14 Comments

Always early, never able to be cool (talking about me, not your excellent substack); thank you so much for the mention! Doing the Kermit arms here. Also, ‘methadone for Twitter beef’ is a very, very good description of Blocked and Reported.

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I have friends who have joined high-IQ societies and speak positively about the experience, but I'm never able to think about them without recalling the late John Diamond's line "people who think that knowing what is to knife as fork is to bagpipe gives them a common bond".

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I listened to the BAR podcast. I like Jordan Petersen but I think even by the time of his interview with you (I thought your questions were fine) he seemed to be losing it a bit. I guess getting a little paranoid is understandable though given how many people were attacking him in a really disproportionate way. I saw one of his early talks in a church in central London maybe a year before you talked to him and he was genuinely impressive. And very empathetic and helpful when he took questions from the audience. He is an excellent Agony Aunt and maybe he should do more of that! Then I saw him at the O2 with Sam Harris and he seemed a shell of the man I’d seen before.

Anyway I have my own podcast - it’s mainly history but other stuff too (David Goodhart on social issues, Peter Pomerantsev on Russia and fake news) and I would love for you to come on. Here is the latest episode. Ed Shawcross being brilliant and highly entertaining on one of the most extraordinary episodes in history. A member of the Hapsburg royal family is plonked on the throne of Mexico by Napoleon III. I had no idea. And his wife Carlotta- what an incredible story!!

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/subject-to-change/id1436447503?i=1000571016318

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Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022

Look fwd to your BBC broadcast [not available yet] - yep 'gender ideology'/'critical race theory' aka Woke is a harmful religion .... and everyone who doesnt believe in it knows!

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I loved the Ballet Shoes piece, which led me, through a link in the comments, to another about the economics of child labour in Anne Of Green Gables, another much loved series.

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Morning Helen. Have a look at Trafalgar Park (used in Netflix’ Persuasion). A perfect place not to underestimate the power of a well written letter.

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/one-of-britains-grandest-and-certainly-one-of-its-largest-country-houses-is-up-for-sale-as-the-fully-restored-trafalgar-park-hits-the-market-230090

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Truly devastated that I can't even scrape together £1m of the £6m required for Longbourne but we can get a few roommates—I mean we can take on a few boarders, no?

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A very serious article, until I came across this section...'Two weeks into the job, Milley sat at Trump’s side in a meeting at the White House with congressional leaders to discuss a brewing crisis in the Middle East. '

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