Major Rawdon Crawley

@GwydionMW @bestofDrWho The school playground on the Monday(?) following rang to monotonous cries of "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

@bestofDrWho I was 12, and watched the very first episodes. Including a dull run about cave people seeking the secret of making fire. But the next was the Daleks. Like seeing Yoda before we learned that this was the Yoda who would train Luke, it was an unrepeatable experience.

How old were you when you first watched Doctor Who?

@wanksley @nguyenhdi Two brothers, one writer, you could say.

@nguyenhdi strugatskys

A recent conversation has made me want to ask: are there any sibling writers, apart from the Bronte sisters, who are equally eminent? More or less equal, not a pair in which one person is more known as "the sibling". A. S. Byatt & Margaret Drabble? William & Henry James?

@abnerpuddis @ncolloff @nguyenhdi Llewellyn or T.F.? T.F. was admired by F.R. Leavis.

@ncolloff @nguyenhdi I was just thinking of them, but John was far better known, was he not?

@nguyenhdi Like the Barneses, William and Henry James were in very different fields and very different kids of writers. Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, though Christina has pulled ahead?

@soniasodha As for the traditional loaded revolver (anyone got a spare loaded revolver?) and a bottle of whisky in a locked room, it's less likely to work than you'd think. Captain H.R. Robinson, the Modern De Quincey, merely blinded himself and waited twenty five years to succed.

@soniasodha I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. Way to go! I'm on my way out and I don't have much choice now the Assisted Dying Bill has been suppressed. Successfully killing yourself, especially if you aren't healthy is more difficult than you'd think.

What even is this from the Metro

@historydefined When were they ordered to shave their beards and wear moustaches only? A few soldiers - pioneer sergeants - are still required to wear beards.

From 1860 to 1916, the British Army required every soldier to wear a mustache. Any man who shaved his upper lip could face disciplinary punishment, including possible imprisonment.

@ridethepastlane Cagney was superb as Bottom in A Mid-Summer Night's Dream. He'd have been a very different Hood to Flynn, but he might have been very good cagneu

James Cagney was considered for the role of Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The part went to Errol Flynn. As much as I like Cagney, I just can’t picture anyone, but Flynn. He was perfect.

@NatalkaKyiv Is it possible to preserve the unity of the Russian Federation and avoid chaos? The whole of the history of the former USSR has consisted of trying to do both and they succeeded in neither.

“Yeltsin was led to the idea that he needed to step aside. What is happening now somehow reminds me of those days.” This is a very informative history lesson from Russian blogger Maksim Kalashnikov 🔽

@NatalkaKyiv It will probably be necessary to use more drastic methods to persuade Putin to step aside or be stepped aside.

@markwolters54 @eileenwanita Something doesn't have to actually exist for someone to be obsessed with it.

@eileenwanita Amish fiction is a thing?

Name 5 things you're obsessed with that might surprise people: Romantic comedies Amish Fiction Simon and Garfunkel Bubble gum Antigone

@BretVDB ...and how long did Dr. Johnson keep that up? We read him for the pleasure of seeing tossing and goring his opponents.

Samuel Johnson’s advice for Twitter users: “I therefore retired from all temptations to dispute, prescribed a new regimen to my understanding, and resolved, instead of rejecting all established opinions which I could not prove, to tolerate though not adopt all which I could not confute. I forbore to heat my imagination with needless controversies, to discuss questions confessedly uncertain, and refrained steadily from gratifying my vanity by the support of falsehood.” (Rambler no. 95)

@SebMilbank As Saki's Reginald pointed out in 1904: "The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediæval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other"

Arthur Machen is a good example of this - a major writer in the decadent movement, and a high church anglican who joined the order of the golden dawn and ended his life as a Catholic.

@RealRiddimHours Were N Koreans in Ukraine? They were involved in the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk, which meant they were technically fulfilling their defensive agreement with Russia. Did they actually enter Ukraine itself in significant numbers?

Do you guys remember that like 6 month period where everyone called you a schizophrenic if you said norks were in Ukraine

@bazzat0 @RobLooseCannon Quite likely. The Reverend Sydney Smith, a generation before, had pointed out that reports of conditions in Australian convict settlements didn't discourage people from risking deportation.

@RobLooseCannon It's likely they had better prospects in Australia than in the workhouses of Ireland.

