Frank Podmore

Intention Matters: The Magic of Middle-earth Credit: Aronja-Art Today I want to talk about how magic works in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and associated legendarium, as well as how systems of morality and values function …

NEW BLOG POST! Today we're using @bretdevereaux.bsky.social's recent articles on this topic as a jumping-off point to talk about spiritual, magical, and moral power in Tolkien, and how they're all fundamentally the same thing.

Up to 40,000 homes to be built on disused railway land - BBC News The UK government is taking a "brownfield first" approach to building in places like Manchester.

Huge tracts of railway land are lying unused in strategic and sustainable locations.

This government is acting to unlock these brownfield sites to deliver much-needed housing and drive regeneration across our towns and cities.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

WASPInomics and the magic avocado tree Why boomers struggle to make sense of the millennial world.

My latest, exploring with numbers how the millennial household budget is basically incomprehensible to retired boomers.

Top image: Sauron armored with the one ring, caption: But they were all of them deceived. Bottom image: the 9 Kings of men who would become Ring wraiths. Caption: for they were actually wedding rings, and they were now married to each other.

He got their asses

The joy of building It's the key to a better future

All mammals play at the skills they must master for survival, and we are no different.

www.thereengineer.pro/p/the-joy-of...

We need to teach people the difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. Because the discomfort of the safest people is endangering the most vulnerable, all day every day.

when they close it all up, I do believe this will go down as the funniest video on the internet

Politicians: [decades long war on 'red tape']

The public: You should have to have a licence to own or operate kitchen scissors

Politicians: But... red ta-

Public: Separate licences.

More evidence for the British public's love of banning everything (or of making everything such a hassle no one does it anyway)

Just constantly invoking him, like Carthago delenda est, except it's '... and Jimmy Savile would've supported my opponent'

Don't assume you'd stand up to Trump It's easy to imagine yourself resisting authoritarianism. Most people don't

Don't assume you'd stand up to Trump. It's easy to imagine yourself resisting authoritarianism — but everyone has their reasons not to.

This is why class politics works better than anything else tried so far (but not *that* well because so many purveyors of class politics either seem or are posh)

Like the polling during lockdown that found approval for a permanent curfew for adults

Side note: actually quite amusing that the two most successful 21st century Tory or Labour leaders, in terms of increasing their party’s vote share, were May and Corbyn at the same election, thereby cancelling each other out

last night my friend was like, i’m just like my mom and I can’t sit still I always gotta be doing something. I’m up and cleaning and moving things around.” and I was like, “oh not me I really enjoy sitting. sometimes people are like ‘is she dead?’ and i’m like ‘nope i’m just sittin’”

See, I told you

Feels like a good time to announce that I love penalty shootouts

Oh I forgot to post the baseball cards of the striking workers they were handing out. Genius.

Yep, and rugby league.

Cover illustration from THE YELLING CONTINUES above the contributor feature. ERIC'S TRIP by Frank Podmore WEBSITE: frankpodmore.wordpress.com yesterday this said lunch. now it’s unwound from round the soup tin, blown away and up and rolled into the MoMA, (or—not rolled: spun, recordlike, thinner than a vinyl groove). there is a something there, but what it is isn’t What It Is, you dig? the record is not the music.

Spinning like a record (but faster), here's a sneak peek at "ERIC'S TRIP" by @frankpodmore.bsky.social!

Order THE YELLING CONTINUES: pwritersu.com/TYC
About the author: frankpodmore.wordpress.com

I've got a poem in this, so obviously you should buy several copies

Physical copy of THE YELLING CONTINUES on display at our booth, priced at $20.

THE YELLING CONTINUES open to show pages: a full page of art and the table of contents.

Eva holding a copy of THE YELLING CONTINUES in front of our publisher Lip Think Press’s banner!

PWU’s booth setup, with all our inventory: physical copies of LONG-WINDED listed at $25, BOTH FALSE & TRUE at $15, THE YELLING CONTINUES at $20; a board with stickers, pins, and postcards, plus keychains, all by Ceilidh @suitcasedragon! As well as business cards and pamphlets.

Physical copies of THE YELLING CONTINUES are here!

PWU is at #SDCC2025 and these beautiful new books can be picked up all weekend! Stop by and check out the rest of our inventory, too—we’ve got something for everyone :) Booth 2103 with Dial R Studios, directly under the Independent Press banner.

And of course people use this logic on themselves, they don't actually start from "I'm a good person if I do good things", they start with "I am a good person. Therefore, the things that I do are good, and anyone who argues with that is bad."

I mean this is consistent with those guys being lonely. If anything I think it makes it more likely they're lonely. There's no contradiction between having obnoxious traits and also having sympathetic traits.

The other bit we should bring back is the idea that moral values are things we try to live up to, even if - or perhaps *because* - they're unattainable. So much wasted energy goes into policing the supposed hypocrisy of people failing to live up to high moral standards

delighted to announce my new job as conservative professor. it’s like a regular professor, but i’m wrong about fucking everything.

Ozzy knew he was gonna die and ended it with one last metal show where money went to children's healthcare (and children's hospice for deathly ill children, which is so fucking metal it was already kind of a plot to an episode of Metalocalypse with Toki)

What's your church done lately

The moderate Tories I know either switched to the Lib Dems or switched off entirely

Anyway, I'm visibly getting off topic here so, in conclusion: London is great and pretty safe, though it could be better (and definitely could be cheaper). Most of us want you to visit and to stay if you like the place

Also, our health outcomes are getting worse generally from, ooh, about 2010 (wonder what happened then?). So, yes, too many people are dying - but not because of violent crime:

www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...