Brian Painting 💙

I agree with everything about this.

@SalvadorDafti Have the MC5 ever been bested? Has anyone plugged in at the other end of the Gramde Ballroom and outshine, outdone Motor City's Finest?

One of the greatest, not to mention most ferocious, two-chord song in the history of two-chord songs

@AMP86793444 I'm only up the road. Usually. Today I'm not. Notwithstanding..one of the very finest of cathedrals. The glass alone is a f*&%ing triumph. What a church

Guess where I’m today.

@WG_RumblePants Its never Victor Trumper though is it.

No! I don’t want to guess who the cricketer is. I know who it is. So does everyone else. And you know that we know who it is, but you still post it anyway. Stop it.

@WG_RumblePants Every time I turn this damn thing on

@WG_RumblePants Many happy returns old chap

Today is the good old 24th of April again. As some of you may recall, Sachin Tendulkar and I share the same birthday. It seems to happen every single year. Between us, we’ve won the World Cup, scored 34,357 international runs and taken 201 international wickets. We’ve even managed to take more 5 wicket hauls in ODIs than Warnie. So happy birthday to us @sachin_rt — and thank you for your contribution to our wonderful and very longstanding partnership 😉 And, as an aside, thank you also to so many of you who have kept me company here and in the real world over the last year. It’s been a lot of fun. Your friendship is very much valued. Hopefully, I’ve kept you entertained. Thank you in particular to my extended family at @SWCCcrocus and @surreycricket and also to my newfound friends at @rajasthanroyals — cricket and our community make such a positive difference to my life. It’s a joy. So thank you all.

@WG_RumblePants @weymarplanet Short thread. 😁

@weymarplanet It’s Shane Warne. Because it just is.

The ultimate question: Who is the greatest Test Match bowler of all time? 🏏 ​Drop your pick and the reason why below! 👇

Amidst all the interminable AI slop I've started to both try to keep my creative powder dry and invest in some y'know, thinking . this is my latest essay on Shakespeare's plays, possibly his best. Henry IV pt 1. the most appropriate for #stgeorgesday open.substack.com/pub/brianpaint…

@PalantirTech Hey @NHSEngland @DHSCgovuk these the guys you've entrusted our health data with?

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

@SalvadorDafti Oh for heavens sake stop this !! Fookin Fannies and now Big Star...

Big Star - Thank You Friends Classic Chilton: beautiful, bitter, and self-aware, sarcastically raising a glass to toast the fair-weathers that were there to make it happen, only to leave them high and dry. 1974.

@SalvadorDafti They mastered it. It has this certain Beatles ring to it that they perfected in sparkys dream, verisimilitude and Neil jung that (bandwagonesque perhaps ) they never quite repeat. And as you allude to. A testament to how good British guitar pop was mid 90s

@Zingari The most basic of chord structures too, and yet they know what to do with them, which is an art in itself. They were fantastic at it actually

Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix My album of the day. Arriving, fully formed and quietly, at the height of Britpop’s hype. Sunshine harmonies, jangling guitars, all played with the confidence of a band that’d perfected the art of referencing influences. 1995. 🎧 Don’t Look Back

@WG_RumblePants A true labour of love. thank you. I've read so much of this era, of Hobbs, Trumper et al. Its always bittersweet watching these newsreels. I'm watching some of the finest cricketers that have ever taken guard or passed a cap to the ump. AND, bugger, I want to watch the full game

There’s a lot of really fascinating silent footage of Silver Age cricket (1918-1939) available online, which I suspect hardly anyone ever watches. So I’ve edited together some of the Jack Hobbs footage and set it to music of the era. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out.

@SalvadorDafti STTTTTRRRIIIIIKE 3! my absolute out the park Stones favourite and for a long time even made the funeral list. Probably still does

The Rolling Stones - Shine a Light A Leon Russell co-write, supposedly about the sad decline of Jones, helped taken to church by Preston. A spiritually reassuring, gospel-infused farewell to a tortured friend. 1972.

@SalvadorDafti you, sir, are on a roll

Leon Russell - Leon Russell My album of the day. One of rock’s true behind-the-scenes greats, backed by crack musicians, stepping out in his prime. A man with a genius for fusing genres into something timelessly American. 1970. 🎧 Dixie Lullaby

@SalvadorDafti CHOOOON.

Van Morrison - T.B. Sheets The suffocating, slow-burn sounds of a man watching his lover slowly die. In a room thick with the smell of illness, the song’s stark, unchanging rhythm mirrors the endless wait. 1967.

Dear #mdant community ! May I ask you for a little help? I need to do some research on some work I'm doing around patient data and could do with casting my networking net as wide as possible - so if you do see this - please help by completing the attached forms.cloud.microsoft/r/ZYVbqiLYgg

I would pick the day Microsoft has an #outage to post a link to a M365 form...

Deep into the #patientdata and #privacy work with my project @VitaniumOnline . I'm running some market research and very much hoping you all can help me by completing this short survey and sharing with family and friends for reach. Thank you, Brian forms.cloud.microsoft/r/ZYVbqiLYgg

@bbctms @MichaelVaughan "Product"

.@MichaelVaughan on the positives that The Hundred has brought to the English game 💰 #BBCCricket #TheHundred

@antmiddleton *shamed

I body slammed a male police officer to the ground in 2012 and I was initially charged with ABH but then forced to plea guilty naïvely to section 20 GBH. I didn’t break any bones nor inflicted any bruises or cuts and held myself accountable not knowing the magnitude of the charge. I held myself fully accountable as a white, Christian, British, straight man to which they took full advantage of. It’s funny how British law and order is fully applicable to us but differs to those who can play the cultural and racial card… If there’s an investigative journalist out there that wants to know the truth please get my court statements and you will find out that I never laid a finger on a woman and that the situation wasn’t preempted. My reaction was sparked by an action by the male police officer however I still held my accountable for ‘my actions’ thereafter. If the Manchester airport scumbags do not get a custodial sentence then I will stark something that no one will be prepared for and I will bring a whole British nation along with me! 🫡🇬🇧