Ben Williams

@Madz_Grant @EchoesofWarYT American Imbecile?

@EchoesofWarYT Did an AI write this?

Four musket balls tore through George Washington's coat at the Battle of Monongahela. Two horses were shot dead beneath him. He rode back and forth across the worst of the fighting rallying broken men, and when the smoke cleared he did not have a single scratch on him. An Indian chief later said he ordered his men to fire at Washington again and again, then stopped, certain the Great Spirit was shielding him. He was 23 years old. He wrote to his brother a few days later, almost puzzled by it, and said he had been protected beyond all human expectation by the miraculous care of Providence. And here is the part people forget. That was not the one time. That was the pattern. At Princeton he rode his horse to within thirty yards of the British line and told his men to hold as the muskets opened up. An officer who was there covered his eyes because he was sure he was about to watch the general die. When he looked again Washington was still sitting tall in the saddle, waving his hat, completely unharmed. For eight years of war he stood where the fighting was heaviest and the bullets simply refused to find him. His enemies started to talk about it. His own soldiers started to believe it. He was not being reckless. He just never seemed to believe it was his time. This is the thread that runs through nearly every great man in history. They lived like the date had already been written and no enemy on earth could move it up by a single hour. Caesar stood on the bank of the Rubicon, looked at everything he was about to risk, and said the die is already cast. Then he walked into it. Cromwell rode into battle after battle convinced the outcome had been settled long before either army woke up that morning, and he fought like a man who had nothing left to fear because the ending was not his to decide. Andrew Jackson stood on the Capitol steps while a man walked up and pulled a pistol on him at point blank range. It misfired. The man drew a second pistol. That one misfired too. The odds of both failing were so small that people argued about it for years. Jackson just raised his cane and went after the man himself. Stonewall Jackson would ride calmly through a storm of gunfire while everyone around him flinched, and when someone finally asked how he stayed so steady he said it plainly. My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has already fixed the time of my death, so I do not trouble myself about it. I am always ready, no matter when it comes. That was the whole secret. Not that they loved danger. Not that they did not feel fear. They simply believed their steps were already numbered by a hand higher than any king, and a man who truly believes that walks through fire like it is a hallway. You cannot kill a man before his work is done. And when you line their lives up side by side, the escapes, the misfires, the bullets that passed through the coat but never the man, it gets very hard to call all of it luck.

@FurtherOr @tc1415 @ladygreenkirtle Opposite in my family. My wife has those bizarre Scandi genes that mean you’re both blonde and tan perfectly. While I’m the dark haired Celt who burns in seconds. She is, however, the mozzie magnet.

@tc1415 @ladygreenkirtle I have a pet theory that people who tan more easily are less attractive to mosquitos. Not for that reason but for some correlated reason. I am one if the "disliked by mosquitos" but fairer family members are not.

Everyone: ugh I keep getting bitten by mosquitoes Me: oh no! They seem not to like me for some reason, I’ve barely ever been bitten by an insect Mum: this is clearly caused by a character flaw of some kind, here are some suggestions. You should endeavour to be more edible.

Does Boulton really not perceive one can both be a fact based journalist and a crass idiot? It’s also a fact that Boulton is a porcine mediocrity. But we can surely agree it would be poor form for a fact based vicar to announce that at his funeral.

@a_fo_benbidbont @Euan4Falkirk Except that’s not what I said. So the plain weird thing is your standard of basic comprehension 🤷‍♂️

@FaringForwards @Euan4Falkirk Supporting different countries in different sports. Plain weird 🤷‍♂️

Goes without saying football and politics shouldn't mix in this way. However, nothing wrong with Lara's view here. I actively cheer for any team playing against Dunfermline because I'm a Falkirk fan. Same goes for Scotland fans because England are our rivals.

Another one saying you’re a distasteful cretin? Perhaps for once we can all agree with Bob.

Bizarre experience of going to the gym and seeing a man on the rower who was an extraordinary doppelgänger of @AmbJohnBolton. His moustaches were quivering with exertion.

Since deleted but it encapsulates the rigorous thinking of the Socialist Worker that they demonstrate their opposition to the death penalty… by celebrating a proponent’s death.

caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2026/… If evidence be needed of what is wrong with Article 3. A man who wounded his partner, burgled multiple houses and then raped a young women can stay here becaue there is a risk of gang violence in Jamaica over his mother having given evidence 25 years ago.

@BucketsOf_Rain Good use of colour by the cover designer too

One of the first things I do when I come to Belfast is buy a book from a second hand bookshop and I particularly like it if it’s a Northern Irish writer. The title poem is lovely - to me especially, as a Londoner

@TheSimonEvansX @DeoDomu1que Jarvis is a genius. I would rate listening to him read the full “David Copperfield” well above reading it myself. How one man can have such a panorama of characters, from the wicked to the pathetic to the sublimely comic, living in his voice, is just wonderful.

@DeoDomu1que @FaringForwards Well that’s a classic and I’m delighted to hear you are both enjoying it!

God we’re doomed. Cut off the author’s name to spare blushes, but the intensely difficult text he is posting about is… “The Hobbit”.

@ikeijeh @FTerryArchitect RIP? He is still alive. Obviously we can read between the lines, but perhaps better not to voice your conclusion?

It is with sadness for the family that my father Quinlan Terry, has needed to retire from practicing architecture due to poor health. He has had an amazing career working until the ripe old age of 88 and becoming the best classical architect of his generation.

@Ameer_Kotecha Also, Blair hired him because he was a thug who understood the redtops in the days when that mattered. Not because of his mastery of political analysis or policy. The idea he’s some sort of Richelieu is laughable. It’s like hiring Bill Gates’s bodyguard to teach you coding.

The rehabilitation of Alastair Campbell is one of the most annoying things about British punditry. The less intelligent co-host of a popular podcast. The man who inspired Malcom Tucker - Westminster’s most notorious bully - and who now has the gall to play the nice guy and lecture us all about the importance of mental health. Of course it’s all unsurprising given his Centrist Dad shtick who espouses all the normal right-on opinions. If he ever had anything interesting to say you could look past what an unappealing person he is - but he never does

One of my daughter’s happiest memories is going to an open day there, being allowed to hold a horse’s eyeball and various other viscera. She was 7.

It’s funny to think that if Anthropic had chosen a different computer pioneer to honour, we’d be chatting to a genius level AI called Alan.

💯

It also raises a really rather obvious question: if it is a dereliction of their duty to constituents for MPs to have other jobs, then how can we tolerate them also running huge government departments, let alone one of them being PM, 1st Lord, & Minister for the Civil Service?

@FurtherOr I always thought SW10 pretty bad, but I suppose it is probably within a mile from Fulham Broadway then?

There are eight boroughs (H&F, K&C, Westminster, Lambeth, Islington, C of L, Tower H, Lewisham) in which no point is more than a mile from a station. The sole central blackspot is in Southwark, specifically between Walworth and Camberwell: the red dot just south of the river.

In fact, Camberwell is notoriously bad for public transport for such a central location. The only central part of London more than 1 mile from a station is Camberwell/Walworth. [Link below.]