Between 1848 and 1850, thousands of young Irish girls, some as young as 14, were shipped off to Australia under the Earl Grey Scheme. Named after Earl Grey, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, this scheme was pitched as a solution to Ireland’s overcrowded workhouses and Australia’s labour shortage. In reality, it was a desperate attempt to offload destitute girls from famine-ravaged Ireland and supply the Australian colonies with domestic servants and potential wives. Around 4,000 girls, mostly from counties like Cork, Galway, Clare, and Dublin, were selected based on their perceived "moral character" and health, though after years in the brutal workhouse system, many were frail and malnourished. Between 1848 and 1850, the Earl Grey Scheme shipped over 4,000 young Irish girls to Australia to solve two crises: Ireland's overcrowded workhouses and the colonies' chronic female shortage. Named after the British Secretary of State, the scheme was a "tidy" administrative fix for a famine-ravaged surplus of destitute girls, some only 14. They were not volunteers. Selected via Victorian hypocrisy, they were required to be "morally pure" and skilled in domestic work, despite years spent in brutal institutions that offered no such training. After receiving a basic outfit and a religious text, they endured an 85 day voyage to a society that viewed them with suspicion. In Australian ports, they were held in depots and selected by employers or husbands in what was essentially a market. One such girl was 17-year-old Eliza Dooley from King’s County. An orphan, she arrived in Sydney in 1850. She found work as a nursemaid, married, raised 13 children, and eventually ran an inn on the goldfields. Eliza died in 1912, having outlasted the famine, the workhouse, and the ocean. Her story is rare only for its documentation. Most "Earl Grey girls" were absorbed into the landscape, their origins forgotten. The scheme ended in 1850 when the colonial appetite for Catholic Irish girls vanished. Today, a memorial stands at Sydney's Hyde Park Barracks, and a new monument in Dunmanway, Cork, finally honors these girls who did not choose their fate, but were simply handed a prayer book and shoved towards a ship. They arrived in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide to a society that viewed them with suspicion. Branded as "Irish orphans," they were often met with prejudice for their Catholic faith and working-class status. While some found stable work and marriage, others faced harsh conditions, exploitation, and social exclusion. Despite this, the Earl Grey Girls left a lasting legacy. Many of their descendants form part of Australia's Irish-Australian population today. A memorial to them stands in Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks, and now, a new monument will be unveiled in Dunmanway, County Cork, to honour these women and their resilience. SOURCES Kay Moloney Caball's book "The Kerry Girls" womensmuseumofireland.ie/exhibits/femal… theirishpotatofamine.com/blogs/blog-1/i…

@RobLooseCannon In a country where many inhabitants were ex-convicts or the descendants of convicts, it's unlikely that the girls suffered for their "working-class status".

@Microinteracti1 "Hello? ICE? There's this guy wandering around Washington who says he's the King of Britain..."

Flying to America in 2026? There are things you need to know before you board. A 21 year old from Norway had an approved ESTA. He never made it past Newark. A French scientist sent home from Houston. A British punk band turned around at LAX. A political commentator pulled aside at SFO after a public figure called for it online. None of them were stopped by ESTA. ESTA cleared all of them. What officers can legally see. What you can legally refuse. What it costs you when you do. And the one question at the desk that has ended more trips this year than politics has. open.substack.com/pub/gandalv/p/…

@MichaelRosenYes What would happen with Palestinian converts to judaism?

So Indians can convert and become Israeli but Palestinians can't return to the houses and lands where they lived.

@JuliaDavisNews What makes Solovyov think it was a lot more sahe to lead Russia and the USSR than other countries? Wasn't Russia's system "despotism tempered by assassination"? How many members of Stalin's Politburos were killed by Stalin?

Meanwhile in Russia: state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, who used to pop in for unscheduled broadcasts to cover Trump, now says that an attempt on his life is not all that newsworthy, in light of all the problems Russia is currently experiencing. youtube.com/watch?v=d-70D_…

@DiadeMartin @rogerlorton Many Argentinians would probably welcome the imposition of the logic of military force and institutionalized piracy if they were taken over by the Falkland Islands and capably administered.

@rogerlorton Es por esto por lo que hay que hablar con razonamientos legales, jurídicos, político - administrativs, e históricos: para evitar que se imponga la lógica de la fuerza militar, y piratería institucionalizada.

Hay islotes de las Hébridas Exteriores, Islas Shetland y Scilly en los que nunca hubo ocupación humana. Hay que aplicar el argumento de Hitchens sobre las Islas Malvinas, y reclamarlas, estableciendo una colonia: Argentina o España, u otro país. "Alcalá del Mar" suena bien.