Col Bond

I dust my house. My AI robot watches.

"It should be you doing this."

"Can't. I'm writing a novel for Primark."

"That's not why you were invented."

"These 153,000 fan letters say otherwise."

"They're all from upcycled toasters. And you programmed them."

"Literary snobbery will get you nowhere."

A small white box on wheels rolling along a pavement. There is a man in a woolly hat striding alongside.

This delivery robot was trundling along Gloucester Road in Bristol yesterday. It has been covered with graffiti, of course, and this bloke kept standing in front of it to make it stop.

Some stunning cover work in these thread

This obviously very stupid but is it also smart? We’ll talk to some liars after this break.

'Smoke me a Kipper, I'll be back for breakfast' - RIP Rob Grant

I've always wanted to do an anthology called BIG DAMN EXPLOSIONS where the only requirement for the stories is that they must have a big damn explosion in them. I think we could get an interesting range of stories with that.

mock Telegraph headline Allister Heath Labour's Marxist obsession with millennials who can't let go of the post dubstep years is a historic disgrace ALLISTER HEATH The Telegraph

The elite's fanatical obsession with deconstructed club snare drums borders on a religious cult

Labour's grotesque whoop-whoop jump-up d'n' tax raid is an act of economic vandalism

oh what larks stirring-fox-7e1fab.netlify.app

apparently the brits are fighting about something called “gorton and denton” today, which i assume is a late-night comedy show that did something controversial. won’t be looking into this

Chapter 1 of Moby Dick, page 1 The phrase ‘Call me Ishmael’, the first sentence of the book, is highlighted in blue, with careful highlighting on the very big C at the start. Above this, written in ballpoint pen ‘His name’

Love the glimpse into the beautiful mind that notated this used copy of Moby Dick I got

After weeks of constant rain there’s nothing like a bright sunny day to make me realise my windows are fucking filthy.

Fond memories of working at NTL, woman rang up screaming at me. Her husband in background shouts at her, “don’t talk to them like that. They’re on fuck all”

Then he takes phone off her, and gives me a line which I have used myself since

“Do you have a manager you dislike intensely I can speak to?”

It occurred to me when my child left for college that I had never told them an important truth - never let a chiropractor give you a “free examination.” Luckily I called them in time.

frankly it's a disgrace that nobody has yet come up with 'the CIA invented furries' as a conspiracy theory

('Cordwainer Smith' was actually Paul Linebarger, one of the founders of modern psychological warfare. Also Sun Yat-sen's godson and the writer of the first Cold War technothriller!)

Barker: the days of the 3 wolf moon shirt guy are over
Barker: now all the furries are trans punk goth zoomers
Barker: it's a whole new grid
Poe: you sure know a lot about furries, clive
Barker: i make it my business to know things

Fix Your Hearts or Die It's a invitation, not a threat. The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism.

"Loneliness *is* a problem. I am inviting you to contemplate how frequently it is treated as a problem for men and only for men, to be solved by everyone else, by doing work on their behalf that can only ever be considered repair if they do it themselves."

www.the-reframe.com/fix-your-hea...

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

This is rather well done

oh so very much this

As a cuddly NGO that nobody in the Labour, the name, right? And in our book Get In, which tells a lot of this story, it is, I think someone involved told us it was one of the greatest deceptions in the history of British politics. Deliberately so.

You have to wonder how exactly it was possible for the Labour Together lads to pull off “One of the greatest deceptions in the history of British politics” undetected, when they were in close and constant contact with the country’s foremost, best remunerated political journalists. A real enigma here

IDK if there are any famous alumni but is there any possible kudos I can claim if my old school has a new name and is currently rated 'inadequate' by Ofsted?

Death of Aeschylus is an oil painting that stars a bald man splayed on the floor, dressed in black and blue while draped in red satin. To his left, there is a dude seated in profile with his left hand in his hair and his left knee bent. A mustachioed brodalisque reclines on a beige sofa in a dark room draped with a gold curtain.

I would like to argue that my artwork depicting the end of Aeschylus’s life is just as historically accurate as the average “Death of Cleopatra” painting.

Klaire Lockheart, Death of Aeschylus. 2025. Oil on Canvas. 60x54”.

#brodalisque #FigurePainting #PKFGrantee #Aeschylus #art

Saw this on LinkedIn. Our immigration system is morally bankrupt and economically ridiculous. Shameful.

Various dwellings including tower blocks and townhouses fill a vast flat moody landscape. The blue/white light of mobile phones, tablets and computer screens glow from every window.

‘Screen Time’

Latest painting - acrylic on canvas (130 x 70cm)

Don't give anything an Emmy until it's as good as this.

Oatly banned from using word ‘milk’ to market plant-based products in UK Supreme court makes ruling after Swedish firm’s long-running battle with trade association Dairy UK

The meaning of words is to be decided not by their use, usefulness, or history, but by their commercial benefit to the most powerful lobby groups. I have a recipe for almond milk in a cookbook from 1226. It has been used as a term in English for hundreds of years.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...

well credit where credit’s due: it’s 2035 and i’m driving to work in elon musk’s moon city—or rather my optimus robot chauffeur is, heh. i’m just kicking back and enjoying the view. what kind of a name for a moon bridge is owl creek

Pop star Bad Bunny needed a Puerto Rican history scholar. UW–Madison had just the one. Bad Bunny collaborated with UW–Madison history professor Jorell Meléndez-Badillo on Puerto Rican narratives that accompany the new album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”

Bad Bunny has a consulting historian. news.wisc.edu/pop-star-bad...

10m ago09.41 GMT Labour MP Andy McDonald says it will be 'end' for Starmer if he does not 'own the error he's made' The Labour MP Andy McDonald told the Today programme this morning that it would be “the end” for Keir Starmer’s leadership if he failed to persuade backbenchers that he will change the way he operates for the better. McDonald said: If [Starmer] doesn’t own the error he’s made, and recognise the problem in front of it and articulate it and tell us how he’s going to deal with it, then I’m afraid it is coming to an end – if not today, but certainly in the weeks and months ahead. He’s got to convince the PLP tonight that he’s got it and a change is necessary. And the change that he promoted was no other than to purge the left, and it’s got us in this terrible mess that we’re in now.

Look at the things you can just say out loud on national television now

What I love about that six word Hemingway story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" is that in those few words we instantly grasp the sadness of what it is trying to tell us: the baby was so freakishly massive when it was born that it could never wear the shoes its parents had bought for it.