Today, on two separate occasions, I saw men applying underarm deodorant in public. One having emerged from parking a car at the crematorium, the other while waiting at a tram stop. Is this a thing now?

My latest post from fiftyyears ago: https://robspence.org.uk/2025/06/30/scheming-through-the-second-year/

Fantastic project, with far-reaching potential. I found a bacteria-eating virus in my loo - could it save your life? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czryvm3nlvdo

If you were in the market for a fan, or indeed a "pedestal air circulator", you'd go for the one named after an Anglo-Saxon word, wouldn't you?

An astonishing litany of wilful incompetence. Hundreds are now dead as a result. https://prospect.org/economy/2025-06-12-dreamliner-gave-boeing-manager-nightmares-just-crashed-air-india/

Now reading Hesse’s Glass Bead Game. Having anticipated the internet in 1927 (see previous post) here in 1942, he invents the iPad and stadium video displays:

I’m reading Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Here, Harry the Steppenwolf character sits with his landlady while her nephew constructs a wireless set. And Hesse anticipates the internet in 1927.

#ukpolitics I'm reading about the "seismic shift" in the Runcorn by-election. More than half the electorate didn't bother to vote. Of those that did, less than 40% voted for the racist. That means the seat was won by 17% of the electorate choosing to vote for the fascist. So 83% of the electorate didn't choose the Reform candidate. Seismic? I don't think so.

@fionaorkneynews Am I missing a nuance here? I would expect that slogan to be the other way round: remember the dead, fight for the living?

In Lewes today at the Rights of Man pub. Lewes rightly celebrates Tom Paine. I’m guessing that’s not a thing in the USA now.

This old comment seems increasingly relevant these days:
"People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?”
H.L. Mencken

Latest review. Donatella di Pietrantonio's Strega Prize-winning novel is a haunting study of the lasting effects of trauma on a small Italian mountain community. https://shinynewbooks.co.uk/the-brittle-age-by-donatella-di-pietrantonio

@the_roamer @samuelpepys I've eyed those volumes many a time. But I'm quite content with the shorter one, which is still massive.

@richard I dunno, you could probably counteract it by injecting ivermectin or ketamine or something…

Says man who has literally spent his whole working life at a desk reading from a screen.

@the_roamer @samuelpepys Pepys is such good company isn't he? I used to keep a shorter Pepys by the bed to read that day's entry. The living embodiment of the "be curious" idea.

@the_roamer Thank you! Yes, I’ve been lurking too much. I agree that this place is a veritable haven in the waste land of the web.

My latest post from fifty years ago concerns the life and work of Ken Severs, poet, broadcaster, academic.

https://robspence.org.uk/2025/03/31/ken-severs/

Know your parasites