What I Don't Miss About the 70s, 5

Somebody on Twitter/X asked: Who were the Manosphere 50 years ago? I replied:

They were the man down the pub. 
They were the man down the pub who knew the answer to everything.
They were the landlord who wouldn't let women order at the bar until the law forced him to.
They were the Turkish old men's club. 
They were gentlemen's clubs in Pall Mall. 
They were magazine editors who didn't run pieces by women but published any dross by their friends. 
They were the ones who claimed "woman can't drive" until you showed them the stats. 

They were the ones who told you women don't have logical minds - and who couldn't follow an argument.

Who claimed women only worked for "pin money", so they didn't need equal pay. 
Who shouted "Cheer up, love it may never happen!" 
Who wrote ads for airlines: "I'm Mandy, fly me!" 
Who plastered their workplaces with pix cut out of porn mags, so that women couldn't work there. 
Who sold porn mags in every newsagent, displayed within view of children. 
Who sold "joke" keyrings reading "Avoid r@pe, say yes!" 
Who sold cigarillos with the slogan: "You've come a long way, baby!"

We've still got a way to go. I complained about the keyrings and got a frosty response. But next time I went into the shop, the proprietor said: "You know, I've been thinking about what you said, and I've taken the keyrings off sale." 

More about the 70s here, and links to the rest.

Neologisms 26

I speak fluent lanyard

de-mothballing
paint the target round the arrow
hymn sandwiches
polite golf applause 

fabricated gibberish
spectacular, breathtaking foolishness 
taskification
architectural lift music
misbegarbled
rube-coded

"My heart was in my knees!" says an England fan on 6 July 2026. 

Social potholing: You live as a tramp and write Down and Out in Paris and London.

Begrudgery of the highest order.

She kept getting socially iced out.

Circuitous black hole of web-based enquiry forms. (Shahrar Ali)

downdating (A 70s house has been tentatively updated over the years. You remove – sorry, “rip out” – the boring standard 90s panelled wood kitchen units and restore the formica originals. See makeunder. Destore?)

Shoulder seasons (spring/autumn)

respectfulness theatre (pronouns, “gestating bodies”, “pregnant people”)

chronological snobbery:  temporal parochialism

I don't want to be a fun-sponger. (Morning Live)

Who is more spiritually correct?

Explain that to me in crayons.
 
He ended up at room temperature with three bullets in his chest. (imdb)

He was a type to which I do not warm. (LW)

Turn your brains on!

 
Courtney Cox’s family were 100% old stock Wonderbread.

Pointless to try and teach critical thinking using “toy examples” of syllogisms etc.

DEI milk (oat, almond etc)

The Desolation of Yesterday's Future. (@AlistairMorley)

Sometimes the trash takes itself out. (@FloreFlos)

Can someone more fluent in lanyard explain what ‘place-based cooperation’ means? (@aswren)

A deeply weird mix of tweeness and vulgarity. (Fergus Butler-Gallie on crude greetings cards)

Weapons grade levels of mawk and nause. (Rob Chapman)

Of any attempt to slow climate change: The WEF wants to use it to steal our platelets. 

[On the new Sense and Sensibility] Marianne wouldn't look that dishevelled, either. These new adaptations completely sand off Austen's stratified society so that impoverished but still gentry-bred daughters dress and behave somehow worse than lower class servants. (@thefudge_on_ao3)

Not saying it's hot on the London Underground today, but I've just seen Virgil leading Dante down the steps at Oxford Circus tube station. (@MarksLarks)

An embarrassing thing about a fear of thunderstorms is if you look up info on how to cope, it mostly gives you tips on how to support Rover & Mr Whiskers during a storm. @stoneandthestar)

I do not have a “gender identity” in the same way that I do not have sin or Thetans. (@thefempire50)

Men stayed out of women’s spaces because both society and the law punished them if they did not. That norm is disappearing, and the law is disappearing — or being tortuously reinterpreted into nothingness — along with it. (Róisín Michaux)

The premise, as you frame it, setting aside it's the wankage of the uni caf, is flawed: this isn't women's problem to solve. So the goateed-Herman Hesse-readers on the quad can debate this all afternoon if they want. Doesn't change a thing: We're us, no one else is, walk on. (@mmcdonaldlewis)

It will be interesting to see how in coming days genderists will seek to circumnavigate the Finnish study. My money is on an all-purpose bleat about "insufficient data", possibly overlaid by the usual babble about "lived experience", "cisheteronormativity" and other gibberish. (@QcWynter)

Years ago a joke went around Labour circles full of student Corbynista types that we should each own a 'privilege card' scored 1-100, so that the knotty shibboleths and table manners of modern left politics could be quickly circumvented.  (@leftrestoration)

When doing multiple countries by train, you can wind up back in a situation from early 20th century where you're dealing with various border-bureaucrat "Kafka traps." (@JacobAShell)

Keir Starmer to accuse Anas Sarwar of 'mountain strongholdism'. (@phased_bemused)

You can do all these things and the cultural undertow will still carry many away. (@BeanMimosa, in answer to “How do I stop my daughters going woke?”)

MPs are CLUELESS. I would honestly rather a flock of pigeons made these decisions, at least then there’s a random chance they might get one or two calls right. (Rupert Lowe)

Too many groups jumped on the bandwagon, and now the wheels have fallen off. (@AEthelswin)

Now for my traditional Christmas afternoon activity - fielding the irate and confused messages of family members and friends who have had to go to Christmas sermons which were pitched at the intellectual level of a whelk. (@_F_B_G_)

You look like you're playing a man who sells waterbeds in a movie about the 1970s. (@RyanGirdusky)

Wait why are ppl trying to normalize the infantilization of the glorification of the gentrification of the justification of the commodification of consumerism which perpetuates religion psychosis and overstimulates my niche theory... (@fawnncel)

There is a certain pleasure in a really grim English day. Ideally 7 or 8 degrees, unbroken crypt-like gloom and hammering it down all day. (@surplustakes)

One of those days where you throw open the curtains and the room gets darker. (@SoVeryBritish)

A loveless and inhumane cross between an elephantine sandwich box and a bureau for secret police and faceless functionaries. (@createstreets on one of Oxford’s Brutalist masterpieces)

The entire argument falls apart if you simply rub two neurons together. (@MarmotRespecter)

Not trying to be a doomer, but we're currently living in a world where the only children in the USA who will reliably learn how to read are the ones with parents that are willing to teach them and successfully avoid the minefield of junk curricula and gimmicks. (@readtoyourkid)

America is going bankrupt quickly, but everyone is whistling past the graveyard. (Elon Musk)

Metal Injection just described my band's new stoner metal album Canticles to the Fungal Suzerain as "an impenetrable slab of fuzz-soaked doom". (@saturnalreturn)

PCSU conference sends a letter to delegates about toilets, explaining the recent confirmation of the law and the danger of lawsuits. @FranklyGaslit asks: Do we have to read it through the same gritted teeth through which it was written?

From the NHS clap-a-longs to slebs singing ‘Imagine’, we nearly drowned in a wave of maudlin claptrap. (Spiked.com recalling lockdown.)

(Neo)liberals are obsessed with the word "building" and i think they like its flavour of cinder blocks and rebar and workmen's lunch pails; the impression it lends that they're about something concrete, rather than stirring up a phantasmagoric cloud of bullshit. (@snackowska)

Oh boy. I knew I shouldn’t have posted about Mars. 1.2 million views! And a lot of responses from people who I wouldn’t describe as being hinged. (@monstroso)

Decline and Fall is in fact full of lies and you should NOT read it unless you already have a black belt in the history of the period... Pagans knew very well how to be intolerant and even fanatical, Exhibit A being of course their oppression of Christianity. (@pegobry_en) 

Deinococcus radiodurans is a type of bacteria that is resistant to radiation doses that could kill a human being, can withstand acid, dehydration and cold, and is able to survive outside of the International Space Station for three years. Scientists call it Conan the Bacterium. (@qikipedia)

He had the IQ of a house plant. (Bill Pronzini)

Adapted, seemingly in the dark with a shovel, from Amy Liptrot’s prizewinning memoir... (Kevin Maher, Times on The Outrun)


More here, and links to the rest.

George Orwell and the Passive Voice

George Orwell is often accused of "telling us not to use the passive and then using it all the time". I asked @Grok to highlight all uses of the passive in his essay Politics and the English Language. @Grok speaking:

Here are notable examples of passive voice from George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946).  (orwellfoundation.com)
  
Orwell criticizes the passive voice as a tool that obscures agency and promotes vagueness (e.g., in his discussion of "Operators or verbal false limbs," where he notes: "the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active"). Yet he uses it himself for stylistic reasons, generality, or emphasis—highlighting the nuance in his own advice.  
(en.wikipedia.org) 
 
Early in the essay (opening paragraphs) "it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it." (Passive: the assumption's source is vague.) Me: How would you recast this in the active voice? Many assume?

"It is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer."   
Me: "It is" is in the active voice.

"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure..." (though "to be" here is more linking, the construction echoes passive patterns). Me: He feels himself to be... is in the active voice.

"I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer." (Future perfect passive-like.) Me: None of this is in the passive voice.
 
In descriptions of bad writing habits "the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active..." (He explicitly calls this out while using similar constructions elsewhere.) Me: He is condemning the exclusive use of the passive voice. "The passive voice is used" is in the passive. How to fix? "Bad writers use the passive voice..."?

"banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation." Me: How to fix? "Bad writers give banal statements an appearance of profundity..."?

"Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as..." Me: Again, replacing with the active is awkward. You'd have to keep using "bad writers" as the actors.

"the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as..." Me: Replacing with the active would be awkward. You might use the generic "you". An editor once warned me against this because, he asked, "Who are you?".
 
Other examples throughout "These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad..." Me: You'd have to make the actor "I" in this case.

"They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples." (Copular, but part of passive-like generality.) Me: Not even "passive-like". "They are" is in the active voice.

"prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house." Me: "Prose consists" is in the active voice.

"Bad writers... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones." Me: "Bad writers are..." is in the active voice.

"unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers." (Mixed, but "gain ground" follows passive tendencies in context.) Me: "gain ground" is in the active voice.

In the Ecclesiastes translation parody: "success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate..." and "a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account." (He uses this to mock inflated passive-heavy style.) Me: But none of what you've quoted is in the passive voice.
 
Later sections (on political language and rules)"political language has to consist largely of euphemism..." (Some linking passives.) Me: Really? Let's hear them. "Has to consist" is in the active voice.

"Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out... the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire..." (Classic passive examples in his discussion of euphemism, where agency is hidden.) Me: Isn't he pointing out that this passage avoids blaming the perpetrators? How can he point out where it is deceptive to use the passive without giving examples?

"All these [dying metaphors, etc.] are used without knowledge of their meaning..." Me: Again, you'd have to use "bad writers" as the actors - you couldn't keep on repeating them.
 
Orwell's essay contains roughly 20% passive constructions (higher than some averages), which shows he applies his rules flexibly rather than rigidly. (en.wikipedia.org) 
 
Passive voice isn't inherently "bad"—it's a tool, and Orwell uses it effectively for objectivity or to mirror the vagueness he critiques. Me: Thanks, Grok, for agreeing with me!

Here are Orwell's bullet points, and I recommend reading them ALL. Especially the one about clichés.

Avoid cliches: Never use a familiar metaphor, simile, or figure of speech.
Keep it simple: Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Edit ruthlessly: If a word can be cut, cut it.
Use action words: Prefer the active voice over the passive.
Speak plainly: Avoid foreign phrases, scientific terms, and jargon for common English words.
Stay flexible: Break any of these rules before saying something "outright barbarous".

If you like clichés there are more here, and links to the rest.

Received Ideas According to George Orwell

 

The other night a barmaid informed me that if you pour beer into a damp glass it goes flat much more quickly. She added that to dip your moustache into your beer also turns it flat. I immediately accepted this without further inquiry; in fact, as soon as I got home I clipped my moustache, which I had forgotten to do for some days.

Only later did it strike me that this was probably one of those superstitions which are able to keep alive because they have the air of being scientific truths. In my note-book I have a long list of fallacies which were taught to me in my childhood, in each case not as an old wives’ tale but as a scientific fact. I can’t give the whole list, but there are a few hardy favourites:

    That a swan can break your leg with a blow of its wing.
    That if you cut yourself between the thumb and forefinger you get lockjaw.
    That powdered glass is poisonous.
    That if you wash your hands in the water eggs have been boiled in (why anyone should do this is a mystery) you will get warts.
    That bulls become infuriated at the sight of red.
    That sulphur in a dog’s drinking water acts as a tonic. 

And so on and so forth. Almost everyone carries some or other of these beliefs into adult life. I have met someone of over thirty who still retained the second of the beliefs I have listed above. As for the third, it is so widespread that in India, for instance, people are constantly trying to poison one another with powdered glass, with disappointing results. 

George Orwell, As I Please, 1944

Kingsley Amis reports that his landlady came into his room to collect his breakfast tray, and started closing the curtains. What are you doing?, he asked. The sunlight puts the fire out, she responded. He explained that when the sunlight hit the fire, you could no longer see the flames, and it looked as if it was going out. Oh really? And she closed the curtain.

The full set is here, in my book What You Know that Ain't So.

More here, and links to the rest.

Received Ideas in Dialogue

"Nobody can MAKE you feel anything, YOU control your feelings" oversimplifies human emotional response and overlooks the impact of conditioning and coercion – often in the service of a fantasy that we can "control" our feelings if we just "try hard enough." (@DrDoyleSays)

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. (Eleanor Roosevelt)


The French occupied the Netherlands in 1811 and forced the Dutch to take surnames. They didn’t use them, so made up Dodeman (dead man), Niemand (nobody), Tabaksblatt (cigarette paper) etc. 

Apparently, when the French took a census of the Dutch in 1811 many didn't have last names so they made them up, thinking it was temporary, but some of them are quite common today... Some are quite normal like Pereboom (pear tree) or Lachman (laughing man?).


I was today years old when I found out "newspaper" means North, east, west, south, past and present. (@0xleegenz)

No. (@MerriamWebster)

Was it Notices Entertainment Weather & Sport = NEWS? (@flowergirl_lon)

Never. (@MerriamWebster)


1,000-year-old Viking church built without a single nail is mind-blowing. (@wakenminds)

They always say “built without a single nail”, but that’s the least interesting thing about this church. Guys, every barn frame in America was built without a single nail. They’re pegged together. It’s not a miracle or anything. (@nealjclark1)

Did you know the roof of the Royal Albert Hall is not actually attached to the rest of the building – its enormous weight is all that holds it in place without any bolts or screws. (@The_East_End) 

The full set is here, in my book What You Know that Ain't So.

More here, and links to the rest.

Received Ideas in Quotes 41

 Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. (Oscar Wilde)

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. (George Orwell)

Museum curators describing literally any portrait of a woman: She boldly meets the viewer's eye, confronting our gaze. (@molochofficial)

The premise that the “popular kids” in high school would go on to be failures has never been true. (@OliverJia1014)

"It was a received idea that all Frenchmen were undersized and lived on frogs." John Henry Newman, The Grammar of Assent. (@lazarusatgate)

My doctor grandfather used to say he would know what phase the moon was in without having to look based on what patients would come in and what they would complain about. (@itinerantfog)

Experience showed good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was [easier] for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things than start afresh. (Spinoza, paraphrase)

You cannot have original thoughts if you only read writing and ideas from within the 100 years you were born. Read very old books and see how they thought, reasoned, what they believed. You'll see how many of your ideas were thoughtlessly downloaded from your environment. (@megha_lilly)

A lot of “ancient tradition” is just 19th-century nation-building. (@marcportermagee)

In 1917 journalist H.L. Mencken published an article in the New York Evening Mail claiming that the bathtub had been invented in 1828 and the first bath was introduced to the US in 1842. Although this is obviously nonsense and was debunked almost immediately, the story refused to die and was mentioned on television unironically as recent as 2008. (@Fakehistoryhunter.net)

The final 12cm diameter of the CD was a compromise during 1979–80 negotiations between Sony and Phillips. One popular story credits Sony with pushing for enough capacity to hold Beethoven's Ninth Symphony uncut. (My theory – they were made to fit men’s hands and are just too large for a woman to pick up easily.)

There’s a lot of Internet misinformation about white ravens being social pariahs or eaten by their mothers at birth. (@BluebellRaven)

Islam is the only religion on earth who has addressed cleanliness as special mention no other religion even has of concept of bathing, washing, wearing clothes, nail cutting, shaving, dental cleaning etc. Muhammad Bath invented the bathroom. (@Syed22549150 and others. Rests on dubious accounts by rotten historians from 100 years ago and more.)

It seems that the sophistication of French cuisine arose from the need to mask the lack of freshness of the ingredients – much as perfume came from the need to compensate for bad hygiene. In contrast, Italian and East Med cuisines make salient the freshness of the ingredients. (@TalebWisdom)

When the masses were able to afford spices, haute cuisine became about "the simplicity of the dish" and only using a few ingredients. (@wtflanksteak)

‘Japanese’ tempura comes from the Latin ad tempora quadragesima: ‘during the time of Lent’.  (@robbertleusink)

When a Christian missionary  gave a sermon to the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia, he mistranslated the phrase ‘tongues of fire’, instead saying the Holy Spirit would descend on them in a deluge of wallabies. (@qikipedia)

Every year on Ash Wednesday some Europeans pretend that ashes on the forehead are an American thing, which is just… a lie. (@pegobry_en. In my memory the cross was faint, and faded during the day.)

Sitting in Almaty, the city of apples, I fondly recall the Kazakh (or was it Kyrgyz?) scholar who once claimed that Adam and Eve were Kazakhs because in Kazakh the word for apple is "alma"--and the word for "don't take" is also "alma," so they must have spoken Kazakh in paradise. (@BeilinsonOrel)

“Romance” is white supremacy, black studies professor says. (2026)

Is romantic love a Western invention perpetuated by Hollywood movies, pop songs, and Valentine’s Day cards? (@SteveStuWill)

In the Southern States of the US, porch ceilings are painted “haint blue” (sky blue). It discourages insects like wasps and spiders from nesting (they mistake the ceiling for open sky), says Grok. Black residents think the blue will deter ghosts and spirits.

When New College Oxford was built in the 14th century, the builders planted trees that would be mature by the time the roof rotted – in the 18th century – ready to repair it. (@joelmiller, paraphrase.) Another authority says that the college had owned forests since 1441, and the oak trees used to repair the roof came from there.

