Eddie Robson

Also, the boob hypnosis stuff is misinformation put out by The Sun. A journalist asked him specifically to make her *think* her boobs had grown, he initially refused but agreed to try it. Cool to see Smart Thinkers(tm) run with that.

I'm always fascinated by how much people love to hear stories about creativity being easy. Classic songs written in ten minutes based on a riff the guitarist doodled between songs, that sort of thing. Stories about it being a long and difficult process are less popular, oddly.

They’ve hit 9 hospitals in Iran so far, including a maternity ward. Remember that the next time they try to sell you some bullshit about “the most moral army”

Ask the public what services they want to cut, or what services they're happy to be rubbish, and you get a very different set of answers.

They'll say cut foreign aid, ofc, but that's all but gone already. What next?

Totally, having two guys who are watchable in anything helps.

Yeah there isn't one in my parents' village any more, and there used to be a couple when I was growing up. I'm always baffled there isn't one in Looe, where my in-laws live: you'd think people in a seaside town would buy magazines, but no.

Anecdotally I do know someone who used to vote Tory and is a natural Tory who became a Green counsellor a few years ago, and it made more sense than them going Labour.

The amount of events and festivals around the country using genAI for their promotional images is slightly maddening. All about supporting local, except their local artists.

Watched this last year, story is decent but the location work and music sequences are stellar.

Well, that explains the erratic delivery times.

Their approach with stuff like Lego was odd. Normally Lego is the same price everywhere unless in a sale - the Lego shop, Argos, The Entertainer, supermarkets. Years ago I went into WHS and every set had a mark-up of about 20%. I can only assume the target was grandparents who didn't know better.

My lock screen, a picture of a lady sort of backing away in disgust or fear from some pastrys and bread

My phone appears to have made my lock screen just be random stock images so now I have this image of a lady scared of pastrys

It's also interesting that the polls were so close, and we've got used to polling underestimating the right that close polls usually mean the right will win. But in this case the polls seem not to have picked up how many people actively dislike Reform.

It's strange, it used to be my default shop for everything when I was a kid - mags, books, toys, videos, school supplies. Bit by bit, it was all captured by a more specialist rival that did it better. Not sure why their response was to overprice everything that didn't have a price on the cover.

A Novel of the Belgian Congo With Naked Foot He came to rule an African Outpost— but was ruled by her instead! EMILY HAHN Complete and Unabridged

Ordered a first edition US paperback of James Dickey’s Deliverance (for work) and was sent the wrong book. But I really can’t be disappointed as *this arrived instead.

A copy of Jitterbug on a table in a bookstore

With Jitterbug in shops from today, tag me if you spot one and I’ll repost.

Part of the problem is WHS became so crap for everything else. There was a time I might be going in for a book, a DVD, stationery, a greetings card, some Lego, walk past the mags (always at the front) and see something. But for at least a decade, I only go in WHS for mags or to use the post office.

The Conservatives are, after all, well placed to know a lot about this morass, since they introduced it. In 2012, the coalition government launched the Plan 2 system of student loans and raised university fees across Britain to £9,000 per annum. To put Plan 2 in simple terms, loan repayments were laid out via a seemingly innocuous series of calculations. The first to consider is the threshold at which repayments begin. If you left education with, say, £27,000 worth of debt, you would only start paying it back once you met a predetermined salary. On its face, this might not seem like a particularly onerous demand. “Low-earning” graduates would avoid being saddled with repayments before they were financially able to begin making them, while their “high earning” peers could start chipping away at their debt, and provide an income stream for the state.

As any of my fellow literature or history graduates will tell you, however, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the threshold at which someone becomes a high earner was never particularly high and, following years of inflation, is now preposterously low. Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the government are freezing the threshold at April 2026 levels (£29,385) for a further three years only makes this worse. The real living wage for London is currently calculated at £28,860, which means that any London-based graduate making just £40 more per month than the minimum needed to live there will automatically begin paying their debt. In real terms, this means practically any graduate in any form of full-time work will be paying as much as 9 per cent of their income to the state, and for a very, very long time. Worse still, the amount owed by those graduates below the threshold does not remain static – it accrues interest, year on year, whether you’re working for low wages, volunteering, taking a career break or on maternity leave, ensuring that if you do pass the threshold some time later, you will be returning to find your original £27,000 much enlarged.

If the state’s attitude to what constitutes “high earnings” makes you think it’s oblivious to the concept of inflation, let me put your mind at ease. When it comes to the calculation of student loan interest, they are very conscious of inflation indeed. Each year, the interest charged on student loans is calculated by two components. The first is the Retail Price Index (RPI), which generally records a higher number than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Governments prefer the latter, lower figure for many of their other calculations, just not when it comes to adding extra debt to every graduate in the country. To this is added a second component, a percentage tied to each graduate’s earnings, meaning that as your salary increases so too does the interest you’re paying on the loan you took out. If you think this seems like a predatory and punitive way to bilk students for as much money, and over as long a period of time, as possible, then you’re just about up to speed on this scandal, which amounts to a regressive stealth tax on every graduate in the UK. One which, it’s calculated, you would need to be earning £66,000 per year to pay off in anything like a timely fashion.

The debt burden of UK students is one of those things where, the more you look into the details, the more insane and predatory it is. So I tried my best to explain the numbers involved without making my, or your, head explode.

I must admit, as a lifelong reader of paper magazines, I switched to subscription during the lockdowns and rarely go into a shop for one now. Which means I don't impulse buy mags that aren't my regular ones as much as I used to. But I would see them if they were in Waterstones.

tUnE-YaRdS - Water Fountain Listen to Water Fountain on TIDAL

#THETENX5 Day 28

"Water Fountain" by Tune-Yards (2014)

The quickfire, surreal lyric reads like an unauthorized sequel to Subterranean Homesick Blues; the irresistible rattling percussion meant it was bizarrely used as menu music in FIFA 15.

tidal.com/track/292579...

This is terrible news and absolutely entirely 100% as predicted. And given most post offices relocated into WH Smith stores, this will have an even greater impact.

And on a similar note, IPSO has just ruled against The Telegraph over its implausible sounding story headlined, "We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays" - www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/0210...

me: it's okay to be a person struggling with productivity during a prolonged crisis my brain: not u though me: not me though

She's like an old samurai whose great battles are behind her but every once in a while she kills a man with piece of paper just to prove a point

If her safest second serve is beyond your ability to return, that's what she'll play, over and over. It showed such a lack of understanding that you would not be a real opponent in that scenario.

When this poll came out there were some men going "most players double fault at least once a match so I would win a point that way, ahhh". But... pros only double fault because they're pushing themselves to make big serves under pressure. If they're playing some random bloke they don't have to.

Story time, y'all, about the time I witnessed nearly this exact scenario play out in real time.

It's 2003 or 2004. Serena, Venus, Anna Kournikova, and Brenda Shultz-McCarthy played an indoor exhibition event at Rupp Arena.

Both Williams sisters had won majors at this point. 🧵/x

There's a parallel with how the US right reacted to Obama's election, isn't there.

A screenshot of a conversation I had with someone who stole my photo in which I ask them to not steal.

Part 2 of my conversation with someone who stole a photo of mine.

Pages like these are awful, stealing other people's work and uploading it themselves. A common theme among them is getting defensive and blocking anyone who calls them out. Just got blocked by this one after asking them to take down my photo. Repost buttons exist for a reason. Avoid aggregates.

Almost seems wrong making them fight.