Reading

Created
Tue, 28/04/2026 - 07:07
I stumbled across this, completely typical word usage today: The Somali government officially announced that it was starting a blockade. Same as the US blockade. Same as the Iranian blockade. So either it’s all piracy, or it’s all “boarding.” We have seen a constant refusal to call Palestinian children, children. The words “Israel killed” are […]
Created
Tue, 28/04/2026 - 03:00

With apologies to Walt Whitman.

- - -

I sneeze myself, I excuse myself.

For every sniffle belonging to me as good belongs to you. Sorry!

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass, clawing my eyes as I reach for Zyrtec-D and “fast-acting” eyedrops.

I, now thirty-seven years old and in perfect health, maintain a group text with my allergist, internist, and energy coach.

The atmosphere is not a perfume but an assassin, a revenge epic.

Each golden particle, a tiny airborne Judas.

I contain multitudes, but mostly mucus.

Mucus I wipe away with a CVS receipt longer than my sleeve.

My airways are inflamed, and my friends are tired of hearing about it.

We suffer, but not in silence. For when we sneeze, meetings stop, foundations shake.

Not I, not anyone else can travel the road for you. But before you do, obsessively check the pollen count and pack your inhaler.

Created
Tue, 28/04/2026 - 00:50

Sometimes, when a 10Foot graffiti tag slips into view from an unexpected source — on a remote farm gate in the countryside, or in an over-gentrified corner of London Fields — the pleasurable jolt of human connection is not that far from the warm feeling of recognition that great literature can give you. So maybe […]

Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 22:00

“This is why we have to have all the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s a larger room, it’s drone-proof and bullet-proof glass. That’s why the Secret Service, the military, are demanding it. They’ve wanted the ballroom for one hundred and fifty years.” — Donald Trump, April 25, 2026, after an assassination attempt against him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

- - -

April 26, 1877

Dear President Rutherford B. Hayes,

As you know, I have seen some shit. Bull Run was no picnic, and Atlanta was no backyard bonfire. Which means I know of what I speak. Nothing like watching thousands of young men get blown to bits in a single afternoon to help you figure out your priorities.

And while I bear the middle name of the great Shawnee chieftain, even as we are “relocating” all our native friends from the Black Hills (I mean, all that gold must be ours), I’m sure Chief T would agree that our nation has always put a select few’s safety ahead of sanity.

Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 19:51

The late Leo Abse — social reformer, author and Labour MP — once recalled his early days taking the train from his south Wales Pontypool constituency to Parliament. This was in the 1970s, when MPs weren’t paid much and most of Leo’s colleagues were former mineworkers and union officials. ‘The carriage would be quiet,’ said […]

Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 19:35
Nigel Farage's Head of Policy endorsed extremist ‘Great Replacement’ theory, called for the reversal of a quarter-century of British migration, and named himself UK chair of a pan-European far-right alliance, in conversation with now deceased ‘MAGA’ activist Charlie Kirk.
Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 18:42
Adam Smith, like the other Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, was strongly influenced by natural rights philosophy. Locke — under the influence of Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf — had emphasised people’s natural freedom and right against the state. For Smith, natural freedom meant, among other things, that the individual himself should have the right to […]
Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 14:34
Today is a public holiday (ANZAC Day) where we remember the efforts of our past generations who fought in wars. This used to be a rather sombre day when some reflections were in order about the men and women who died ‘defending’ our nation. However, it is now a full-on, merch-driven, commercialised glorification of war…
Created
Mon, 27/04/2026 - 04:12
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 26, 2026 by Tony Wikrent   War How Iran has been studying lessons from the war in Ukraine [FT Alphaville, via The Big Picture, April 20, 2026] Military journals provide tantalising glimpses into what Tehran’s military thinks and its priorities, including drones. Tehran’s military journals reveal how closely […]