Reminds me of the story I read where there is a forest of oak trees managed by the US navy that exist solely to replace boards on the USS Constitution as needed. (@collins_daman)

You need  to learn and forget something 7 times before you know it permanently. (@alex451g)

The old church recipe compilation books? Full of missing secret ingredients because of gatekeeping. When I would go through those books with my nana, she would tell me who left stuff out of their recipe. (@korinreid)

The Museum of London’s collection of codpieces was originally classified by the Victorians as ‘shoulder pads’. (@qikipedia)

Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley. Buddy was his school nickname. He adopted Holly as his stage surname after his real name was incorrectly spelled on a recording contract. (@FXMC1957)

Darin took his stage name, Bobby Darin, when he began recording. One version of how Darin got the name is that the first three letters on a Mandarin Chinese restaurant were burned out. According to another version, he adapted it from the first name of actor Darren McGavin, TV's Mike Hammer. (Wikipedia)

Deaf people are super strong. (@wallywooyeah)

It's strange how things used to go viral with nothing but Chinese whispers. It was seven blokes' worth down in Hampshire. (@bloodykingghost)

The Swan with two Necks, Stockport. Not a myth: The name is not a reference to a mythical creature but is a corruption of "The Swan with Two Nicks". "Nicks" refers to the notches made on a swan's beak to denote ownership. Two nicks traditionally identified swans belonging to the Worshipful Company of Vintners. (@PubMaverik)

This belief – that the world would be better if the population was reduced by 90% – is alarmingly popular among boomer social engineers & technocrats. The belief goes back to the 1920s & "utopian" eugenics. It resurfaced in the 1970s w/the debunked book "the population bomb". (@MrEwanMorrison. Espoused by Jane Goodall. This week someone's saying it would be better for the human race if it went extinct. The book was by Paul Ehrlich who died recently.)

London cab drivers have an enlarged hippocampus. You lose half your body heat through your head. Mobile phones give you brain cancer/make you sterile. Every glass of water you drink has been through at least seven people. Swimming too soon after lunch gives you cramp. (Via Giles Coren)

Received opinion as late as my childhood (1980s) was that Victorian brick architecture was ugly, tasteless and inefficient. Keble was still derided by my Oxford peers. When Betjeman & Co. started campaigning to save St Pancras in the 70s they were regarded as campy contrarians. (@RichardBratby)

Did anyone else’s parents say you couldn’t shower during a storm because you might get struck by lightning? (@Ughhmantha)

Worryingly, around a third of psychologists still believe in repressed memories. Imagine if a third of physicists still believed in phlogiston! (@SteveStuWill)

What happens to students identified as gifted, highly gifted and profoundly gifted at age 13 by the time they reach 50? They do really well, as you would expect, although for some reason we want to believe the opposite. (@marcportermagee)

The grand staircase of St. Pancras Hotel in London was deliberately designed wide enough to allow two Victorian women in bustles to pass each other comfortably. (@bymortalhand. Bustles stuck out at the back – perhaps you're thinking of crinolines.)

Jaws was the first film where people were queueing round the block, hence “blockbuster”. (Interviewee on BBC. There were blockbuster bombs in WWII, powerful enough to destroy a concrete bunker. In the 20s and 30s all movies were so popular that queues went round the block.)

Europeans wore fur stoles and perfume – the fur stoles were to attract the fleas away from their bodies, and the perfume was designed to cover the stench of unwashed bodies. (@ReasonVsFear)

In 1947, Kix cereal offered the "Atomic Bomb Ring" for just 15 cents and a box top. Shockingly, the toy contained polonium-210, one of the deadliest radioactive substances known to man. (@BiancoDavinci. Toy was safe, say @Grok and others.)

My best friend in my youth was a Russian girl. Her mom would NEVER let her out in the snow in shoes that would make her feet cold because that would make her infertile. She always wore the warmest boots and carried her heels in a bag. (@megha_lilly)

James McNeill Whistler never planned to paint his mother. His model canceled at the last minute, so he turned to the only person available, his 67-year-old mother. She could not stand for long, so Whistler seated her sideways. The result became Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1. (@CultureExploreX)

Nobody was educated in those days apart from the very, very wealthy. (FB reels)

At my sister’s graduation. Speaker is claiming that “talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not”. What claptrap! What twaddle! (@captgouda24)

Someone will tell me that a college doesn't have sororities because it counts as a brothel in their state, and I'll be like "OMG actually that's an urban legend", and they'll just go to someone else and be like "Do you know we don't have sororities because it counts as a brothel". I once tried to tell my sister-in-law that the brothel thing is a myth. Turns out her university is the one university where that was actually true. (@LinkofSunshine)

Raymond Cusick was given only an hour to come up with the design for the Daleks and was inspired in his initial sketches by a pepper pot on a table... In 1964, [writer] Terry Nation told a Daily Mirror reporter that the Dalek name came from a dictionary or encyclopaedia volume, the spine of which read  "Dal – Eks". He later admitted that this book and the associated origin of the Dalek name were completely fictitious, and that anyone bothering to check his story would have found him out. (Wikipedia)

It’s impossible to accurately measure intelligence because there are too many variables to consider. Traditional IQ tests don’t really push the boundaries of testing your cognitive skills but rather how well you can conform to rigid structures. (@ihyFawa)

The man who argues merely proves that he is less, that doubt has sapped his vitality. (E.M. Cioran) 

Once you commit to nonsense, it's pretty difficult to un-commit, not least when your relationships and job depend on being committed. Enter the West's progressive overclass, which committed to nonsense years ago – and can't just un-commit on discovering it was a bad idea. (@bencobley)

In 14th century Puglia, dry-stacked stone houses (trulli) were designed to be disassembled when the taxman came. When he arrived, there'd be large piles of stone and a lot of "homeless" families standing around. (@shagbark_hick)

The gift of a pair of gloves has long been considered a romantic promise. In the 1800s, ‘glove flirting’ rose to popularity with an entire coded language surrounding it. Turning them inside out meant ‘I hate you,’ but to drop both gloves was a declaration of love. (@Kerria)

A very funny, common belief among normies is that God created a “soulmate” to every living person that he randomly drops into your life as a generated character from his large reservoir of soulmates. (@stundholz)

"The courts are a clumsy means to negotiate social relationships" is an argument men have used to deny the need for women's rights in law so many times. (@glosswitch. Dec 2025 and after an unsatisfactory judgement Sandie Peggie is appealing.)

Everybody is stupid now because they all had Covid without knowing it – you may have no symptoms. (Net)

My favorite fact about Jane Austen is that her works were largely popularized because British soldiers serving in World War I read them while away from home. (@cmclymer. Maybe from a Kipling story The Janeites about men in the trenches reading her books and forming a secret society.)

Another old one: “hocus pocus” comes from English Protestants mocking the Latin Mass (“Hoc est corpus”). (@peterawolf)

In the 17th century, Venetian lace was so fashionable that France smuggled 20 Venetian women into the country to teach French lacemakers how to make it. Venice threatened to execute their families for treason if they didn’t return immediately. (@qikipedia)

Do not go after big goals because you think achieving them will make you a happy and fulfilled person. Go after big goals because you think the process of pursuing them will make you a happy and fulfilled person. 99.9 percent of life is the process. (@BStulberg)

We now have to make sure potential teachers haven’t graduated carrying a toolbox full of education myths and misconceptions. Learning styles. Left-brain vs right-brain learners. Cone of learning pyramids with fake percentages. “Discovery first, instruction later” as a default. Brain-based labels with no grounding in cognitive science. The idea that more engagement automatically equals more learning. These ideas are still taught, recycled and assessed in many education programs, often presented as settled science rather than claims that failed to hold up under evidence. (@AmmarMerhbi)

East Asians like ducks because they are believed to mate for life. (Tim Wonnacott, Antiques Road Trip) 

Traditionally, Navajo rug weavers leave a small mistake in their work to make sure their spirit isn’t trapped in it. (@qikipedia. See Persian rugs, crochet, mosaic floors etc.) 

We are a “bundle of impressions whose existence as a unified self is ontologically uncertain”. 
(@John_Attridge. He is sending up the idea.)

Idk who else needs to check their family pumpkin pie recipe, but apparently my grandmother’s was not passed down from generations as I was led to believe… it’s off the Libby’s pumpkin puree can. (@mandalynns23)

The eye patch associated with pirates was to keep one eye acclimated to the dark so they could read the maps inside the ship. (@DTBERKIS. Ships had windows and lighting.)

Melania Trump destroyed the White House rose garden. “Melania improved the drainage and sunlight (by removing dead infected trees) to the Rose Garden, whose namesake flowers had failed to thrive over the years. Only 12 original rose bushes remained when Melania oversaw the addition, she added 200 new rose bushes, which were the same type as the  original rose bushes, that had died.” Says 
@Likeshesays.

A very good Mothering Sunday to those celebrating (for the record, this is a different day to the American version, so don't panic, and started in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, as a day when servants visited their mother church). (LW)

The Grand Hotel in Scarborough, designed by Cuthbert Brodrick, opened in 1867 as Europe's largest hotel and brick building at the time. The landmark features a V-shaped plan, four towers symbolizing seasons, 12 floors for months, 52 chimneys for weeks, and originally 365 rooms for days. Built in tawny brick with Baroque/Second Empire influences, it used over 6 million bricks. (@dutchbuildings. The story is also told of Arts and Crafts house Avon Tyrrell, Hampshire. Maybe there was more than one "calendar house".)

