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alistairking.bsky.social
If you’d be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal.
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On today’s NYT Mini Crossword, which I did on an iPhone, did you get a weird red thing darting about like a fly when you completed it? What the hell is it? Take a look at a static image here if you’ve already completed it because I reveal the answers.

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

Apropos of nothing at all, really, I was just out strolling and it occurred to me that the characterisation of right-wingers being pro-small state and left-wingers being pro-large is a massive over-simplification. At the risk of more over-simplification, I think it’s more that those on the right…

submitted 2 hours ago • 1 comment

Submission for one of those new definitions they do on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue... Entities: an unspecified number of breasts

submitted 6 hours ago • 2 comments

AfD gains expected, my radio tells me. Imagine living in Germany, a country right next to the old Eastern Bloc - indeed partially a *part* of it - and thinking now, in February, with Trump’s pro-aggressor stance fully laid bare: “Yeah, I’ll have me some of that. I’ll add to this deranged movement.”

submitted 9 hours ago • 1 comment

Sometimes I’m envious of the Scots. The history! Such a proud people. So beautiful a country. And then, while my son watches the start of the rugby on TV, I hear O Flower of Scotland and I think again.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Ever spot a connection between two words for the first time that’s SO blindingly obvious you think you MUST have noticed it before but you can’t remember when? Today’s for me is ‘pass’ and ‘passage’. My defence - if needed - is ‘pass’ in ‘passage’ is pronounced differently with a southern accent.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

They see it as a sport, Trump and Musk: doing and saying things that could be construed as fascistic - such as tweeting support for the AfD - then either ignoring the accusations or dancing around individual issues to show how they’re only on the cusp and there’s a sliver of plausible deniability.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

“America has turned” www.ft.com/content/1511...

submitted 1 day ago • 23 comments

Reached a week of humming Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, one of the most beautiful orchestral compositions in existence. Or at least the first minute of it, the bit I’ve been humming, is. The second is OK. The rest? Not very catchy. Or am I a massive philistine? m.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dmf...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

1/2 A panellist on Any Questions this evening described the era we’ve now entered as a second cold war, and it’s hard to argue against that. Oh, for the simplicity of the first, though! East vs west*. So straightforward. What do we have now, though? With the US, they’re just in it for themselves.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

This is low. I’m in a minority on here in thinking that exploring the idea of acting as a bridge isn’t definitely a terrible idea, even though it probably won’t achieve much, but we should only try if we do so with integrity. This takes diplomacy too far and slips into appeasement.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

BREAKING: They were here all along.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Lost my reading glasses in the pub I was hot-desking at. Someone would be a mug to steal them, as they’re worthless; they must’ve been handed in. But no one’s seen them. “I’ll take your number,” says the manager, adding “and your name?” after I give it to her. “Alistair.” “With an E or an O?” 😐

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Is there a case for placing economic sanctions on the US?

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Listening to The Media Show on Radio 4 in the week that Trump, well, you what that shit has been up to, it strikes me for the umpteenth but most pronounced time that a politically-neutral broadcaster like the BBC can’t plausibly be neutral in relation Trump. It almost isn’t, really. Good thing too.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Cathartic as it might be and little difference though we can make, I'm not sure it's a great tactic to mock right-wingers for their naïvety in backing Trump if they're now publicly criticising his position on Ukraine; we should be encouraging everyone, them included, to criticise him on this.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Just followed someone back as a token of my appreciation for being the only person so far to have liked a post that I thought was worthy of at least three likes.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

That's the last time I give a handwritten shopping list to my wife. I needed a pair of wooden shoes and she's come back with two cocker spaniels.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

How do I stop my son from giving me constant, tedious, unsolicited financial advice? It's very unwelcome, he won't stop and he doesn't go back to school till Monday.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Hard relate from me in my 20s.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

My nerdy 14-year-old son is earnestly lecturing his exhausted and much less-nerdy 11-year-old sister on the concept of compound interest, and I think this is my cue to rescue the latter and get her to bed. (Yeah, I know it’s 10.30. It’s half term.)

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments