25°C and sunny in London. If you haven’t started your yearly read of Hilary Mantel’s epic, deeply horny novelization of the French Revolution “a place of greater safety” yet, today is surely the day.

I wrote something about the importance of good food while red and nude (saunas) for this. I bet the other pieces are great too. Buy the book!

Gorbachev news really showing how twitter can't process complex events and figures because (i) short form, and especially (ii) loudest voices are total morons. Every tweet is like "wow, you just gotta say, what a life."

The dumbest Gorbachev take is that Russia's basket-case 90s and current derangement is somehow singularly "his legacy". Gorbachev wanted the dissolution of WTO/NATO, and a closely integrated, politically plural Europe with Russia a part of it. We might ask why that didn't happen.

I couldn’t get into the room it was so full (!) but I heard there was a good joke about me researching and reporting nude. Buy the book to learn more.

Just stepped on an upturned tack in my kitchen, and, while gripping the injured foot with both hands and hopping around on the other, my only present thought was “hmm this is definitely something you don't see so much anymore”.

Here's Stephen Buranyi's review of An Intimate History of Evolution by Alison Bashford theguardian.com/books/2022/sep…

I could not possibly be more Penelope Fitzgerald-pilled. Every novel should be (i) almost unfathomably good and (ii) fewer than 150 pages.

Slavic excellence.

It's pretty funny that there are now tons of menswear influencers, and menswear podcasts(?), and crazy expensive stuff like Arcteryx is selling like gangbusters, but dudes absolutely do not look appreciably better than they did ten years ago.

A girl in the club smoking section on the weekend asked me "do you go to the gym?" And my girlfriend leaned over to say "no" and explained in great detail the little kettlebell workout routine I do in the garden. Mortifying. Elite defensive manouver.

Come for the great writing, stay for the embedded playlist that sees Daniel Cohen spring "Lil Uzi Vert" on an unsuspecting LRB readership. lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/…