Just learned that the Irish name Fearghal is from Virgil. (@TomBFlanagan)

The section of underground between South Kensington and Knightsbridge is long and bendy and loud because it needs to bend around to avoid both a grave of plague victims, and the Harrods cellars, which are layers and layers deep. (@ladygreenkirtle)

The theft of Napoleonic treasures in the Louvre followed  a change in the display cases in 2019. Before then, the Rococo display cases had armoured glass and if disturbed the treasures would drop into a safe. They were later replaced by “modern” displays with normal glass. (@CyberPunkCortes. Modern is always better?)

Pricing everything in a number that ends in .99 is a kind of financial atavism. We tell a story that it was for psychological reasons, but originally it was so that cashiers had to open the register for each transaction, thus recording a sale, so they couldn’t just pocket the cash. (@owenbroadcast. I've only just worked out that they had to open the till to give the customer the penny change.)

Socrates was killed for not believing in the Greek gods. Plato said Homer and Hesiod should be banned and new myths created. (@romanhelmetguy)

For all my years on this earth... It was only yesterday that I learned that rap stands for "rhythm and poetry" I'm ashamed. (@xAsamoahx)

People move to Denver and get Paris syndrome when they learn it’s not in the mountains and people are not affable and folksy. (@SYNESTHEIZURE)

The "School of Architecture" is ALWAYS the ugliest building on campus. (@aaron_lubeck)

The full set is here, in my book What You Know that Ain't So.

More here, and links to the rest.

221B, by Vincent Starrett

John Atkinson Grimshaw

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die;
How very near they seem yet how remote
That age before the worlds went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo;
England is England yet for all our fears –
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window pane
As night descends upon this fabled street;
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
As ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always 1895.

1942

 

Grammar: Pismronunciation

Confusing worms

A medieval monk substituted “mumpsimus” for “sumpsimus” in one prayer. When put straight, he replied that he had said it that way for 40 years and “I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus”.
 

advocado: avocado

Alexander Solzeernitskin, writer of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch: Solzhenitsyn

Andrew Sabitsky, Andrew Sabinsky: Sabisky

Artic, Antartic: Arctic, Antarctic

Baia, in Italy: Baiae (Bye-eh. Probably means "bays".)

Barnard’s Castle: Barnard Castle

Bayzhing, the Chinese capital: Beijing with a hard J

Beer-route: Beirut in Lebanon (Bay-root)

Bob Geldorf, musician and fund-raiser: Bob Geldof

Buchi Emencheta, the writer: Buchi Emecheta

Callagan: Prime Minister Jim Callaghan pronounced his name with an aspirate as in loch and Bach

Casa Pupa, the rug company: The labels clearly read “Casa Pupo”.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (in the US)

Colgate’s toothpaste: Colgate

Colibri, the font: Calibri (Colibri is a brand of cigarette lighter.)

Company House: Companies House

desoxyribose nucleic acid: DNA, or deoxyribose nucleic acid

grahtsy, Italian for thank you: grazie (grah-tsee-ay)

Epson salts: Epsom salts

Eric Hobsborn, the Marxist historian: Eric Hobsbawm (originally Obstbaum). See also "Somerset Maughan".

folage: foliage

Fortress Road in Kentish Town: Fortess Road

Hailey's comet: Halley's

homogenous: homogeneous

In Chester Cathedral: Winchester Cathedral (song by the Kinks)

jardinère: jardinière

Jeux sans Frontères/Frontiers: Jeux sans Frontières (It's front-ee-air, not front-ee-ay. Likewise Médecins sans Frontières, Doctors without Borders.)

Johann Sebastian Bark: Bach (Especially annoying when spoken by someone who can say “Loch Ness” perfectly well.)

John Hopkins University in the US: Johns Hopkins University (trips up many Americans)

Jungendstil: Jugendstil (Decorative style from the late 1800s.)

juvenalia: juvenilia

Last night I dreamed I went to Mandalay again (More often “Manderlay”.): The first line of Daphne du Maurier’s well-known novel Rebecca mentions the house where most of the action takes place – Manderley. Mandalay features in a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

lightening: lightning

lines of longtitude and latitude: longitude

long-gevity: lon-gevity

Mario Vargas Llosas, writer and politician: Vargas Llosa

Marleen Deartrick, actress and singer: Marlene Dietrich (Marlayna Dee-trich)

marshmellow: marshmallow

Mars tricked, with the accent on the "tricked": Maastricht

mischievious: mischievous

Miss Haversham, character in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations: Miss Havisham (And some think Heathcliff has a final e.)

Miss Marples, Agatha Christie’s genteel detective: Miss Marple

National Institute of Health in the US: National Institutes of Health 

Nora Desmond, character in the film Sunset Boulevard: Norma Desmond

nucular, nuculus: nuclear, nucleus

portères, curtains over doors: portières

protruberant: protuberant (Protuberant eyes protrude.)

Rekkavik, Iceland’s capital: Reykjavik

Revelations: The Biblical book is The Revelation of St John the Divine.

Roger's Theosaurus: Roget's Thesaurus

Rubik's Cube: Rubik Cube

Stephen Hawkins: Stephen Hawking

Suits you, sir: Suit you, sir! (From the Fast Show.)

The Forsyth Saga, series of novels by Galsworthy, twice televised: The Forsyte Saga.

The Narzies: the Nazis (Allegedly Winston Churchill stuck to Narzies because that was how many people pronounced the word.)

Tiananmen Square in Beijing: Tienanmen

Trivial Pursuits, the 80s game: Trivial Pursuit

tumeric: turmeric

When Good King Wenslas last looked out: King Wenceslas looked out.

Some insist it's "an historic" rather than "a historic". This was never a rule, though we used to say "an hospital" and "an hotel", not pronouncing the Hs. 

 
As a child, I had a friend called Adele, pronounced A-dell. My mother insisted on calling her "AD-ell" because she thought it sounded more French. And others on this template: a Giovanni who was called "Yevanney" by one of his teachers. Conversely, the holder of the name tries to make it sound more English: a Radio 3 announcer in the 70s pronounced his name "HOMEstr'm" (Holmstrom). But perhaps he thought the Brits couldn't cope with the correct Swedish sounds.

At a convent boarding school in the 60s, postulants (trainee nuns) were called “apostulants” by everybody.

Every day we recited: “The angel of the Lord appeared unto Mary/And she was conceived by the Holy Ghost”. Wrong theologically and biologically (people also confused conception and contraception, back then). It's "she conceived by the Holy Ghost". 

In the school garden there was a beautiful rose-draped pergola (path with columns). The adjacent lawn was the “pergular lawn”.

Every Friday we sang a hymn – we never got the text, we just picked it up by ear. There was one line where everybody sang "er er er er". Years later I found the words and that line is "Eia ergo".

The Dennehy sisters were persistently called "Dennehay" by one nun.  

And designer Laura Ashley was always "Laura Rashley" or just "Laurashley".

Some try to put extra vowels into words like "Renaissance" or "Sèvres" (Renayassence and Seyervres).

And then there's pronounciation versus pronunciation...

 

Technophobia 15

 

Does your desktop look like this?

I admit there was a time when I didn't know you could cut and paste text from a web page... About 1993? And for a while I didn’t know you could pause CDs. I used to think you had to let your phone run out completely before you charged it, and you couldn’t leave it plugged in once it was at 100% because er er... It wasted electricity?! But now we're putting a woman on the Moon!

A friend told me about a man who runs his entire business through a tablet.

Someone on Twitter asked what the little bumps on the F and J keys of a keyboard were for. Touch typists find them with their forefingers. They keep your fingers on the home keys, ASDF JKL;.

Boggles my mind how many people work from a laptop as their only computer. Not even a plug-in monitor or keyboard or mouse. Just that 15in screen and touchpad in their $200k/year white collar job. The absolute hubris of it all. (@dioscuri)

I have a client who communicates exclusively via Microsoft Word. If she has something to tell me I will receive an email with nothing in the body, but a Word doc attached. That’s where she writes her message. Whenever she wants to email me a photo she does it via an empty Word doc with said photo as its background. But my favourite thing was the first time I witnessed her visiting a website. She had me spell the URL (w w w dot), and with my own two eyes I watched her type it into Word, make it a hyperlink, and Ctrl click to go there. I was so fascinated I didn’t even say anything. (Via Twitter)

It’s 2026, but when I watch a film on a streaming service the sound is so quiet as to be almost inaudible.

Who at Apple was like ‘you know we should make the new iPhone photos app super confusing and random because now it’s too straightforward and easy to use, let’s make it feel like you’ve had a stroke every time you want to find something!’ (@seanonolennon)

Actual interaction I had today, Jan 16:
website rejects bank info
I retype, website rejects info
I refresh and retype, website rejects info
I call support
"Oh, it's a savings account? You need to click the button five times"
I click the button two more times
It works (?!?!)
(@its_bvisness)

Why does it seem like everything has three extra steps now? You can’t just do one thing. You have to log in, check your email for the code, enter the passkey to access password, that isn’t the right password so you enter email AGAIN for password email, then you have to make a new password, then you have to save it to your password saver but first you have to enter the passkey to access your passwords but the username doesn’t automatically update so you have to enter your email AGAIN in your password saver and then you can finally Do The Thing. What is this system? (@parakeetnebula)

I got a new TV after 11 years, and there was a nice simplicity to just turning the old one on. The new one requires a loading screen, logging in and navigating complex menus just to be able to watch. (@ianmackey)

There is a special place reserved in hell for website designers who disable cut and paste in password fields. (@WKCosmo)

Trying to buy something at an actual store, and they’re like, What’s your email? Phone number? Zip code? Blood type? (@kristabellerina)

I am so tired of logging into things. Please stop making me log into things. I don’t want to make an account! Stop texting me codes! (@holy_schnitt)

THE BIG REGRESSION
My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby. It’s new construction... It’s amped up with state of the art systems. The ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard. And it’s terrible. What a regression.

