24 hours in Lawless London.

Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty & was sentenced. Ricky Jones pleaded not guilty & was acquitted by a jury. That is not two-tier justice. It is legally illiterate to imply one was punished & the other ‘let off scot free’ - when one of them was quite literally acquitted after trial.

The ghost of an Egyptian Market: These two photographs were taken 112 years apart at the Temple of Luxor at Karnak. The former is an enhanced autochrome by Friedrich Paneth, taken at a tourist trap market in 1913, during his honeymoon in Egypt. The second is the site today. The

Beware quick translations. The transcript of Putin's remarks in Alaska have him talking about "the agreement that we’ve reached together" but he used the word ponimanie, which better translates as the much vaguer "understandings"...

Clothes horses belong in the Derby, too.

A guess about a point Putin and Trump agreed on: that Putin won’t release the files about Russia’s campaigns to support Trump in 2016 and 2020 so long as Trump continues to aid Russia’s war.

In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, "This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." Of course, M13 is now less modestly recognized as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, one of the brightest globular

Wonderful column by Hadley Freeman in her occasional series on Scotland and its gender madness. 🎁 link thetimes.com/article/232b37…

Witkoff's evasions & contortions on CNN today all but suggest that Trump team has asked Zelensky to cede unoccupied parts of Donbas to Russia in exchange for what Witkoff has been told & credulously believes are serious concessions by Russia. Make no mistake: this is worse than

Bill Clinton proves Marco Rubio is lying, right here, clear as day: WE forced Ukraine to give up their nukes, cruise missiles, and strategic bombers: WE promised to protect Ukraine from Russia; WE made Ukraine vulnerable. So yeah, THIS IS OUR WAR.

In decades to come, there will be many books written about how European states with well over 500 million people and an economy more than 20 times the size of Russia and approx equal to the USA, end up a group of sad bystanders in the making of their own destiny.

The week in toons from ⁦The Times and The Sunday Times⁩ #eyetests #hosepipeban #Trump #crime #JDVance #Cotswolds

The Francis report said; '... corporate self-interest and cost control [was put] ahead of patients and their safety.' The quest for cuts in the boardroom are always to be found at their deepest, by the bedside. Mark my words; the same will happen this time. Roy Lilley 💙

When, some years ago, I had a rant about "trigger warnings", both here & on my blog, many said "What harm can it do? It's just advisory warning, which you're free to ignore". Well, a few years on, we can see the harm: it is infantilising. And yes, it is harmful.

The 16th century witnessed four major musical phenomena: the polyphonic school reached its zenith, the tradition of instrumental music was founded, the first opera was produced and music began to be printed for the first time. Here's our beginner's guide gramophone.co.uk/features/artic…

... and which bits of Russia is Putin *swapping* for bits of Ukraine, such that these currently Russian lands will become Ukrainian?

Yes, but he's never around. You never see him in Aldi.

Beijing is watching how the U.S. responds to the war in Ukraine and thinking if America is not defending its European interests, surely it won't defend its interests in Taiwan or the South China Sea. youtube.com/watch?v=NIDU4N…

On this day in 1950, Sylvia Plath was me