Tim Leach

A list of the finest honey-based drinks, called Maslow's Hierarchy of Meads

Was just thinking of that quote...

I've always gone off brand with toner and never had a problem.

The man must have truly extraordinary charisma, I can't understand how (even after all those scandals and all these warnings) he was ever given a significant role.

I do think CS Lewis was on to something when he wrote about the lure of being in the Inner Ring. (“Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things”)

www.lewissociety.org/innerring/

Don't start a land war in Asia, don't go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, don't piss off the FT politics team.

This.

I read it every year, and I collect that particular edition! ( I've got four copies in various states of disrepair). Such a wonderful book.

image text: Typically, Boorde was rude about the drink, writing of Cornish ale that it was “stark nought, lokinge whyte and thycke, as pygges had wrasteled in it,” adding that “it wyll make one to kacke, also to spew; it is dycke [thick] and smoky, and also it is dyn”.

People talk about our food killing a medieval peasant, but in the Middle Ages they were drinking viscous beer made with egg whites and flour that made you shit yourself

Ooh that's great, thanks for sharing.

Love that essay! As Rob said, it's an easy voice to fuck up, but it's magical when a writer really gets it right. Quite a lot of modern fantasy seems to be written in a more straightforwardly modern voice, and it loses something, I think.

Yeah, he's a loser rather than a nerd - nerds are smart, and have friends (other nerds).

I wonder if it is more a matter of folks losing trust in and consideration of strangers (which tallies with the rise in phones being played out loud etc). In the scrum, you're part of a social contract (and contact) with strangers, in a queue, it is a much more basic kind of contract.

And the fact that it relies on people not to be dicks to work actually incentivises people not to be dicks and think about other people, which is crucial for good pub ambience.

Yeah - the traditional pub scrum is less reliably fair (it's dependent on good staff and well-behaved customers for people to be served in roughly the right order) but it's much more efficient in terms of fitting waiting people into the space.

5. Humankind, Rutger Bregman

A nice bit of optimism in times that feel quite dark. Good case studies, though like a lot of modern non-fiction, it sets out a thesis in the first chapter then restates it repeatedly without significant challenge or evolution. Not sure why this structure is the norm.

I remember Pandorum being surprisingly good, is my memory correct?

Me whenever I see someone with a 1977 Penguin edition of Watership Down:

Cropped up in my phone memories, it makes me smile every time I see it - @paulmmcooper.com doing a casual drive-by on poets (and writers more broadly) in the middle of a really tense and climactic scene (from his excellent River of Ink).

See also the first significant Zack Polanski wobble coming in a Rest is Politics interview, where their general philosophy is to be soft and exploratory rather than hard and aggressive.

I remember when Charlie Brooker wrote for PC Zone and reviewed a game he didn't like - brutal! (But very funny, of course.)

3. Heated Rivalry

Absolutely delightful. Come for the steamy forbidden shagging, stay for the deeply tender and thoughtful romance. The hype is real on this one.

There's an Anglo Saxon poem from the 8th century called The Ruin about the Roman ruins at Bath which gets at that point and the line you cite feels like it could be a very whittled down version of the sentiment.

Yeah, it's like that Harrison Ford line about Star Wars, when Mark Hamill was worried about continuity: "Kid, it ain't that kind of a movie."

I can't remember the exact first encounter with RPGs, but Fighting Fantasy definitely played a big part in developing my youthful interest.

Anecdotal, but I think this has more broadly led to an increase in people regarding what they read (and what they write) as a kind of moral performance, which I don't think is the most useful or interesting way to approach books.

Every time I finish one of Patrick O'Brian's novels, I feel a little pang of sadness that Jack Aubrey isn't real, that I can't raise a glass of wine with him over a plate of soused hog's face and enjoy the warmth of his company.