It's Thursday, a long time since Mon. I just remember a very close contest. Mercifully slightly fewer science questions. I seemed to do a little better than more recent programmes.

Staff in retail outlets have to put up with a lot of horrendous 'music' all day. The drumming is the worst

Rashid Khalidi’s next book will be about Ireland as a laboratory for Palestine. “It is astonishing how personnel and counter-insurgency techniques, like torture, assassination, find their roots with the British in Ireland.” www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’

As the Columbia University professor steps down, he addresses student protests and how ‘higher education has developed into a hedge fund’

That was a hectic University Challenge tonight. Forgot to alert ye in advance.

When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand. Richard III (2.3) #ShakespeareSunday

'The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which.' A Midsummer Night's Dream #ShakespeareSunday

Ye gods!

Today (6 Oct.) is Ivy Day, the anniversary of the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the ‘uncrowned king of Ireland’. By tradition, a wreath is laid by An Taoiseach to mark the occasion. Read about Ivy Day here from @irishtimes.bsky.social.

“A man who doesn’t know the truth is just an idiot, but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook.” Bertolt Brecht, Galileo, 1943