itty-bitty titties and a bob

Your mother is problematic. Your father is problematic. Your son is problematic. Your aunt is problematic. The cashier at the local Tesco is problematic. You've probably bought a cookie from a bakery made by hands that have done unspeakable things. Every chocolate bar you've ever eaten has probably killed a 7 year old child slave in Cameroon. The gas that drives your car is fueled by engines of death. Every person who has ever smiled at you in the streets has committed some act that if you knew about it, would make you profoundly dislike them. We have all been bad, small, petty, unlikeable, cruel, downright mean. Authors are not special "problematic" beings, they're just more public. Part of being an adult is recognizing that without mercy for our fellow human beings, and ourselves, we'd all be condemned to death. Reading fiction should help us understand that we're all irreparably tainted with evil, every system is corrupted, every line is broken. And like, that's okay. That's what it means to be alive.

This Two Ronnies sketch was never televised originally (it appeared many years later), but I’ve no idea why. It was written by Ronnie Barker, under the pseudonym Gerald Wiley, and for my money it gives Four Candles a run for it’s money. Seriously, if I’d written something this good I’d just retire immediately. What a talent! Good morning.

The most revealing thing in this post is that the worker’s need to live never appears as a real business cost. VAT is real. Business rates are real. Energy bills are real. National Insurance is real. Rent is real. Beans, milk, cups, insurance, accountants, card fees, compliance, all real. But the person making the coffee needing enough money to pay rent, eat, heat their home, travel to work and not rely on state top-ups? Suddenly that is “silly socialism”. No. That is the cost of labour. If your business model depends on paying people less than they need to live, then the state is not attacking your business by demanding higher wages. The state is currently propping your business up by letting taxpayers subsidise the gap between what you pay and what your staff need to survive. That is the bit you cannot grasp, or do not want to grasp. You say businesses fail because they are unprofitable. Fine. Businesses do fail. But “I can only make a profit if my workers stay poor” is not a serious moral defence of a business. It is a confession. You say a cup of coffee has to absorb lots of costs. Yes. Welcome to business. But you are treating wages as the flexible bit that must always be squeezed so your business model survives. Nobody says, “If you can’t afford coffee beans, just get the taxpayer to provide the beans.” Nobody says, “If you can’t afford electricity, tell the staff to sit in the dark and call it prosperity.” But when the unaffordable item is the person being doing the work, suddenly everyone is supposed to become very mature and economically literate about poverty pay. You also get VAT badly muddled. VAT-registered businesses can generally reclaim VAT on goods and services bought for business use, and the VAT registration threshold is turnover above £90,000. So this line about 20% VAT and inputs not being claimable is not the killer argument you think it is. The bigger point is simpler. Workers do not get to tell landlords, supermarkets, energy firms and train companies that their boss has “compounding costs” so everyone must please wait quietly while they are paid less than a living wage. The worker’s bills have compounded too. Their rent has gone up. Their food has gone up. Their energy has gone up. Their council tax has gone up. Their travel has gone up. Funny how “proper economics” always discovers pressure when it lands on the owner, but turns into a lecture on realism when it lands on the staff. The Green proposal is £15 an hour by April 2027. The real Living Wage is already £13.45 across the UK and £14.80 in London, calculated on what people need to live, not what a struggling employer would prefer to pay. And even before that, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that a single working-age adult on the National Living Wage was nearly £7,000 short of the gross income needed for a minimum acceptable standard of living in 2025. So spare us the sob story that £15 is some wild Bolshevik fantasy. It is much closer to the actual cost of surviving than poverty pay dressed up as realism. You say jobs will disappear. That is always the threat. Every time wages rise, the same people emerge to announce that civilisation will collapse because a cleaner, waiter, carer or barista might be able to pay a bill without choosing which meal to skip. Yet the Low Pay Commission’s latest judgement was that recent National Living Wage increases have not had a significant negative impact on employment. That does not mean every business has no pressure. Of course small businesses are under pressure. Business rates need reform. Energy costs are brutal. Rents are often obscene. Big chains can absorb shocks that small independents cannot. But none of that proves workers should be the shock absorber. It proves the economy has been built so badly that the smallest businesses and the lowest-paid workers are set against each other while landlords, energy firms, banks and large corporations walk away with the margin. Your welfare argument is even worse. Universal Credit is explicitly available to people who are working but on low incomes, and as earnings rise, Universal Credit is tapered down. That means low wages and public spending are already linked. The taxpayer is already helping cover the living costs that low-pay employers do not meet. So when you ask “where does the money come from?”, one answer is: from the business that uses the labour. That is not extremist. That is basic decency. Profit is not ugly. Profit made by selling a product people want, paying suppliers properly, paying workers enough to live, and still having something left over is perfectly defensible. Profit made by underpaying staff and then expecting the public to top them up through benefits is not heroic enterprise. It is a business model leaning on the state while pretending to despise the state. And this “read a book” routine is always funny from people whose entire economic theory seems to be: owners must be protected from hardship, workers must be exposed to it, and taxpayers must quietly make up the difference while being lectured about socialism. A liveable wage is not a luxury add-on. It is the price of employing a human being. If a business cannot pay rent, it cannot use the building. If it cannot pay suppliers, it cannot use the stock. If it cannot pay energy bills, it cannot keep the lights on. And if it cannot pay workers enough to live, it should not expect applause for creating jobs that keep people poor.

