America’s Most Evil People: 3. Elon Musk 2. Donald Trump 1. Whoever set today’s NYT Connections puzzle

A good pair of trousers can't be bested but they can be worsted.

TOP TIP! Got loads of pent-up fury you’d like to release but don’t want to get your head kicked in? Come here to Sweden, where the word for ‘morning’ - which can be used as a greeting - is ‘morgon’. But Swedes don’t voice the ‘g’, so you can wander around indiscriminately calling everyone a moron.

I was hoping I could find a minor celebrity with a name similar to ‘Rod Aldi’ so I could do a silly ‘Has anyone checked in on Rod Aldi?’-type joke, so I started typing ‘Rod Ald…’ into Wikipedia, and look what happens. Hats off to whoever tinkered with the metadata or something to bring this about.👏🏻

I’m no fan of your party, Sarah, but it’s a bit overblown for you to compare a Reform-led UK to the Third Reich.

Rob Jacques@knutcrosswords.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is profoundly upsetting

Sad, really. If her car hadn’t conked out, they probably wouldn’t have caught her.

If you simply must report on Reform, can I suggest you save on your headline writers’ time and just run variations of ‘Reform do/say something that yet again demonstrates what insufferable cunts they are’?

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2d ago

Reform UK has proposed using the navy to stop small boat crossings. Is their plan feasible?

Did you, Nicholas? How fascinating! What was it about ‘Freelance’ that caught your eye, given the ‘Freelance’ I work for doesn’t have a website, so all you know about it is that my name and it are associated with each other on LinkedIn, the platform you used to send this highly personalised message?

Moment Of Silence Followed By Hot Dog Race

FARAGE LATEST: in cruel parody of hook-handed cleric and tabloid favourite, Abu Hamza, and attempt to deflect from questions of financial probity, Reform leader has lower arms replaced with insect leg-like microphones.

It’s all right for some, isn’t it? The rest if us, meanwhile, have been driven to near-bankruptcy through our towel-purchasing habits.

fesshole 🧻@fesshole.bsky.social · 3d ago

Former professional tennis player here. Since the age of about 20, I've never had to buy a towel for my home as I just use the ones from the tournaments I've played in

The drip-feed of Farage revelations, which I hope continues right up to his stupid by-election (and beyond), fills me with all sorts of thoughts, but the funniest is the faith he had in the people around him not to cooperate with investigative journalists. If you mix with bastards, this will happen.

‘Stench of sleaze’: Farage struck deal over political return months before 2024 election, reports say

Labour chair accuses Reform of making ‘grubby pacts’ after contradictory reports emerge on timeline of events

theguardian.com

This is doing the rounds of joke suggestions. I struggle to get involved with these because the tension between my inner pedant and my inner pragmatist can never resolve whether ‘I’m’, ‘won’t’, ‘doesn’t’ etc are each one word or two. Add ‘can’t’, a contraction of ‘cannot’, into the mix and I’m: 🤯.

RadarOnline@radaronline.com · 2w ago

Prince Harry is said to have offered five words as a 'peace' gesture to his older brother, William.

This one is clever and hard and I knew how to tackle it but I’m ashamed to have needed two letter hints, the second being the last, which gave it away. Minute Cryptic - 2 August "Tinkle all over the place after surprise entry... Maybe knock first?" (6,1) 🟡🟡🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 2 hints – 1 under community par

‘Seen as’ or, as it’s more commonly known, ‘that is’.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4d ago

Trump offering early access to online posts in move seen as corruption

There was once an old man from Ur And to him it didn't occurr To tell his wife A look may save her life So she ended up seasoning his cur

1/3 About 10 days ago on a whim, I thought I'd start reading a few chapters of the Bible every day, more for an education than a religious wakening. Just reached Chapter 34 out of 50 in Genesis. What strikes me most is how sparse some of the stories are. There's LOADS on Jacob and Esau, to be fair.

It’s sweet, though, how many of Reform’s target audience are learning of the existence of Ceuta, the novelty little North African oddity.

‘Little Red Book’ was, I think, a more dignified colloquial name for ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung’, and it contained more aphorisms than chewy sweets. Still, you can’t stop progress.

Must remember to tone down my Duolingo Uzbek credentials on LinkedIn.

Penguins in an enclosure at a park in Gothenburg earlier this evening, seen here being called to prayer.

Lovely definition. Minute Cryptic - 30 July, 2026 "Bergamot herbal extract for bodybuilder?" (6) 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 0 hints – 1 under the community par (52,110 solvers so far).

It’s weird how we talk about classics as an academic discipline without making it clear whether an academic in question knows Latin or Ancient Greek. It’s totally valid to not know it and focus on the literary and historic side, as is the case on some courses. But they’re two very different things.

A message from my mum, who’s looking after our cats for a couple of weeks. Lol. Cats.

Give it a rest. Of COURSE Manchester is in the north of England at least - by every measure: population, being above the halfway-mark, being WELL above the centre of gravity of the shape of England. I get why Scots might be pissed off but they undermine their case with this nonsense.

Reform, Farage and all of their associates: they’re just so comically corrupt. Look at these two paragraphs. It feels like the first is missing an “especially after last time” at the end, the second paragraph then acting as a sort of cutaway gag punchline. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Cheap lunch; expensive fork. Some people in London parks are odd.

Ruin a book by adding a word: A Tale of Two Birmingham Cities

Alistair King@alistairking.bsky.social · last wk.

Ruin a book by adding a word: Les Dennis Miserables

Ruin a book by adding a word: Les Dennis Miserables

Chris Kendall@ottocr.at · last wk.

Ruin a book by adding a word: Vanity Publishers Fair