The lights are powered by Control4. And require a demo to understand how to use the switches, understand which ones control what, and to be sure not to hit THAT ONE because it’ll turn off all the lights in the house when you didn’t mean to. Worse.

The TV is the latest Samsung which has a baffling UI just to watch CNN. My parents aren’t idiots, but definitely feel like they’re missing something obvious. They aren’t — TVs have simply gotten worse. You don’t turn them on anymore, you boot them up.

The Miele dishwasher is hidden flush with the counters. ... It wouldn’t even operate the first time without connecting it to an app. This meant another call to the house manager to have them install an app they didn’t know they needed either. An app to clean some peanut butter off a plate? ... Worse.

Thermostats... Nest would have been an upgrade, but these other proprietary ones from some other company trying to be nest-like are baffling. Round touchscreens that take you into a dark labyrinth of options just to be sure it’s set at 68. ... Or is that what we want it at, but it’s at 72? Wait... What? Which number is this? Worse.

The alarm system is essentially a 10in iPad bolted to the wall that has the weather forecast on it. And it’s bright! I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off, but then the screen would be so barren that it would be filled with the news instead. Why can’t the alarm panel just be an alarm panel? Worse.

And the lag. Lag everywhere. Everything feels a beat or two behind. Everything. Lag is the giveaway that the system is working too hard for too little. Real-time must be the hardest problem.

Now look... I’m no luddite. But this experience is close to conversion therapy. Tech can make things better, but I simply can’t see [how] in these cases. I’ve heard the pitches too — you can set up scenes and one button can change EVERYTHING. ... It actually feels primitive, like we haven’t figured out how to make things easy yet. That some breakthrough will eventually come when you can simply knock a switch up or down and it’ll all makes sense. But that's at least 20 years down the road.

It’s really the contrast that makes it alarming. We just got back from a vacation in Montana. Rented a house there. They did have a fancy TV — seems those can’t be avoided these days — but everything else was old-school and clear. Physical up/down light switches in the right places. Appliances without the internet. Buttons with depth and physically-confirmed state change rather than surfaces that don’t obviously register your choice. More traditional round rotating Honeywell thermostats that are just clear and obvious. No tours, no instructions, no questions, no fearing you’re going to do something wrong, no wondering how something works. Useful and universally clear. That’s human, that’s modern. (@jasonfried. Jan 5, 2026)

The government makes the Civil Service get the lowest bid for computer services and it always, always results in the Civil Service paying out a ton of money in compensation for continual errors. They hide the information about compensatory payments under different names in their rules and regs. "Special payments" was the name the DWP used to use (I worked on the team for two years and paid out an average of 27 claims per week, just me. There were over 50 on the team covering CSA alone, let alone the other areas of the DWP). (Rebecca Hodson)

Friends my age, who have been not-very-techy for decades, and hardly ever watched TV (some didn’t know how to turn theirs on) have now got tablets and Netflix and are keen followers of some niche series I’ve never heard of! (Now I want to say: There are other streaming services!)

Your life becomes so much more liberating when you learn that keeping your laptop plugged in at max is actually Perfectly Fine and much healthier for the battery than draining and recharging constantly. (@PalmyrPar)

More here, and links to the rest.

Buzzwords of 2025

 IQ of a crayon

And trending topics. 

What are you going to do when you retire? I’m going to train to become a “death doula”. (Takes over from “storyteller”. But a birth doula plays a useful role protecting her client against careless and overworked staff. Perhaps death doulas do the same.)

First week Jan: “learned helplessness” is popular, but nobody quite knows what it means.

Breaking the internet.
And calling me a “retard”. (With the IQ of a crayon. Can I be a nice colour?) 

Narcissist has taken over from bully. Never mind the motivation, look at the behaviour – and stop it.

slop: the productions of AI

Late Jan: Some severe storms, and the usual whingeing about “nannying” risk-to-life warnings. Two men were killed by falling trees during Storm Eowyn. Don't forget insurance companies, which won't pay out if you ignored the announcements.

agency: People talk about it as if it was a thing. Here, have some agency. (While talking as if we were the puppets of our subconscious – or a dysregulated nervous system.)


Early Feb
Spitting fury at the suggestion from Yvette Cooper that knives should be manufactured with rounded ends. What if someone attacks you with a poin-ted stick?

Extremely pious Twitter announcements explaining why you or your organisation has “made the decision to leave Twitter”.

nervous system: for heart, psyche, soul etc. 

skill issue: You’re single? It’s a skill issue. Prob from gaming. You lost? Skill issue, not unfairness.

bread-crumbing: See Hansel and Gretel.

Anyone you disagree with online is a p@do, a r€tard or gay.

Accusing public figures of having “given a Nazi salute”. You can freeze frame almost anybody and find a moment where it looks as if they might have given a Nazi salute for half a second.

“Some women have penises” popular last week of Feb.

Maine Women’s Lobby is fighting for trans rights: men in women’s sports, changing rooms and toilets. And probably on women’s panels and women-only shortlists.

legacy

First week March DOGE are sacking weather forecasters. They mention global warming, and if it’s true, Americans will have to find alternatives to cars.

March
I missed the Transies last night. Does anyone know who won Best Trans in a Trans? (@SamBarber1910 Mar 3 on the Oscars)

Scientists have created transgender mice! (They’re “transgenic” mice. See also the autonomous nervous system. It's not automatic.)

proctor: I would say it means to oversee or supervise. Because a test proctor watches over students who are taking test tests and make sure that they’re following all the rules. Right? (@mermaidwrites)

Vibes are back!!! From the late 60s.

21 March: “Abundance” is all over the place.

And Hegel has been all over the place for the past year. I suspect he was a dualist. Grok says: "Hegel's philosophy centers on the dialectical unfolding of Absolute Spirit through history, where reality is the self-development of the Idea via thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, culminating in the rational reconciliation of all contradictions in freedom and self-consciousness." He did say "Everything contains its opposite." 
 
April 
You can only know about online indoctrination into misogyny, violence or whatever if you watch Adolescence. A phenomenon is only real if there’s a TV drama about it.

The folks in Austin, Texas are overjoyed because the city has decided to allow the building of medium-sized blocks of flats. 

Truffles are suddenly everywhere.
And tariffs, not to be confused with truffles.

Black chick peas. Black almost anything. See truffles. (Jan 2026: black food seems to be ovah.)

In Europe they imprison you for a tweet. We’re better off in the US! (In the UK, this is: Lucy Connolly was imprisoned for "hurty words". In reality, her crime was incitement to violence and murder. She pleaded guilty and was given a prison sentence.) 

People don’t like the em dash they find in text from AI, and assume AI invented it. (Americans don't use dashes at all, and punctuate long, complex sentences with commas alone. They use commas for parenthesis, even if the item itself contains a comma. I wish they wouldn't do all that.)

Black and white wings at the corner of the eye. Is there a youtube video?

Oh, no, is “gay” just an insult again? And “retarded” just means “wrong”.

Theatre kids – twice in one morning! 2025-05-02 Who are they? Probably teens who study drama at school and form a tribe. (Passionately involved in drama club, school plays, and especially musical theatre productions, says Grok.) 
 
The UK Supreme Court affirms the original meaning of the Equality Act ("man" means man, and "woman" means woman). Many people and organisations won’t lie down. (At the end of December, Bridget Philipson, Women and Equalities Minister, is sitting on the official guidelines (from the Equality and Human Rights Commission) as she tries to twist logic to allow the Act to allow that "women" includes transwomen. And nobody can keep them out of women's loos, sports, changing rooms, panels, organisations, refuges, shortlists.) 

14 April: high trust, low trust (A “high-trust” society is a “racially homogeneous” society. Or even "monoethnic".)

People are sending drones to picturesque villages and harassing the residents.

People going on about “hoes”. What do they mean? Stopped now mid-June.

People redefining the phrase “born a woman” to mean “looked female at birth” so that they can say Imane Khelif WAS female at birth. Or even “has an F on their birth cert or passport”. They don’t understand the verb to be.

Aura is back, June.
vibe coding: Watch this space.

Longhouse, longhousing: In far-right and alt-right online subcultures, "longhouse" has been repurposed as a slang term to critique modern society. It metaphorically describes a perceived matriarchal, overly egalitarian, or collectivist social structure that some claim suppresses individualism and masculinity. (Grok)

The Kim Reaper (Leadbeater)
sinister ministers
flip the script: turn it on its head

Showers of rose petals are now a Catholic thing. (Through the oculus of the Pantheon – nice.)

Young people think people in the past wore black or very dark lipstick – because that’s what red looks like in black and white.