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

The Academy has banned AI from ever winning an Oscar. • Only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” can be nominated for acting Oscars • Screenplays “must be human-authored” to qualify for a nomination

Very Important Message!! Do NOT, and I repeat do not buy plants treated with Neonicotinoids. Bees take the pollen back to the hive and feed it to the brood. This is a number one cause of the colony collapse. It's important to NOT buy these plants! Make sure to share this post!

@BenBankas She's wonderful and you were melting, sorry

Triggered girl at comedy show…

I saw a video where Neil deGrasse Tyson narrated how racist 19th century anthropologists set up human racial hierarchies with white males at the top of the evolutionary ladder and Blacks and other non whites lower down, still evolving and closer to the apes. He explained that back then, calling someone a Neanderthal was a straight up insult because Neanderthals were seen as brutish and primitive. But then in the 1990s, once genetic testing became possible, scientists discovered that Europeans carry 1 to 3% Neanderthal DNA while Africans have 0%. Suddenly, research papers started coming out praising how creative, imaginative, and skilled with tools the Neanderthals must have been. Tyson pointed out it was a complete u-turn of the Neanderthal image that began right around the time they learned this genetic information. Interesting example on how bias can shape science… and this is true mostly in anthropological research…

A daily reminder that after Disney paid $0 in federal income taxes, got a $1.4 billion tax refund, made $12 billion in profits, spent $7 billion on stock buybacks and paid its CEO $46 million in compensation last year, it laid off 1,000 workers. Trickle down economics is a scam.

@KOJournals One of the all-time greatest cruiserweight contests

Evander Holyfield upsetting Mike Tyson in 1996 to become a three-time heavyweight champion.

Agreeing with Jacob Rees-Mogg wasn't on my 2026 bingo card.

This is coming from a place of warmth and acceptance… -It’s ‘sleight of hand’ -It’s ‘bated breath’ -It’s ‘lo and behold’ -It’s ‘one fell swoop’ -It’s ‘brass tacks’ -It’s ‘free rein’

@TheX_Barbie @MelloFelicia1 The face test! Thought I was the only one. I'm a boy.

@MelloFelicia1 Nd then put it on your face😂

Do you ever touch your laundry when you think it’s dry and ask: “are you just cold or are you wet?”

@dissproportion 8yo: [from other room] daddy, come here Me: what for, 8yo: just com3 Me: [obliges] what is it? 8yo: can you get me my book? Me: which one? 8yo: it's there on the table Me: the one in the same room as you? The one you were closest to? 8yo: yes, and you're closer now

My patience is ten times more tested by adolescents than toddlers. Toddlers are amateurs. My 12 and 14 year olds are artisans. [I hear the 14yo set a dish on counter] Me: please put your bowl in the dishwasher 14yo: what bowl? Me: the one that left your hand ten seconds ago 14yo: that’s a plate Me: please just put it in the dishwasher 14yo: what? Me: your dish 14yo: the dishwasher is clean Me: no it isn’t, it’s dirty. Put your plate in there. 14yo: [brother] has to unload it first Me: he unloaded it this morning. I saw him with my own eyes 14yo: the magnet says it’s clean Me: then the magnet is wrong, please, just do what I ask 14yo: what? Me: put your dish in the dishwasher!!! And flip the magnet!!! 14yo: that’s [brother’s] job. He should have to reload the dishes since he didn’t flip the magnet Me: PUT YOUR DISH IN THE DISHWASHER!!! 14yo: can you do it? I’m all the way over here now

The wondrously talented DANNY KAYE conducting the audience at the London Palladium in 1948. He could fly any civilian plane on the planet, became the world's most revered non-Asian Chinese Chef & had no formal singing or dance training. Extraordinary.

1/14 🧵Surrey police have confirmed that the Epsom "gang rape" never happened. A woman sustained an accidental head injury and made a confused report. But before that, Britain's right-wing media helped turn an unverified allegation into violent anti-immigration riots. #Epsom

"faces criticism" is a very polite way to say "were assailed by deranged racists."

the CATO Institute.. a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch brothers.. just published a study showing immigrants paid more in taxes than they received in benefits every single year from 1994 to 2023.. not a left-wing university.. not a Democratic PAC.. the Koch brothers' own research institute.. they reduced the deficit by $14.5 trillion over 30 years.. they earn less per hour but work at higher rates.. which means higher per capita income.. which means higher taxes paid.. the country spent 30 years being told immigrants were draining the system.. turns out they were funding it.. and the people who told you that knew the numbers the whole time