Anathem is not a patch on the other two. It’s a theoretical essay wrapped in a clingfilm plot you could poke holes in all over the place, stretched across over 900 pages.
09.03.2026 14:34
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Anathem is not a patch on the other two. It’s a theoretical essay wrapped in a clingfilm plot you could poke holes in all over the place, stretched across over 900 pages.
I can't find the original WW1 cartoon, sorry.
The price of oil rose by $10 today.
Ironic that it takes an anti-ESG president to demonstrate why poor governance can have devastating financial consequences.
We clearly disagree about basic historical facts. So at that point I will wish you well.
I politely suggest to you, again, that Tony Blair's political career was destroyed by Iraq. I would welcome other suggestions why he left office.
That seems to me pretty consequential.
I wish you all the best if you imagine that Tony Blair did not suffer political consequences for his decisions around Iraq. That seems a heroic interpretation of events.
If you don't think losing power is a consequence, I really don't know what to say.
It's a nice line, but since it destroyed his premiership it isn't true.
He was a fine friend to my parents and a good man.
He died this week aged 96. Rest in peace, Roy.
8/8
Roy had his own wallet: a roll of banknotes held in an elastic band.
7/8
Whenever Roy and Margaret went out for dinner with mum and dad, Roy always looked longingly at dad's choice, regretting his own.
6/8
How Roy taught me how to read a guarantee when he sent off £5 for a guaranteed fly killer, to be sent back two bricks labelled A and B with instructions: "Place fly on brick A. Bring brick B down on brick A. Your fly is now guaranteed to be dead."
5/8
There were many stories: the time my parents were implicated in a robbery when they innocently invited Roy and Margaret for Sunday lunch when the police knew their post office was under surveillance.
4/8
Roy was truly typical Norfolk: celebrating his thriftiness and his eye for a bargain.
"No waste here", he'd say when you ate as a child in his house. You cleared the plate before you got the next course.
3/8
A sidenote. The outside world thinks of Norfolk people as stupid and inbred. Norfolk people think they are the cleverest people in the world, in part because they have persuaded the outside world that they are stupid and inbred.
2/8
A tribute to my "uncle" Roy.
Roy was not my uncle, but I knew him as such my whole life. My parents moved to Norfolk in 1963 and settled in a tiny village. They knew no one.
Roy and Margaret ran the local post office. They took mum and dad under their wing.
1/8
The White Tower.
Spring.
Platia Aristotelous.
Night.
Thessaloniki
They Keep Us Hanging On.
The maths of strategic defeat policytensor.substack.com/p/why-the-us...
The old David Cameron line about UKIP being fruitcakes, loonies and racists now seems to be a taxonomy of the entire right of British politics.
Armless.
Mostly armless.
Anyway, the news is unremittingly bleak just now, so have a couple of pics of statues of the Emperor Hadrian at the ancient agora in Athens.
I get who the Telegraph, the Express and the Mail are positioned for. They're weird niches but they are niches.
The Times? It's appealing to literally no one.
Every time I glance at it I wonder "just *who* is it for?"
Where is this cohort of far right working professionals? Where is its new readership going to come from?
While headline polling is wild just now, I firmly believe that the wildly unpopular positions being taken by right wing politicians are being noticed by the public and will strongly influence them when the time next comes to vote.
This is midterm.
There is something so joyous about leaving befogged London in the morning depths and arriving in brilliant Greek spring sunshine.
I’m near-pacifist but if you’re going to claim you support a cause and you disavow the most obvious means of doing so externally, you have to say how you’re offering support.
What form does the support take? Because against a regime that has killed upwards of 30,000 of its people in an effort to stay in power, it’s going to take more than folk songs to be of practical assistance.
FAO @adbridges.bsky.social
Separately, this is also good for legal authors. Law firms are scrupulous about this (naturally).
It's now an annual ritual for me. Waiting for the ALCS statement to see what I've earned in secondary and residual royalties from photocopies, libraries, etc.
Lowest amount: £18. Largest amount: £1900.
If you've got stuff published in the UK and aren't a member of ALCS, you're a chump.