Continental Breakfast

(If you make it to the end, you get a cookie!)

UConn professor Trace Peterson reveals everything you need to know about Queer Theory in this atrocious poem, "Everyone Is A Little Trans."

Modern universities have substituted identity for scholarship—and taxpayers are subsidizing it.

More: https://t.co/pbSareFefw. pic.twitter.com/6CIsaikRYf

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) January 3, 2023

(This kid will never live this down. Ironically (Don’t you think?), he’ll thank God he was wearing a mask.

2021 was a strange time. pic.twitter.com/riISk8FAO6

— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) December 29, 2022

I haven’t done one of these in a while because I’ve basically run out of ideas. Nightmouse used to do a really very good news round-up, methodically eyeballing tonnes of sites for pieces that might not warrant a post on their own but were interesting. I could try to do that kind of thing if people want me to, although I don’t think I’d be very good at it. But I do like the idea of an open thread.

There are only so many recipes and weird eagles. Nor am I a wiz with pictures. I’m very, very open to suggestions and such. Okay:

Possibly we’re accused of being a bit negative about Pakistan at times, but look at this cool thing!

HIGH FLYING TENANTS-The world's grandest bird house is one of the must see sights of Lahore,Pakistan.Put up by the local council to keep the street birds warm and cosy at night,it easily accommodates around 5000 of Lahore's bird population,with space spare for friends & relatives pic.twitter.com/WWWvAumjGF

— The Folk Horror Consortium (@folkhorrorforum) December 24, 2022

My useless (I’m being kind because it’s Christmas) medical system is clearly trying to force me into “virtual” “medical” bollocks. (“May I see a doctor, kind sir/ma’am/zir/they?” “Nope.”) If I have to go this route I’m definitely going to use this.

No time to get ready for your meeting? Use xpression camera to be dressed for all occasions.

— xpression (@xpression_app) November 4, 2022

This made my blood boil, as it might yours. The tweeter answered my where/when inquiry “Sutton in Surrey – a state school. I believe this was recently”. They go after children, and what’s more dishonorable than that?

https://twitter.com/LondongirlSJ/status/1607831451667505154

Have at the comments, and leave off being unreasonably happy for another day or so, because of the calendar, but as soon as it’s allowed definitely have a Very Happy New Year!

This is truly chilling. Bye bye legacy media. You won't be missed. https://t.co/AIgvayHyqr

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) November 26, 2022

Sorry I haven’t been doing too many of these lately. What’s happened is that I have basically run out of ideas. Suggestions are appreciated.

Here is the Harpy Eagle. I’ve just learned these things exist. Good grief.

I have never had an allergy but I’ve long had a vague feeling that something in the South American jungle would eventually get me once I inevitably ran into it. (“Now who’s not allergic to anything?”) But I was thinking maybe a spore or a lizard. All yours in the comments.

The concept of “offended” is all the rage. I don’t get it. “Offended” is an attitude, not an emotion. Anger is an emotion. So is fear, joy, hurt, etc. Not “offended”. But if we are going to live in this induced-psychosis culture where morons who don’t know what words mean constantly get “offended”, let’s make it interesting. I want the code duello back. There are practical difficulties, (women can’t do swords against men, it’s very class-based, etc.) but I feel that, in the fullness of time, taking things into account and so on, we can move forward, vibrantly, in a productive way.

At least we could get some good scenes out of it.

Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter.  Or suggest some recipes or something, please, thanks.

“All you need is a keyhole-saw, a spoon, and clay modelling tools, a fine-tooth saw, and an apple corer.”

I think I have only one of these things, and this is literally as complicated as the pumpkin I’m going to carve is going to get. If that. (When I’m feeling particularly lazy I do two eye-ovals and one mouth-oval. Energetic, I add fangs.) And yet I love Halloween and always do a pumpkin. Anyone have any cooler ideas?

(p.s. Is there anything to do with the pumpkin flesh that isn’t better done with tinned pumpkin? And does anyone else find the words “pumpkin flesh” mildly creepy, in a Halloweeny kind of way?)

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Bridget Jones’ Diary isn’t a franchise I particularly like, but this is rather cute. Language warning.

Poems, recipes, general observations etc. etc., have at it.

Hurrahing in Harvest via Osumashi

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

To go from the Hopkinsy sublime to the pop culture whatever, All The Leaves Are Brown:

Sort of a poem about autumn. (“Unleaving” and “leafmeal” are lovely Anglo-Saxonisms.) Published in 1880, to a young child.

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Here are a couple of crustless cheesecakes.

I don’t get the point because the crust is the best part but we must be open-minded.

This is a horrible idea and I am absolutely going to watch it.

https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1580650315010887680

Historic (18th c.) Harvest Soup with Pumpkin Bowl. (I’m intrigued by all the egg yolks and bread.)

For those as riveted by current U.K. politics as I am: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?

https://twitter.com/JaimieAlexKay/status/1580843170333483008

Pumpkin cakes!

These look fun.

These look complicated