Marek Kohn

Bonus #DarwinDay content:

Six of the best grumpy Darwin quotes.

Thank you! I hope you get good luck and sound support!

I'm very sorry to hear that. It was a lovely, very special lit fest, and I'm glad there was a Dornier available to ferry me to it a couple of years ago. Hope you can revive it when conditions improve.

Oof. Good luck with the author airlift 🤞

Take the time to do this folks. The proposed changes to ILR are shocking and cruel, which is made abundantly clear in the text of the public consultation linked below. Please lend your voice to try to mitigate the cruelty.

done, at last! Thanks very much for posting and reminding.

Saying 'spurn' when they mean 'squander' is the misplaced apostrophe of sports commentary.

That elitism was also encapsulated in his idea that high-status scientists were the only people fit to talk about science, and the rest of us should be grateful to 'look over their shoulder'.

A photo taken in an Amsterdam bar at 23.07 on 31.1.2020, 7 minutes after the UK left the EU. It shows a scarf with the EU stars arranged on a candle-lit table, with a poster from Brighton's (and my) Club Europ Express pro-European project, showing the slogan 'Because we're still European and always will be'.

We're just coming up to the 6th anniversary of Brexit, and to the time I imagined, nearly 20 years ago, that it would happen. For my 2010 book Turned Out Nice, about how climate change would shape the British Isles, Brexit was in 2026/7. The future arrived faster than I expected. (See Alt text)

A photo taken in an Amsterdam bar at 23.07 on 31.1.2020, 7 minutes after the UK left the EU. It shows a scarf with the EU stars arranged on a candle-lit table, with a poster from Brighton's (and my) Club Europ Express pro-European project, showing the slogan 'Because we're still European and always will be'.

We're just coming up to the 6th anniversary of Brexit, and to the time I imagined, nearly 20 years ago, that it would happen. For my 2010 book Turned Out Nice, about how climate change would shape the British Isles, Brexit was in 2026/7. The future arrived faster than I expected. (See Alt text)

Also sounds almost exactly like Steve Earle, and no bad thing either.

The UK government didn't want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I'm not surprised | George Monbiot It took an FOI request to bring this national security assessment to light. For ‘doomsayers’ like us, it is the ultimate vindication, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem.
Thank you.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

And a lot to do with a Mitteleuropean city. Not to mention the rogue Austro-Hungarian submarine. He’s a great cosmopolitan humorist.

and even with the survey, the why them? question still looms large!

and I remember a brief chat about it, ca2000, with John Maynard Smith, who always relished an apparent anomaly as a potential source of hypotheses.

Grr, homosexual behaviours weren't 'long dismissed by the scientific community as a "Darwinian paradox"'; they posed a theoretical challenge that stimulated scientific research, as this article itself demonstrates, and as science is supposed to do :/

The ideological arc from Alan Sked to Roderick Spode

'For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.' Tribute to Bob Weir, https://bobweir.net/bobby/

The family's words do glow with the gold of sunshine. bobweir.net/bobby/

Striking illustration of how eugenicist criteria are being extended from 'quality of offspring' to the quest for personal fulfilment. And thereby broadening their influence.

Petition: Keep the 5-Year ILR route for refugees. Do not extend it to 10 or 20 years We call on the UK Government to preserve the current 5-year route (ILR) for refugees and people with humanitarian protection.

British citizens and UK-based folks: please consider signing and sharing this petition:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/75...

#RefugeesWelcome

Screenshot of page saying access to Polish shelter map denied by firewall, in Polish, English and Ukrainian

🙃

YouTube video by Kyiv Independent What Russian mass attack feels like in Ukraine

A family's night-time routine in Kyiv; shelter at night, kindergarten in the morning. This ‪@kyivindependent.com‬ video is thoughtful, respectful and eloquent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGEI...

I hear 'fail better' echoing down the ages

Rather comforted to think that none of my mistakes will last so long

You can see why X is their platform of choice, can't you?

Ils sont fous, ces Anglais 🤣

okay, triggered, welcoming 'Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road' back into my head having only just dislodged it after several weeks' rent-free occupation

don't suppose the menu at the Grenadier is as traditional as Google makes it look

Yes, the answer to 'do you trust me?' has to be 'to do what?', as Russell Hardin pointed out long ago.

'130,161 people in Scotland had some Gaelic skills in 2022, an increase of 43,105 from 2011 ... 2,444,659 people in Scotland had some Scots skills in 2022, an increase of 515,215 from 2011'. What's driving this impressive stat surge?