Daniel Soar

Sometimes I feel really sorry for the characters in books. Novelists can be bullies and control freaks! So you have to love the great Mexican writer Yuri Herrera, whose latest book I reviewed here lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/…

@ejhchess I didn't! He was right. I feel ashamed still to be so obsessed.

@danielsoar I'm guessing you've seen this piece prospect.org/article/christ…

Christopher Hitchens and the great derangement lrb.co.uk/v41/n06/daniel…

Seymour Hersh on covert military operations overseen by George H.W. Bush as vice president under Reagan, cutting out the president, Congress and even the CIA. At the heart of it all the shadowy figure of Admiral Art Moreau, who was "just like [Bond's] 'M'" lrb.co.uk/v41/n02/seymou…

I just remembered this email from Donald Rumsfeld and it has brought me joy again.

@ffgqc @BarristerSecret @HMCTSgovuk In court presumably not but I share the fear. Georgi Markov, 1978? The famous James Smith and Sons umbrella shop on New Oxford Street sells real sword sticks. Deadly weapons. ☂️ 🗡️

Our court service is now banning lawyers from taking umbrellas into court lest they “be used as a weapon”. I ask @HMCTSgovuk to kindly provide a single example of a barrister’s golfing umbrella being used as a weapon in a court. Just one. Please. Indulge me.

Come hear the brilliant Francis Spufford @LRBbookshop tomorrow eve: ice, adventurers, the Soviets, atheists and more lrb.me/2fk

@leohollis The connecting tunnel they ordered was too short? It was built by Kushner Companies and they were too shy to do a big fuck-off K?

The 3D illusions of Kokichi Sugihara, an engineering professor at the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences.

A classic

@chrisllarkin don't take snacks into the auditorium. Or booze.

@caxtonian @LRB it's SO embarrassing that you can tell

"Chapter 6: I consider the differences between myself and Kafka": @xlorentzen's huge memoir on a napkin lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/christ…

@DrMatthewSweet not film music so it won't count but the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach, esp the bit that goes "1 2 3 4 5 6 7"

The 4 Ds of online covert action at GCHQ: "Deny Disrupt Degrade Deceive" - scary new story by @ggreenwald firstlook.org/theintercept/2…

One of the eight assistants who watched 2900 films for 16 hours a week for Christian Marclay's The Clock ameobatube.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/a-l… (@kg_ubu)

Greenwald "says he is not yet halfway through the tens of thousands of documents that Snowden gave him" ft.com/cms/s/2/221d11…

Syria peace talks end without agreement. Nice legs, though.

CIA audiobook: Intelligence Briefings of Presidential Candidates 1952-2004. gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-…

@HamishH1931 thank you, Simon!