2024 approaches. The fireworks are ramping up, and the pigeons are getting unsettled.
Is it possible to create an arbitrary bookmark - not bookmark a post - using the microdotblog API? @help
I thought 15C was too warm for snow at Christmas, then looked up and saw it was a tree in blossom.
TikTok is evil beyond redemption. Its community safety is a sham, and it seeks to profit from misery and suffering. This cannot escape its employees and enablers. If you work for or do business with TikTok, make quitting your new year’s resolution. The choices we make matter.
Friends and followers, we have the winners for the winter solstice 🆆⚓️ on 🛞🛞competition.
Oh. The Substack clowns have de-cloaked. And to no one’s surprise they’re the RealNazis™. If you’re not bailing right now, then, we see you - we know what you are.
Should you ever find yourself sarf of the river in need of a decent lunch, you could do a lot worse than Marcella on Deptford High Street. Good food, interesting wines, friendly staff.
Principled Tories? Uh-uh. No. Nope. There are none.
Relief for Rishi Sunak as Rwanda bill passes first vote in Commons
Here’s the thing about neoliberals: they would rather “go fash” than tax the rich and build affordable housing
Political and financial journalists should be clear as to whether they are writing about the “market” or “Mah-Ket”, the infallible god of the Neoliberals.
The idea that Sunak and the Tories gave two tosses about the jobs of hospitality workers is laughable. Property portfolios of city centre landlords more like.
A lasting legacy of neoliberalism is that in place of solidarity it has created a culture of belligerent victimhood.
The obvious, rarely stated.
Policy is more responsive to preferences of the well-heeled than of the worse off, and people know this - but it [is] a blind spot for most politicians
Next UK election set to be most unequal in 60 years, study finds
The people who build and operate TikTok are ghouls.
How will Labour leader and earnest Thatcherite Keir Starmer outdo the Tories’ cruel “no families for foreign care workers” proposal? Indentured labour?
Christmas Menu - first of the second thoughts
For Christmas Day, I’m thinking a starter of wild mushrooms preserved in olive oil, silken beancurd with chopped capers and dukkah, lamb’s lettuce alongside the friselle salad.
The original: Christmas Menus 2023 First Draft
Christmas Menus 2023 First Draft
First cut of menus for Christmas 2023. Work in progress. Main meal only. Vegetarian. Christmas Eve dinner to Boxing Day.
Christmas Eve
Food
- Sugared, chocolate-coated, gilded, and silvered Brazil nuts and almonds
- Chickpeas and cannellini beans with hispi cabbage and cavolo nero
- Frangipane
- Soft cheeses
Drink
- Sparkling water (eg, Vichy Célestins)
- Kir Royale with a twist of hibiscus
- Sparkling white wine (Maybe a Franciacorta)
- Sweet wine with the desert (Recioto?)
- Atlantic coastal brandy with the cheese
Christmas Day
Food
- Friselle with tomato, oregano, basil and rocket, chilli flakes
- Creamy risotto with butternut squash and Brussels sprouts, sage, dried Senise peppers
- Mince pies with brandy cream or brandy butter
- Hard cheeses and blue cheeses, nuts, dried fruit, charcoal crackers
Drink
- Sparkling water (eg Ferarelle)
- Negroni
- White wine (to be decided - or maybe a Puglian orange wine?)
- Dryish champagne with the mince pies
- PX or Port with the cheese
Boxing Day
If the weather is bearable, do this as a picnic.
Food
- Filo parcels with festive vegetables and smoked tofu
- Soured red cabbage with winter spices and bitter orange
- Stollen, brandy butter
Drink
- Sparkling water (eg S. Pellegrino)
- Mulled wine
- Brandy
So, last week’s OpenAI chicken coup was a grift to hype their Q* product.
Few things say global Britain more than a freight train of empty FreightLiners trundling to Tilbury.
More more puzzling still is why this cabbage is called a hispi cabbage in restaurants and a sweetheart cabbage in supermarkets.