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danieljowen.bsky.social
A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, covered in breadcrumbs and dipped in ketchup. He/him North Devon, UK 🧡
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I resent the "furiously". It makes it seem somehow squalid.

The random number generator has chosen another great fountain pen and ink combination for me this week. Love the design of the TWSBI, and always nice to be reminded what a smooth nib it has.

This conversation was prompted by a (now deleted) post from someone (not DutchBill) asking 'why are you all talking about silly things like fountain pens instead of listening to my dire warnings about imminent cybersecurity catastrophe'. I'd like to give a full response to the original post.

old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “looking for an obituary.” Vendor says “those are towards the back of the paper, comrade.” Guy says: “not the one I’m looking for.”

Alongside all the understandable expressions of justified surprise at this Mail front page that I saw on Bluesky yesterday, I also saw a small number of smug, obnoxious posts along the lines of 'only someone who knew nothing about media would be surprised at this'. Those people can fuck off.

You know who should've won an Oscar last night? The person who designed the little 'Gravity on / off' buttons in Alien Romulus.

I have no idea who Grant Grissom is, but he has my respect. (NYT 3/2/25 p11)

Anyway, AI has already stolen friends’ work, and is going to put other people out of work. I do not think a political party that claims to be the party of workers in this country should be using it. Even for just a silly joke.

Guys you're still trying to fix the US. I told you we can't do it. But we can recreate it in the aggregate.

The year is 2035. The latest rail fare rises are announced. Britain’s only remaining train is a single carriage containing one seat, which costs £500m, or £499m off-peak. The train doesn't go anywhere. There's a bus replacement service, which is also stationary, but it makes a nice change.

Congratulations to BRIT winners Charli XCX (Bishop's Stortford College, £38,319 per year), AG Cook (King Alfred School, £27,747) and The Last Dinner Party (Bedales, £52,075) for showing that people from ordinary backgrounds can reach the top in pop music, that most egalitarian of art forms.

What an incredibly unsettling slogan.

I don't say this lightly, but the BBC are really not up to this moment. www.bbc.com/news/article...

'Did you even say thank you?'

Before a man is allowed to join a dating app, he should be forced to use a fake female account and turn a handful of guys down. Just so he knows what bullshit women are facing on there.

This is, by some distance, the most expensive fountain pen I have hired so far from Pensharing.com. I confess, it is really lovely. Is it £800 of lovely? I'm not sure. But I could see myself buying one second-hand one day.

I would go further and say this is just Mason being bad at his job. I don't know how you can write this paragraph seriously after we've had threatened invasions of the Panama Canal, Canada, Mexico, Gaza and the reinvasion of Afghanistan. Trump is not a secret pacifist, he just hates Ukraine.

The green one is when Connections finally jumped the shark for me. Connections Puzzle #629 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟦🟪 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦

It always was. Trump was always Trump.

Obama and Biden may think they are honoring the office of the presidency by keeping quiet at a moment like this — if so that’s just preening vanity — they owe it to the office and to the Republic that until last month it served to speak up loudly and clearly and without relent.

"We ask the public not to speculate at this time."

"Could she have wafer thin ham?"

I have never wanted to be in a gang more in my life

What’d she do? Return a Tesla?

"Could she have wafer thin ham?"

*to the tune of Careless Whispers* I'm never gonna fly again, the FAA has got no workers

It's funny because it's true.

This does rather assume Trump has any intention of permitting fair elections in 2028, which seems unlikely at the moment.

I love this account. Such great names.

Drained, Chester sat down and waited for the police to arrive. Staring at Alan’s still-warm body laying among the empty shells, he felt no remorse. There were two sacred rules. You didn’t touch another man’s wife, or another man’s nuts. His ears perked up as the sound of sirens rose in the distance.

My first payday since I quit Facebook and cut myself off from the UK fountain pen collectors' 'Buy, Sell, Trade' group who were, essentially, my drug dealers. Would it be cheating to ask someone to have a look on there for me, see if anyone has listed something pretty?