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Nothings Monstered@nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · 4w ago

Prince, Inglewood, California — Michael Montfort, February 19, 1985

Yes, all of this. Use your library! It's an unmitigated good in the world!

Tom Cox@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 4w ago

Someone said to me, "I'm sorry but I got your book from a library." Nobody should ever apologise for that. You read my book! That's brilliant! I grew up hanging out in libraries and the idea of a world without them fills me with dread. Without libraries, authors, like readers, will only suffer.

Yeah he's such a difficulty character. He insists on liberating his country from Russian imperialism. What a bore.

Anton Gerashchenko@antongerashchenko.bsky.social · last mo.

President Trump on Russia-Ukraine war: We've settled a lot of wars. I thought this one might be the easiest. But Putin is a difficult character, and this guy [President Zelenskyy] is a difficult character. It's not the easiest thing. It is a lot of commitment.

So it turns out you just need to take England to a stadium 7,000 ft above sea level and fill it with an incredibly hostile crowd to make them play well.

Jun 29th 1945 - "Eleven hundred men went into the water, 316 men came out and the sharks took the rest". Quint says The USS Indianapolis sank on this day, it actually sank a month later on July 30th 📽️📅 Jaws (1975)

A forgotten name on a Penguin book cover led me to a cache of Burberry illustrations rescued from a skip, a Vogue profile of a "spy writer's wife" and a story of how easily women's creative lives can disappear. open.substack.com/pub/stillske... #illustration #womensart #midcentury

@mayor.nyc.gov: “I have thought often of the "Margeret Thatcher quote: ‘the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.’ If anything, my friends, it seems that you eventually need a socialist to clean up the mess."

‘He loved horses, machines, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “short cuts” which took twice as long as the main roads, the adjectives “smashing”, “tremendous”, “marvellous”, “sophisticated”.’ Alex Cocotas remembers producer, cinematographer and screenwriter Harrison Starr. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Alex Cocotas · Diary: Memories of Harrison Starr

Harrison’s life and career was part of the postwar flowering of the avant-garde, which reached its apotheosis in the...

lrb.co.uk

thank you to everyone who sent this to me

May 18, 1980 | 8:32 a.m. The ground shudders. A M5.1 quake hits beneath Mount St. Helens. Weakened critically, the north face bulge collapses outward. Within seconds, a pyroclastic density surge bursts through the disintegrating slope. The clock strikes zero.

Oh my. This is spectacular. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

taken.

A web page that tells you what your browser gave away the moment you arrived. No login, no form, no permission. Most pages do this. None of them tell you.

sinceyouarrived.world

Happy 40 Years of Chernobyl, everyone… My old colleague @adamhigginbotham.bsky.social fills me in on the untold side of the world’s worst-ever accident. ☢️

The Bunker podcast – News without the nonsense@bunkerpod.bsky.social · 4mo ago

26 April 1986: Chernobyl reactor no. 4 explodes, spreading radioactive contamination across Europe... @adamhigginbotham.bsky.social tells @nndroid.bsky.social how Putin’s war on Ukraine risks re-igniting Chernobyl’s radioactive poisons. ➡️ linktr.ee/bunker_pod

Happy Leland Melvin day to all who celebrate. 💚

Oh this is great: there’s now an #Artemis II Lunar Flyby Gallery on the NASA images site: www.nasa.gov/gallery/luna... (thx @dpmanchee.bsky.social for pointing it out)

Lunar Flyby - NASA

nasa.gov

This quote from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has been in my head the last few days

When the spaceship is performing even better than planned 💅🏼

ESA Exploration@exploration.esa.int · 5mo ago

#Artemis II update: our European Service Module's main engine performed the translunar injection so precisely that flight controllers in Houston decided to cancel the first of three outbound trajectory correction burns on the way to the Moon 🥳

Garrett had me from the 1st sentence: “I didn’t begin this week thinking I would be writing about the Iran War, Chuck Norris, and Kid Rock, but one of the “joys” of living through the Trump era is that every week seems like the worst game of Mad Libs you’ve ever played.”

Garrett M. Graff@vermontgmg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Hegseth seems to have spent the whole day trying to underscore my thesis that he doesn’t know anything about what makes a military effective — he’s a frustrated mid-level officer from the glory days of the GWOT lashing out at all those he thinks failed him: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-mythol...

I don't need a summary of what's available online, in biographies, or even in my own notes. I need to comb through and find the great details, decide what interests ME. No, it's not efficient. It's slow and painstaking. But I don't believe in efficiency as an ultimate good, especially in writing. /

Headline writers crossing all their fingers that whatever Scott Mills did it was dark and satanic

This is such sad news. I only met Glen Baxter once, at a literary festival in Montpellier. (He was hugely popular in France.) I can only say he was one of the funniest, warmest, most charming geniuses I've ever met.

Glen Baxter obituary: absurdist illustrator

Yorkshire-born artist and writer known for his quirky and original cartoons of cowboys, gangsters, schoolchildren and explorers dies aged 82

thetimes.com

I have physics-related questions.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 5mo ago

Vance suggests Iran could have used nuclear suicide vests: “People who walk into a crowded supermarket and…blow up the vest and a couple of people get killed, that's a terrible tragedy. What happens when what's on the vest…can kill many, many tens of thousands of people?”

‘Le Carré, driven by personal demons kept writing into his late 80s; Frederick Forsyth maintained his lucrative franchise. Deighton simply walked away into hobbies: fountain pen engineering, unpublished histories of aero engines, flying planes & cooking and living well.’ ❤️ www.ft.com/content/32e4...

Len Deighton, writer, 1929-2026

He reframed the spy novel genre with gritty cold-war thrillers but possessed an extraordinary range of talents, from graphic designer to historian

ft.com

RIP Len Deighton: “When I started writing I had rules. One was that violence must not solve the problem, and I cannot have the hero overcome violence with a counterweight of violence.” He also worked as an illustrator for six years, including a Penguin Iris Murdoch & a Deutsch Jack Kerouac

BOOKSNS@booksns.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Len Deighton obituary: British writer who redefined spy thrillers dies aged 97 https://www.booksns.com/197179/ Len Deighton obituary: British writer who redefined spy thrillers dies aged 97 by Jean_Lucs_Front_Yard

“But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the Strait of Hormuz is open and people are having a wonderful time.”

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26 NO - 41% YES - 38% UNSURE - 21%

C’mon, people. Look at your Kremlin style guide. The phrase is “special military operation.” Not all of you are getting this right.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6mo ago

RAJU: Would you consider it a war? REP. MIKE FLOOD: It’s a significant military operation

Another year, another plea for help from someone whose work is the basis for a $200m blockbuster movie.

Drewthulu@csonkatroy.bsky.social · 6mo ago

#MOTU

medical miracle: this 75 year old man was born yesterday

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 6mo ago

Schumer on DHS reforms: "I believe Republicans will have no choice but to go along with us because it's so common sense"