We’re going through a strange moment with airconditioning. Government says new builds shouldn’t have it, because those who can’t afford it will feel hard-done-by. They don’t put it like that, they waffle about “inequality”. Meanwhile Guardianistas can hardly bring them selves to touch it. Something sinful about being comfortable. And it’s TECHNOLOGY – vulgar, common, you can’t get a unique artisanal one hand-carved out of wood. Everyone gets the same. And it’s American. The British middle classes went through all this over central heating in the 70s. They also won’t take practical steps like fanning yourself with a fan, or even having electric fans. They came with the usual superstitions “Don’t stand right next to it it’ll make you hotter”. Guardianista in mid-rant confesses she has a cheap mobile aircon unit, “But we use it perhaps ten times a year!”. Yes, but I didn’t inhale.

Next year is forecast to be the hottest on record. 

Showing off is called aura farming now, just keeping you up to date. (@gorangligovic.bsky.social‬)

It’s insane that in 2025 a woman not wanting to get undressed in front of a male work colleague is “hate.” (@angijones)

Seismic popular week of 5 June.

7 July: Lots of “hosting” this week as Lionesses celebrate win and Trump visits to play golf and have off-record chats. 2025-07-27 Couldn’t we “welcome” people? Or “play host to”?

14 August: What can we be passive-aggressive about this week? People playing videos with the sound on. Various pass-ag solutions suggested, from frosty looks to moving seats. Some even suggest “Could you mute?” Meanwhile phone manufacturers no longer supply phone jacks. You have to buy bluetooth headphones and sync them to your device. 

Head of Scottish Libraries has banned The Women who Wouldn’t Wheesht. Many furious exchanges on Twitter: I think my district nurse qualification trumps your SEN! Perhaps it’s class don’t patronise me I’m from MORNINGSIDE!!!! (The book eventually made it to the shelves.)

Everything’s a hub now. It has taken over from “centre”.
Strange backlash against painter Mark Rothko as “ugly” and “modern”.

Deconstructing the phrase “land bridge”. Is this a land bridge or a country inhabited for hundreds of years? (See “transitional form”.)

Where did I put things that changed our lives? Freezers. Supermarkets. Takeaway coffee cups. Door dash. Wifi. @moseskagan points out that in the 80s and 90s a lot of people did no regular exercise. Had old fashioned methods gone out, to be replaced with nothing? No more squash or Indian clubs? Along came aerobics and Tai Chi and... tennis?  

I just want to be the happiest version of myself. Meaning “I just want to be happy”.

Solo polyamory, self-partnered. What fresh hell is this?

“The” is vanishing. Yookay, Tate, Tatler, Post Office, “Portuguese are holding a national day of mourning”. Americans already talk about “some French” instead of “some French people”.

Gay means uncool and has for years.
R@tarded means wrong, bad or stupid.

Of any beautiful, priceless object with an intriguing aesthetic pedigree: The important thing is the story. (It's part of the drive to turn any subject into a human-interest story.)

lore: fascinating fact

People still going on about “youngsters find it aggressive if you end a tweet with a punctuation mark”. It was never a big thing. (Or "It was never that big of a thing", as they would say.)

18 September Young people shouldn’t have to pay old people’s pensions because we are entirely responsible for immigration.

People are pretending not to know what “far-right” means after a huge rally in London pro Tommy Robinson, pro the flag and presumably pro removing all brown people. Ooh, you can’t call MAY far-right! Reporters report speaking to ordinary people with “legitimate concerns” who “feel they are not being heard”.

Blench is having a slight revival: a portmanteau of blanch and flinch.

Fabians are the new hate figures.

7 Oct: Longhouses popular this week. Looks like they are matriarchies, and “longhouse behaviour” is sneaky oppression and manipulation. By women.

15 Oct§; incuriosity

Neuroplasticity is the new chemical imbalance. (@hanna_pssd)

16 Oct; This week we are all terribly worried about the feminisation of society. (See “longhouse”.)

Misandry – tip of an iceberg which is an attempt to mirror all the grievances of feminism because men are such sensitive souls they can’t bear to be criticised at all, ever, and call it cruelty. Feminisation of public life comes in here somewhere. What repellent, whiny wimps.

Normalise doing X when you mean “Do X”.

dusty: pejorative. You don’t want to be dusty.

Jacobin: No idea.

Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne has been reprinted! And rediscovered.

mog: Me neither.

Kneeling down and presenting a ring to propose to your girlfriend is back!!!! I’m so glad.

Many such instances: And others on this template.

People saying neuro-linguistic programming is pseudoscience. Never thought I’d live to see the day.

People talking about groups “ruling the world”, as if it was a good thing.

Someone else points out that the “work” women are having done to their faces makes them look more like transsexuals. They have “facial feminisation” surgery, and we copy them.

Things are still “hollowed out” and “broken”.
And they’re still banging on about dopamine. (There's a book – just like in the old days.)
SNAP (food stamps in the US) should be abolished. The food all goes to “bums”.
Men with obvious “mummy issues” wanting to take the vote away from women.

Caitlin Moran is sick of certain words: the environment (“Where is the environment? I’m sure I’ve never been there. It’s a corporate way of saying ‘where we live’.”), diversity, mental health, journey.

November
Twitter saying Mrs Mamdani is ugly. She is stunningly beautiful in a dark-eyed, dark-haired way. 

Outliers are popular. They mean nothing. They’re our old friend “the exception proves the rule”.

Have earbuds become airpods? Makes no sense. And it's "Black Friday Week".

There's a police manhunt in Ireland for an Irish teacher that wouldn't use 'preferred pronouns' in school. (@JohnMurphy51)

In London nobody thanks the bus driver. Didn’t we do that one a few years ago? Why don’t you travel on some London buses?

Now that it looks like believing humans can change sex is not so obviously “the right side of history”, people are coming out with strange, individual compromise positions. Because I’m so special I’ve got my own take. Who suggested transwomen could compete in some sports? Could swim in the Hampstead Ladies Pond if they had their own changing room? The "consultation" consisted only of leading questions putting forward various compromises. Meanwhile women who apply to swim in the Men's Pond are given short shrift.

People are objecting to Post Office’s Christmas stamp as “inaccurate”: Mary is wearing pink, and a head-covering, and she and the baby are lightly tanned. Head-coverings are Muslim! Jesus and Mary were white! Oh, the stupidity.

Emotional regulation, dysregulation. Translation: don’t be uncontrolled in the corridor, as we were told at school.

Tourists are paying to attend Indian weddings. 

Per the Times, the middle classes steal from the self checkout and then sell high-end groceries on Facebook.

Has “roll up” taken on a new meaning?

Oliver Sacks had feet of clay. Someone even calls his case histories “twee anecdotes”. 

Unbelievably, apologists for FGM are still publishing (in BMJ Ethics) and influencing: Oh, but it’s their culture! Trying to abolish FGM is colonialist! And it's really not as bad as made out! (What about footbinding and bride-burning? Infanticide?)

All food is “glazed”. That’s not vinaigrette, it’s a “balsamic glaze”.

People talk about consumerism as if it was a sin. Never defined. (Someone tweets that reading 30 books a year is "consumerism". Too many? Too few?)

On Christmas Day, someone posts pix from Mrs Mamdani’s Vogue photo shoot. Response: tons of bricks on Michelle Obama and Mrs Mamdani. And Melania never got the cover of Vogue! (You see Michelle Obama is BLACK, and Mrs Mamdani is OF SYRIAN DESCENT and Melania may be from Slovenia but at least she’s WHITE. God bless us every one!)

Brigitte Bardot: She was "kittenish". (She was directed to act the way middle-aged men think children act.)

Americans are giving each other herb strippers.

And claiming Italians aren't white. 

And there's a lot of this around in 2025: Reminder to everyone: it is still “the Christmas season” for 11 more days. (@KJP. The converse is "Christmas starts earlier every year".)

And Twitter/X is getting more and more racist. Fix it, Elon.

More here, and links to other years.

Hey, Guys, It's Nearly 2026!

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. (Andy Warhol) 

It’s 2025, and people still think skin colour matters. And Jesus and Mary were white.

It's 2025 and people are still referring to computers as "screens".

It’s nearly 2026, and in London we clean pavements by waiting for a heavy shower of rain.

It's nearly 2026 and people are still whingeing about masks and lockdown.

“I’m not a feminist, but...” is back. Feminism is a dirty word again and feminist now means “transphobe”.

It’s 2025 and men on Twitter are discussing the pros and cons of returning ALL women to the home to run the house and homeschool the children. No woman gets a salary. (And what about spinsters? Nobody remembers us, ever.)

It’s 2025 and some men think they should remove the vote from women. But meanwhile, women have the vote and would never vote for such a measure.

It’s 2025 and some want to bring back the death penalty.

It’s 2025, people, not 1725. (Vaccines work, the earth isn’t flat, 5g isn’t mind control, chemtrails don’t exist, climate change is real, man walked on the moon.)

Someone says “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you”. Riposte: No, you haven’t. You couldn’t even afford a Lego Bridge cupcake. Now Off you [go] with your deranged stupidity, we are busy dealing with real people. PS it’s 2025, the bridge thing, it’s so passé petal, get with it dude. You sound like a museum.

It's nearly 2026, we're in the future. (@ZeroFoxFX)

It’s nearly 2026 and the fate of women and girls in many countries is worsening. (@AnnaPalindrome)

Can't believe it’s 2025 and there’s still so many people convinced that there is somehow a feminist version of doing beauty pageants. (@oksunflowers)

It’s 2025 and India still doesn’t have waste management and sewage systems. (@mandate2049)

It's 2025 and Windows file explorer is a bloated mess. (@mylife4thehorde. Must be why so many people keep ALL their files on their desktop.)

