Nick

You can have the best armed forces in the history of the world, but if you are an incompetent criminal without a plan, you can still lose a war, and rather quickly.

Black and white photo of a tabby cat, Tommy, sitting atop Henry, a Henry hoover

Both Tommy and Henry deserve to be immortalised...

you can tell Wired has been doing good journalism lately because there's been increased whining by the extraction class about how Wired mysteriously changed in the decade since tech titans fully revealed themselves as sociopaths

from this recent Dorsey interview:

I'm going to post this every time I listen to it until I forget because Mark E Smith...

So good. #NowPlaying

Oh. Oh no.

Poem Sometimes everything seems so oh, I don't know.

everything

Joe Brainard, ‘Poem’

A cartoon by Ron Cobb (1975), showing a shadow of US B-52 bomber above cratered landscape. Two people who look like Vietnamese peasants look up; one says “they’re having problems with their economy again.”

This is from 1975.

I asked Kemi Badenoch's spokesperson why she objected to British wildlife being on new UK banknotes, and this was the answer.

The publishing industry's lack of confidence in authors and its own ability to create careers for them is pathetic and, in the end, self-defeating.

My last three reposts are three different ways AI is fundamentally damaging our culture.

I’ve also received six emails this morning all written by AI. Two are scams claiming to be from famous writers who are fans of my work. It’s exhausting having to wade through slop and scams just to do my job

My latest food thing is adding or sprinkling cayenne/chilli/curry powder on pretty much everything I eat. Works surprisingly well and does wonders for my mood - less so my rosacea. 🌶️😳

Survivors of the Twitter wars really should check out Bean Dad's band. #NowPlaying www.last.fm/user/Guerril...

Even granted that the Home Office makes ministers at least 50% more evil, there’s something unnerving about Mahmood’s performative cruelty

I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for those years in on-course bookmaking. A proper education. (Ended up topping it up by going to uni to study computing and psychology. I'm not sure I learned much more.)

I got to see Desert Orchid run. I decided that I didn't want anything more to do with racing and gambling when I watched One Man fall and die at Aintree in 1998.

The first day of the Cheltenham Festival today. So many memories. Clerking and tic-tac-ing for an on-course bookmaker at Cheltenham in 1991 was the making of me. Talk about growing up quickly.

Calling Cormac McCarthy’s authorial style a “mistake” that AI no longer makes is so funny

I say this every year, but:

The uni students I'm teaching are thoughtful, intelligent, will make everything they encounter better.

With a new addition for 2026:

They deeply hate AI.

someone at the pentagon frantically typing “Claude, open the strait of Hormuz for me, quickest possible strategy, make no mistakes.”

Shit. “Taking multivitamins daily will be pointless if there is not a healthy lifestyle associated with it, as bad habits will have a negative impact on ageing too that won’t be reverted by multivitamins.”

Taking multivitamin daily could help to slow biological ageing, study suggests Researchers working to unpick whether daily multivitamin results in people staying healthier as they age

That's good news he thinks as he swallows a multivitamin with the dregs of a glass of wine.

We spent approx. $9B to murder those Iranian schoolgirls so now we can declare victory.

The cunt's gonna outlive me, I just know it.

Black and white photo taken by Allen Ginsberg of Jack Kerouac holding a cat, inscribed by Ginsberg: "Jack Kerouac with Will Burroughs' garden cat, Villa [I can't read Allen's handwriting] Tangier 1957. He stayed several months typing [manuscript?] Naked Lunch for Bill - Allen Ginsberg"

I'd very much like to travel back in time to William Burroughs' villa in Tangier in 1957 - pet the cats and hover as Jack Kerouac helped Burroughs with the manuscript of Naked Lunch.

What do you want to bet this little tantrum on the WaPo's opinion page is because someone ahead of Professor Jakub Grygiel in the queue at some coffee shop had an elaborate coffee order and he hasn't been able to let it go ever since

Excitable Boy by Warren Zevon album cover

#NowPlaying Lawyers, Guns and Money. One of HST's favs for obvious reasons. www.last.fm/user/Guerril...

All the religious nonsense involved in attending a Church of England primary school - the assemblies, the singing of hymns, the church services, the playing of one of the shepherds in the nativity play - deep down I knew it was all a load of bollocks. Kum ba yah my arse.

FOG The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

Good evening from me and Carl Sandburg.

Photo in the style of a Polaroid of a framed "hunter thompson for sheriff" poster hung on my office wall

[I managed to delete the original post 🤷] Anyway... he'd be my first choice if I ever travel to the US and find myself in need of legal help.