So sad to hear of Freddie's passing.
My favourite author. The research he put into his novels was amazing. I have read them all though especially love The Fourth Protocol, Fist of God and Icon which I have read many times.

So sad to hear of the sudden death of Jack Vettriano. I have had my favourite of his pictures hanging in our lounge for many years.

bbc.com/news/article...

🫣🙄 Emoticons for diplomats all over the world right now.

In 2015, 13-year-old Mitch Owen was a die-hard Hobart Hurricanes fan, pictured here celebrating a win against Brisbane Heat.

Ten years later, he’s scored a match-winning century in the final to secure their first BBL trophy.

Dreams do come true 🤩

My Prospect column this month is on the increasingly feral Lobby and why Labour has little choice but to ignore them www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/691...

Beginning to see that it is important for some people to be able to be anonymous (to protect against hate, etc).
Even so still feel that social media would be improved with mandatory verified accounts for all, even if some of the info is not shown publicly.

So pleased to have found and follow @amywebb.bsky.social, @fryrsquared.bsky.social and @vcorenmitchell.bsky.social over here.
They all have one thing in common: they are all so smart it scares me!
Pretty awesome people.

@mrjamesob.bsky.social Hi James. You have a good selection of people that you follow that I was hoping would make it here. Have followed quite a few! Thanks. Have a good Christmas.

As much as I prefer BlueSky to "the other side", I cannot help feeling that any social network could only be enhanced with some form of ID (and probably minimum age) verification.

“Good day, sir. I’d heard you’d recently come into possession of some bread. I see that I was not misinformed. As it so happens, I too enjoy baked goods. Might you be persuaded to part with a small percentage? I would of course offer fair compensation at the current market rate.”

Despite my desire to not go anywhere near politics here I find it difficult not to say that generally there seems something very wrong in any democracy whenever a head of state can pardon family members without intervention from the justice system, courts or parliament.

I've been having lots of "fun" recently reworking some of the code in a C++ application I have written for a home automation device originally for a #RaspberryPi Zero (with a bunch of sensors) to compile for an #ESP32 board so that it will work on both platforms from the same set of code!