How is it 2025, and we’re here celebrating female nurses “winning back a female-only changing room”? (@Onjalirauf)

It's 2025 and women have to fight to get their own changing room! The world has gone mad. Well done, Ladies! (@norwegianesc)

C’mon, it’s 2025 we have Google, Bing, Safari and so many other internet browsers and you still believe in lies. (@TheeeDeeee)

It's 2025 and we're still using pencils. (@timmyrichieb. It's nearly 2026 and we're still using screens when pencil and paper works better.)

It’s 2025 and dehatis still consider being Gay an insult. (@England593. The haters?)

ILHOON DI MALANG AOWKAOWKAOWKAOWKAOWKAOWK IT'S 2025 NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! (@combinatoright)

More here, and links to the rest.

Truly Dreadful Jokes

Time for some dreadful old cracker jokes! Recycle them, it might save the planet.

What’s this piece of music?
A piece of early Handel, before he joined with Hinge and Bracket to form The Doors. (@I_am_KenBarlow)

A man meets an old woman, is making conversation, and asks her where she's lived in her long life. she says, "Well, I was born in Austria-Hungary, then lived in Poland during my childhood, then spent a stint in the Soviet Union and Germany, then spent the bulk of my adult life back in the Soviet Union, and finally retired in Ukraine."
"Wow, you've done a lot of travelling!"
"Nope, never left Lviv."
(@iwsfutcmd)

A man got the job of marking the border between Russia and Poland. So he set out to walk north with a map and a machine for marking tennis courts. He walks for miles, then comes up against a house that sits right on the border. He knocks on the door, explains what he's doing.

"Which side of the border do you want to be on?"
"Poland."

So he marks the border round the east side of the house and off he goes again. After a few miles he stops and wonders "Why did he want to be in Poland, not Russia?" So back he goes. Knock knock.

"I just had to know why you'd rather be in Poland?"
"I can't stand the Russian winters."

On another occasion, Mr Goldberg is in a travel agents, looking for somewhere warm to go on holiday. He twiddles the globe, the travel agent makes suggestions.

"East Turkey is nice."
"The Turks don't like us."
"Bulgaria is popular now? Tunisia? Egypt?"

Mr Goldberg shakes his head at them all. Finally: “You maybe got another globe?”

Jewish telegram: Start worrying. Details to follow.

How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None – I’ll just sit here and suffer in the dark.

Best “Waitrose” story I know is that I was in ALDI, a woman’s phone rings and she says “I’m just in Waitrose at the moment”. I just looked at her & smiled. (SA)

What’s red and invisible? No tomatoes.

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days I've been opening a packet of sliced ham. (@daveguitarjones)

“See ya later, pollinator!” 
“In a while, dendrophile!” 
(@OldHollowTree)

"Do autistic people take everything literally?" 
"No, you're thinking of kleptomaniacs."
(@scantrahan)

Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilisation?
I think it would be a very good idea.

What would you like to drink?
I’ll just have a chateau neuf du tap!

Man is sprinkling powder around him as he walks.
Onlooker: What’s that?
Man: Elephant powder – it keeps away elephants.
Onlooker: But there aren’t any elephants around here.
Man: You see? It works!

During the storms of 1953 when the sea was about to breach the sea walls, 
the conversation in one house went:

"Should we warn the neighbours?"
Pause.
"No, they didn't warn us when the Vikings came."

A secret serviceman is looking for his contact in a Welsh village. Trouble is, everyone is called Jones. He asks a policeman and is offered Jones the Garage, Jones the Shop, Jones the Dig, Jones the Hair. Finally they narrow it down.

Oh, you’re looking for Jones the Spy!

More here, and links to the rest.

Predictions for 2026

Puritan

Journalists will write articles about:

There's a crisis in masculinity we need a new way to be a man. And it’s still women’s fault.

Dopamine. It's too enjoyable and you and your kids shouldn't get ANY.

Society is becoming too feminised, as George Birmingham wrote in 1924. 

Children not learning cursive, and people not writing with Latinate words and complicated syntax. (If only they'd stop.)

Kids today are actually a new species. Their brains have been rewired by [recent technology you don't like but has probably been around for at least 10 years.]

In primary schools 30 years ago, there was nowhere for children to get a drink of cold water. They took to taking water bottles to school. Someone will moan that “kids today” are so soft they can’t be separated from their water bottles. 

Kids today, of course, are soft. We need to make them suffer physically. We should confiscate their water bottles. It’s good for them to be hungry and thirsty. (Since corporal punishment was banned in 2003, adults have to find new ways of torturing children.)

Schools should teach life skills: budget, cook, sew, knit etc.
Schools should teach kids to manage money.

Capitalism forces people to want things they don't need. One of the biggest problems with social media is the way it slices up all of our lives for the consumption of others and leads people to believe they want things they really wouldn't and they don't want things that they would. (@normonics. It used to be “TV ads” that gave us unrealistic expectations, back in the 1960s.)

In 2025, knitting is back thanks to influencer X, see BBC. And crafts are always coming back. 

Animals eat fermenting fruit, haha. (Biologists say these stories are exaggerated or made up, and they are always humiliating for the animals.)

SUVs are becoming more popular in London. Should we curb their use? Every year for the past 40.

Why can’t my intelligent, enthusiastic, attractive 50-year-old friends find partners or husbands? (Every year for the past 50.)

Girls outdo boys in exams! Oh woe, wrings hands, what can we do?????? (Always presented as “boys lag girls in exams”, centring the boys.)

Wild swimming. I was getting worried that The Guardian hadn’t done a wild swimming article for a while but thankfully they’ve started 2024 by rectifying this, I’m sure everyone is v relieved. (@LukeTurnerEsq)

It's a perennial news story: government department commissions bespoke IT system. (These days, couldn't they use something off the shelf?) It is delivered late and over budget. It is out-of-date, slow, clunky and difficult to use, and doesn't do all the tasks required. It is scrapped at huge expense. Backhanders and jobs for the boys somewhere?

Novel-Reading Men, declare yourselves. The NYT is running its regularly-scheduled “male readers don’t exist” piece. (@CoffeewClassics)

The Guardian will write approvingly about polyamory without mentioning the legal and financial aspects.

It’s only January and someone is suggesting bringing back National Service.

Woolworths is coming back to the high street! Sigh, no.

No more stiff upper lip – why we’re now a nation of criers! (Times, Jan 2024. Every year for the past 50.)

They’re talking about ratcatchers being called rodent operatives. (Sunday Politics, Jan 2024.)

These are always “coming back”: rickets, bed bugs, scabies, TB, syphilis.


The following will also happen:

You don't remind your family Mother's Day is coming up. You don't tell them what you'd like them to do on that day. They forget, or do something different. You cry on TikTok. Next year, same thing.

A male part will be taken by a distinguished actress. Shylock, Frankenstein. In a few years they’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel. A female Poirot! How innovative! Nobody will point to Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet.

A severe storm will be predicted by weather men. People will be sarcastic about their bins being blown over. The storm arrives, power goes off, trains are cancelled, trees fall and planes are diverted to Cologne. The year after, the whole thing happens again.

There’ll be a panic about the snow panic in New York and the UK. There’ll be jokes about the country shutting down after a few flakes. Drivers will spend ten hours in their cars in the Pennines. Drivers are advised to take water, food and blankets. (And a good book and a torch.) Next year the same thing will happen again.

On Twitter, people will ask “Are audiobooks reading?” and claim “You’ll find someone when you’re not looking” and "Nobody will love you until you love yourself". 

There will be many noisy, placard-waving protests. It will be suggested that all these actors are in the pay of... Russia, George Soros, the Martians, take your pick.

A child will die tragically, and its parents will then perform some physical feat to raise awareness and money. (Upper middle class parents never do this, still less appear on BBC Breakfast.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Technophobia 14

Save your document every five minutes. Put all the files on your desktop into a folder, and move it to your hard disk. Now you can back up in the Cloud. Bookmark all your tabs and close your tabs. Curate your Facebook feed. Those are not "straight quotes", they are inch and foot marks. Set Word to use curly quotes. Now automate your job out of existence... There'll be a youtube video – or ask @Grok!

PROBLEM BETWEEN CHAIR AND DESK

Someone on Twitter complained about red lines in Word tell him that "colour" is wrong. I told him he can select a UK dictionary.

Gen X survived “Microsoft Word has encountered an error and needs to close” as we watched our term papers vanish into thin air at 1 am. (Save every 5 minus.)

Bloody power went out just as I was saving. Lost the whole story. (@Gnerphk. Save every 5 mins. Save in the Cloud.)

In my first sales position, my manager was the Chief Revenue Officer. He didn’t know how to use Powerpoint, barely understood Gmail, and spent most of his day materializing behind other people to ask them what they were doing. (@cartoonshateher. She’s good on jobs where you have a highfalutin’ title but no actual function.)

I don’t think there should be an ‘algorithm.’ People should follow what they want and see what they get. (@FischerKing6. And could we have a chronological timeline?)

@WilshireTony is told about the Following tab: All the time I’ve been using this & I hadn’t cotton on to that…

It’s 2025 and Matt Walsh has just discovered the Mute button in Twitter!
It’s January 2025 and I’ve just told someone how to block words on Twitter.

