The Guardian has a new word game, Wordiply:

๐Ÿ…ฆ๐Ÿ…ž๐Ÿ…ก๐Ÿ…“๐Ÿ„ธ๐Ÿ„ฟ๐Ÿ„ป๐Ÿ…ˆ #4
๐ŸŒŸ Length Score: 73%
๐Ÿš€ Letter Score: 46
๐Ÿ”— Play Wordiply: www.wordiply.com
๐ŸŽฌ Today’s starter: ๐Ÿ„ธ๐Ÿ„ฒ๐Ÿ„ด

Happy Christmas, everyone!

I was listening to The Specials yesterday because of the sad death of Terry Hall, of course.

I was mildly distracted by this text early in that Guardian report:

The pioneering 2 Tone band rose thanks to the support of Joe Strummer,1 who invited them to support the Clash live,2 and of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

While not wrong, it ignores the fact that The Specials were bloody brilliant! The piece does make that clear later, to be fair, but it seems slightly the wrong way to weight it.

I also listened to some Fun Boy Three, and they were far better than I remembered, too, both with and without Bananarama.


  1. For whom there’s a big anniversary tomorrow. ↩︎

  2. I wish I’d seen The Clash on that tour, though. ↩︎

This is really weird. โ€˜Do the Dogโ€™ by The Specials, but Apple Music brings up the lyrics of โ€˜The Last Day of Our Acquaintanceโ€™, by Sinead Oโ€™Connor.

At the start of this year, I promised myself I’d finish this novel by the end of the year.

I just passed the 70,000-word mark, and I’m on course to do it.

As long as Christmas doesn’t get in the way too much.

I opened a file where I had made some notes for a possible post. It had a link to something I might comment on. I clicked the link. Not only was the post gone, but the whole site; the whole Substack.

I created the file in March.

Own your stuff. Use your own site.

Right. Friday night is upon us. The week’s work is done. Hello.

@meandering

Why do Netflix, when nothing’s playing, still include The OA in the shows they tout, when the bastards cancelled that wonderful series three years ago?

This is a micropost, sent using the MarsEdit 5 beta’s new ‘Micropost’ feature.

It’s good. Would be even better if it had a character count.

This is disappointing: Apple have removed the delightful page-turn animation from the Books app: Appleโ€™s taken the joy out of its Books app with iOS 16 - The Verge.

Bring it back! Joy! Whimsy!