Renee Good's and Alex Pretti's "parents and their loved ones deserve an apology from the U.S. government and I find it outrageous you're taking the position you are today."

Wolf: "I'm not taking a position"

Van Hollen: "YES YOU ARE."

The Iran war should be a lesson for Keir Starmer's Government. If you take a clear line on an issue where the public agree with you then it's your opponents who end up having to back down, not you

Long-time buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were out for a pleasant van drive in Oklahoma when, all of a sudden, their lives would change.

Classic tiny LEGO computer brick design from 1979 made into full-scale working computer — Mac Mini implanted into this 10:1 scale inflated reimagining New ‘high-performance workstation’ based on LEGO Part 3039p23 design is dubbed the M2x2.

www.tomshardware.com/desktops/pc-...

In a field with stiff competition this will turn out to be the stupidest American war ever.

This very straight news piece buried deep within the FT never uses words like corruption or insider dealing but every detail is quietly devastating. Why is the FT virtually alone in the UK media in covering this important story?

Yes. "They're not scared that Mamdani will be a bad major, they're scared he's gonna be a good mayor"

Sandy Sandilands in the desert? Who named him? JK Rowling?

New BBC le Carré series Legacy Of Spies starring Matthew Macfadyen, Charlie Hunnam, Daniel Brühl and Devrim Lingnau Islamoğlu announced The series will chart George Smiley’s overarching quest for his nemesis, Russian master-spy Karla, through the defining era of our modern age, the Cold War

Wait wait did we all miss that the Beeb is doing a new Le Carre Show

“They were just walking along as so many of us do on a fine Manhattan day with their homemade bombs when suddenly, so unexpectedly, they found themselves throwing their homemade bombs at other people.”

Mamdani acting like a traditional politician in the face of an alleged terrorist attack is a problem for the NYT? He puts out a measured statement & does a serious press conference & that's somehow bad now? I'm so sorry but what the hell?
Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...

Being old is regularly: ah i have stumbled across this quirky new song from what must be a niche little band waiting to be discovered which [checks] came out 8 years ago and has been streamed 47 million times

Mamdani Chooses His Words Carefully After Alleged Terror Attack

One day the NYT's editors will read these stories again and be ashamed of themselves. Mamdani called the attack "heinous," "criminal," "reprehensible," "terrorism," and "the antithesis of who we are." The insinuation that he's conflicted about this is disgraceful. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...

Always struck by how much Hegseth physically resembles a dollar store Bob McNamara.

Seeing this doing the rounds and as tends to be the case with this sort of question if you look at the wording of the poll it’s either been sloppily or deliberately designed to be misleading (the ‘right’ answer is ‘definitely false’ which is a strange way to frame a truth-value question).

That girls school was no angel

A journalist not asking basic followup questions to a person in power, has a goal.

If you assumed that goal was "informing the public," you would think they were failing at that goal instead of very successfully attaining it.

Then we would be left with an Iranian regime even more hostile towards the US and its allies than before, potentially emboldened by denying the US and Israel strategic victory, while still in possession of c.440kg of highly enriched uranium. Wonderful.

This is literally almost word for word how the escalation trap is described

I don't think most people grasp the insane amount of resources that the US allocates to weapons and war machines. The list of better things we could do with the military budget is nearly endless.

Copies of Replaying the Second World War, shipped to the author.

Look what arrived today! Replaying the Second World War, my newest book, is now available through ibidem Press, and distributed by Columbia University Press. #russia #ukraine #russiaswarinukraine #newbook

The New York Times Monday, March 9, 2026 Everyone Giving You Likes Sarcastically "Check this out," an anonymous one of your so-called friends said to another over text, linking them to your post. "Lmaoo," came the response before they both pressed the icon to "Like" it. They were, however, not laughing with you,

Uh

imo it's very important not to use the normal verbs that connect speech events to intentions, promises, etc., for Trump. he simply does not "claim", "commit", "deny", "retract", etc. anything. he produces utterances!

The Strait of Hormuz is like a comical piece of geography. Something Tolkien would put in as a plot point.