It’s February 2025 and I’ve just told someone to switch to “Following” if they want to pick what they see and see only that.

Just found the unsubscribe button on emails – changed my life. (@Rylan)
(Many replies saying “Wow! Where is it?”) 

My phone pings all the time so I don’t bother to look at it.
(Turn notifications off. I have turned them off and now people moan that I’m unavailable.)   

Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter. Can you explain it?
Us: [We explain Twitter at great length.]
Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter.

Them: But you can do all that with the mouse!
Me: But it's quicker to use keyboard shortcuts – if you can touchtype.

Someone on Twitter: I’m not seeing anything from people I follow!
Me: Switch to “Following”.
Him: Thanks, I’ll try that.

The wife of a cranky poet who lives in the Midwest contacted me to ask if I would write a letter to her husband since he disdains email. Obviously the wife takes care of everything that is required to live in 2025 while the husband saunters along cheerfully in a bygone era knowing that his spouse will protect him. (@JoyceCarolOates. Another complained that their inlaws never got any kind of computer and now can’t do anything. Somebody has to order their food for them and make their medical appointments.)

Rubio orders State Dept to remove Colibri and revert to Times New Roman. Latter being far more legible and economical, it’s the wisest policy so far by Trump admin. (@leemakiyama)

My recollection at DoD is that the default Word font changed to Calibri around 2021, so everyone just started using that. It wasn’t a conscious choice. (@Brett_327)

[A long thread follows claiming that Times is harder to read than Calibri for dyslexics and the visually impaired. The Republicans just want to be cruel – it’s their entire policy! The font is Calibri, the cigarette lighter Colibri.]

I was sent on a shorthand course in 1993 so guys could dictate their emails for me to type. (@Enilorac999)

Had [a job where I did nothing] for about 3 years and it was heaven until someone on high finally decided to crunch numbers...they just moved me over a department and now I have to maintain a few dashboards and lead a quarterly meeting. Still not a real job but I'll take their money. (@coluim_mael)

It's nearly 2026 and we don't have computers we can communicate with by gesturing in the air.

Someone asked how he could access my blog. The link was after my signature on every email.

If you feel like you're bad at your job and it's making you depressed, just consider that, as the investigation of the recent heist revealed, the password to access the Louvre's videosurveillance system was "Louvre". (@phl43)

The entire Louvre security camera system was protected by the password “Louvre”. The museum was also running software from 2003 that hadn’t received security updates for years. (@visegrad24)

I had a job that was basically filling out seven massive spreadsheets with data that was 85% common between all the spreadsheets. I created a linked spreadsheet and input the data once and cut the job time down to pretty much nothing. I didn't tell anyone and eventually left due to boredom. The person who took the job over went back to the "old way" because they couldn't figure out how to maintain my linked spreadsheet. (@Abe_Froman2)

Yup. I got hired as a 'secretary' by a non profit. The main task was managing the database and sending out membership renewal packages. The lady before me edited the letter, membership card, and sticker for the envelope individually. The first day there I set up a mailing list, set up an export to excel from the database, and had her full-time job down to 1 hour of work a week (stuffing envelopes). AND I saved them money by using envelopes with a window and just formatting the letter so the address field would show. I did that job for 2 years. Pay wasn't great, boss was a jerk, but I was basically doing nothing. Answering the phone was easy, and pretending to work while my boss was in the office. I ended up quitting because the boss had started to blame me for her own screw-ups and it was only a matter of time before she killed a computer and fired me for it. (@Librarycat77)

My friend got hired to work from home for a company that was transitioning from some ancient business software that hadn't been supported in years to a newer system. They had previously been doing this manually, record by record and assumed that she would do the same. They'd send her enough records to keep her busy for a week doing them manually. She did it manually for a couple of weeks, then she automated the process and a week's worth of records was completed in less than 30 seconds on Monday morning with the results uploaded Friday afternoon. She did NOT inform her employer who was super happy with her accurate and timely work. She worked ~2 minutes/week for a full-time salary because she automated her job. (@DLS3141)

I’ve sent three emails in my life, and my wife, Barbara, has typed two of them. (Ringo Starr)

In the past, some managers had all their emails printed, organized and put into binders to read and review. (@fvntsplssvn)

When a publication I worked for acquired Macs instead of terminals, some staff thought they were terminals and didn’t know you could save stuff locally and use them as your own personal computer. And when we got email they “replied all” instead of just “replying” for about a week, creating a terrible tangle of furious miscommunication. 

An innovation joins our lives. Most people pick it up and use it and find it more and more useful. About 10 years in, a group of middle class parents get all guilty about it, and try to reduce their and their children’s screen time, and write jeremiads in the paper and online about how evil it is. Even whole books! And of course it “rewires our children’s brains”.

“TV is evil and destroys your children’s eyesight” has morphed seamlessly into “Peppa Pig gives your children dopamine hits and they get addicted and it’s just passive entertainment”. Like books? I used to get told off for reading all the time.

And if you find spam emails waste time, mark them as spam. Unsubscribe from any firm you've bought anything from – and which now bombards you with marketing emails. If you don't know how to do any of this, you could hire somebody to filter your emails and select the ones you need to see. You could call them a "secretary".

TECHNOLOGY – DONCHA LOVE IT? 
This also comes under "overdigitisation".

Struggled with this wireless mouse for months before it occurred to me to change the tracking speed...

It's nearly 2026 and printers are still requiring the colour cartridges to be available to print in black only. What the hell? (@jaseeey)

I once went to a Chipotle who told me at the register that they could only accept orders via the app, I guess because the register was broken? They could not accept any cash or payment from me in person, I needed to step aside, download the app, then order with it. I just left. (@JasonKPargin)

They had those checkerboard code menus. I’m a 76-year-old man. I’m trying to eat a cheeseburger while I have time left on this earth, not deal with that nonsense.

I once broke a bank receptionist's brain because i showed up for an appointment and couldn't check in for it with the qr code because my phone's camera was shattered. he didn't know what to do. i asked him to just go let the lady know i was there. he said that wasn't possible. (@veanimator)

I consider myself a pretty reasonable person but whoever invented the feature that opens Outlook when you click on an email address in your web browser needs to be sent to mow lawns on the Sun. (@VeryBadLlama)

Afternoon spent as predicted on the phone to Companies House: I finally got through to learn that no, they don't really know how their new software works, they can't get into it, the Post Office probably cocked up our identity verification but they're not sure, and we need to do it again, at a cost of £35 each via a law firm. I phoned a firm in Bristol and they confirmed that they are, in fact, making a small fortune dealing with people who have failed to get through the government's software. (LW)

I'm middle aged and having to jump through so many hoops to do something 'simple', with the inevitable glitch somewhere. And I'm trying to guide my parents through this quagmire of nonsense when getting lost myself. (@laull80)

I have just got a new copy of Word and if I change the view or the type size in ONE document it makes the same change in ALL OF THEM. Every time I open a doc I have to adjust the size and view. Searched for an override, no such luck. (2025. And I can’t “tile” pages, it shows them in a line. I tweaked a few settings and it's better, but Word has taken to opening every file on the far left of my screen. Do you want to install updates? I don't think I do.)

There was a tipping point where everything was now maximised for phones, not laptops or heaven forbid desktops. Now the thing doesn't work on the laptop – or you have to break off and take a picture of yourself on your phone and transmit it to the app you're not using and... Looking at you, lexulous.com.

Why does my phone's ring tone start quietly? Takes several rings for me to hear it. Then I have to unzip the pocket in my handbag and take the phone out without hanging up by mistake. And then the other party hangs up. Apparently you can deselect Ascending or Crescendo but I can’t see how.

My clock radio does the same. If I set it so I wake up with the news I just hear whisper whisper burble burble Donald Trump mumble...

And another thing about clock radios. Every one I've had. The numbers gradually fade - to black. And I have to turn on the radio to see the time. Grok says that the numbers just age. So you have to throw out a perfectly good working clock just to get one whose numbers you can see.

I now can't read Twitter/X direct messages without inputting a "passcode". Click here if you've forgotten your passcode! How can I remember something I never knew I had? (It was my birthdate all along!)

Q How do you take a screenshot on the new iPhones without home buttons short answer?
A Press the Side button and the Volume Up button at the same time. 

“These are our default settings. You may change them at any time if you spend 400 hours looking through our Baroque menu system.” (@Klassical_Kat)

I have just wandered round St Alban’s in the dark looking for the station. Thank you for the map, Google Maps, but WHERE AM I? It thinks I am a car which is infuriating. (You twiddle a setting NOT IN THE ACTUAL APP but in “Apps”.) 

At the moment, aircon can’t be installed in new buildings because “not everybody can afford it”. (Though they use more pompous language.)

Why is everyone using WhatsApp when Android phones have a perfectly good texting service? Perhaps because in WA they can have group chats.

When Google and other search engines arose, we were promised "Ask it anything in natural language".
To get any meaningful results you had to use Boolean logic. My idea of fun, but not most people's. Now we have Grok - what Google was billed to be 20 or 30 years ago. (And some are convinced Grok is part of a conspiracy to spread fake news.)

The outrage and foot-dragging when people got home answering machines was... typically British. Mine used to say "Please leave your number SLOWLY" and people would enunciate their number and then sneer "Was that slow enough?" Usually: Call me at gabble mumble mumble gabble, drops voice.

But whatever you do, don't leave me a voicemail. The phone has vaped my message...

More here and links to the rest.