Notes from this month’s conference on #AlliterativeVerse at the University of East Anglia. www.idiosophy.com/2025/09/n…

Wisdom Literature, says Wikipedia, was common from the 3rd millennium BCE to the end of the 1st millennium CE. After that it died out. Since then, the number and prominence of fools has increased exponentially. In this essay I will…

Ahoy, me hearties! Did anyone else get a fundraiser email from #InternetArchive with the salutation, “dear (amount you contributed last year)”? 🤣

The best kale I’m getting out of the garden this year comes from a volunteer growing under the pea trellis. #Gardening teaches humility. 🌱

Walking around in #Oxford is a weird feeling: I’m used to being one of the biggest nerds around but on those streets, I don’t even qualify.

Walked into a random art gallery near the British Museum. The proprietor apologized for not having much to show because he’d just sold a bunch of pieces. That’s one I’d never heard before. “Yes,” he continued, “these are by Brian Eno.” Only in #London

Hwæt, y’all! #OldEnglish

Visited the Tower of London today. Didn’t bonk my head on the ceiling at all. Gratitude to King Edward I Longshanks for the building standards. #London #MedievalHistory

A walk through Hyde Park. 🪿: Please feed the birds. 🦆: Please feed the birds. 🦢: Please feed the birds. 🐦‍⬛: Please feed the birds. Gull: Please feed the birds. Pigeon: Please feed the birds. Sign: Do not feed the birds. I’m getting mixed signals.

To save time, I’m just going to assume that every parking space in #London is taken.

Talk completed; no casualties.

Hurriedly rewriting my talk to remove parts the morning’s speakers have proven wrong.

Found out why the #London Underground famously repeats “mind the gap” so often. Sometimes the gap they’re referring to is a foot wide!

You know the song “Woad”? “What’s the use of wearing braces/Hats and spats and shoes with laces/ vests and coats you buy in places/Down on Brompton Road?” I’m drinking beer in a pub on Brompton Road. #London

I have arrived in #London. Now what do I do?

The lady I called about getting rooftop solar panels asked me why I was interested. She laughed when I said I’m not sanguine about bidding against Jeff Bezos for electricity. #DataCenters

When I came into the office this morning, I found ketchup on the door handle. It was an indication that today would not be a normal day. #ReturnToOffice

A brilliant bit of technical communication from @bretdeveraux@historians.social : “92% of American households own a car, a one ton (or more) mass of steel precision machinery, with enough worked metal in it to equip close to a hundred knights.” acoup.blog/2025/08/2…

From a podcast guest who just said a too-complicated sentence, the QOTD: “Take what I said, fix it so it makes sense, and that’s what I meant.”

An Amazon delivery driver has just pulled up in front of the demolished house across the street. He’s looking at the hole in the ground. He’s getting out his phone. He’s putting the package back in the car and driving away. #demolition

Darth makes a very good point about the #EricAdams #WinnieGreco cash in the potato-chip bag scandal: “If you want to make friends with someone, consider actually sharing a bag of potato chips.”

“One of those raffish and unfortunate minor figures in history who end up having a powerful influence on the #poetry they do not completely master.” - Mark Strand, speaking of Henry Howard

…and so it has come to pass.

Pastis is an anise-thetic. #pun

“Nothing that you learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.”

• John Alexander Smith 1914