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Eleanor Doughty

@brushingboots.bsky.social
324 followers 200 following 827 posts

Writer on the aristocracy, big houses, old money; author of HEIRS AND GRACES, a history of the modern aristocracy, which is out now! Views my own, yours for £. edoughty92@gmail.com www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305/heir…

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Reposted by Eleanor Doughty
Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'You see the Green Party saying things like "the rich are hoarding money". But who is actually hoarding money?' For this week's Great Estates I went to Skipton to see the brilliant Roger Tempest on the Broughton estate, which has been in his family since 1097 www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a917219...
telegraph.co.uk
‘The rich are being attacked. We don’t have hoards in the bank – we have mortgages’
Great Estates: Broughton Sanctuary is one of many ancestral homes anxiously awaiting the Budget
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
'You see the Green Party saying things like "the rich are hoarding money". But who is actually hoarding money?' For this week's Great Estates I went to Skipton to see the brilliant Roger Tempest on the Broughton estate, which has been in his family since 1097 www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a917219...
telegraph.co.uk
‘The rich are being attacked. We don’t have hoards in the bank – we have mortgages’
Great Estates: Broughton Sanctuary is one of many ancestral homes anxiously awaiting the Budget
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
'We are deeply sorry for what took place. People often ask, ‘you must have known...’ – No!' For this week's Great Estates I went to Ampleforth to interview the abbot Dom Robert Igo – about IICSA, monastery life and the cost of living in an abbey. It was a lot. www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/37cdadf...
telegraph.co.uk
‘Even a monastery isn’t immune to the cost of living crisis’
Great Estates: Ampleforth Abbey is putting its troubled past behind it with a ‘creative’ vision for the future
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
'We are deeply sorry for what took place. People often ask, ‘you must have known...’ – No!' For this week's Great Estates I went to Ampleforth to interview the abbot Dom Robert Igo – about IICSA, monastery life and the cost of living in an abbey. It was a lot. www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/37cdadf...
telegraph.co.uk
‘Even a monastery isn’t immune to the cost of living crisis’
Great Estates: Ampleforth Abbey is putting its troubled past behind it with a ‘creative’ vision for the future
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Reposted by Eleanor Doughty
Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
'We need to take more risk. The UK has a lower GDP per capita than Louisiana. Why? Because the US takes more risk' This week's Great Estates is at Cornbury with the insurance magnate David Howden – and what fun it was! On new money, snobs, the City, and Ascot www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f81d34c...
telegraph.co.uk
‘I’ve spent millions on my 5,000-acre estate – and I don’t even own it’
Great Estates: an insurance magnate from the City has turned Cornbury House into a hard-working home
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I have spent the afternoon reading one of the IICSA reports (for work) and truly, this is not a good way to spend time
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
'We need to take more risk. The UK has a lower GDP per capita than Louisiana. Why? Because the US takes more risk' This week's Great Estates is at Cornbury with the insurance magnate David Howden – and what fun it was! On new money, snobs, the City, and Ascot www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f81d34c...
telegraph.co.uk
‘I’ve spent millions on my 5,000-acre estate – and I don’t even own it’
Great Estates: an insurance magnate from the City has turned Cornbury House into a hard-working home
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
A short story in a few lines. My house has had the same roof for almost 200 years. It hasn’t rained for three months. House has been beautifully dry all summer in preparation. Whole new roof slated to start this week; scaffolding is now up. What is it now doing? Raining, biblically. Fab!
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Lord Kimble Montagu didn't meet his father, the Duke of Manchester, until he was 21 – and he's never spoken about it before. This week's Great Estates is on the old Manchester pile, Kimbolton Castle, now a school, ft several bankrupt dukes and Catherine of Aragon www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/14973bf...
telegraph.co.uk
‘My grandfather sold our country house to a school in 1950. I’d do the same thing today’
Great Estates: Lord Kimble Montagu is glad that Kimbolton Castle has a living purpose
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
‘I don’t know what they teach them there but Etonians are always right’ I went to Holkham to see the inimitable @jakefiennes.bsky.social: on the worst harvest in 30 years, wildfires, ‘as the brother of…’, the king, and exactly how much rain we now need ASAP www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/af7c0fc...
telegraph.co.uk
Jake Fiennes: People are to blame for wildfires, not rewilding
The conservationist on irresponsible campers, the ‘hindrances’ of his surname and how the Government doesn’t understand rural communities
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Lord Kimble Montagu didn't meet his father, the Duke of Manchester, until he was 21 – and he's never spoken about it before. This week's Great Estates is on the old Manchester pile, Kimbolton Castle, now a school, ft several bankrupt dukes and Catherine of Aragon www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/14973bf...
telegraph.co.uk
‘My grandfather sold our country house to a school in 1950. I’d do the same thing today’
Great Estates: Lord Kimble Montagu is glad that Kimbolton Castle has a living purpose
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
‘I don’t know what they teach them there but Etonians are always right’ I went to Holkham to see the inimitable @jakefiennes.bsky.social: on the worst harvest in 30 years, wildfires, ‘as the brother of…’, the king, and exactly how much rain we now need ASAP www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/af7c0fc...
telegraph.co.uk
Jake Fiennes: People are to blame for wildfires, not rewilding
The conservationist on irresponsible campers, the ‘hindrances’ of his surname and how the Government doesn’t understand rural communities
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Apropros recent events, I was minded to look up Peter Carter-Ruck and this (new to me) detail about his relationship with Private Eye does not disappoint. I knew the F/Ruck bit but not that there was a coda
Extract from Peter Carter-Ruck's Telegraph obituary:
In 1989 Carter-Ruck publicly attacked the £600,000 damages awarded to Sonia Sutcliffe against the magazine and was invited to an Eye lunch, an occasion he attended with some trepidation. Not long afterwards, he asked if, in the new spirit of friendship, they would now stop printing the first letter of Ruck as an F. Their response, not unpredictably, was to print the first letter of Carter as an F as well. "I think my relationship with Private Eve is now definitely hate," he said later.
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Be a writer, they said – it'll be fun, they said. And yet here I am reading up on the Bankruptcy Law Consolidation Act 1849. (It is still the best job there is.)
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Oh my good lord, it's raining. A rare, sweet pleasure
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
This week's Great Estates is on Revesby, Lincolnshire where I learnt how to herd deer, went stoat spotting and almost fell into the reservoir! www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/2d2198f...
telegraph.co.uk
‘We’ve always treated our 6,000-acre estate like an elderly relative that needs looking after’
Great Estates: village charm and bustling business keep Revesby relevant in the 21st century
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History Rage Podcast @historyrage.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
📅 #onthisday 3 Aug 1945 Manny Shinwell became Minister of Fuel and Power. Soon after, open-cast mining transformed the grounds of #WentworthWoodhouse . @brushingboots.bsky.social reveals the clash between government need and aristocratic estates. 🎧 Listen : pod.fo/e/3a194b #History #Podcast #otd
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
This week's Great Estates is on Revesby, Lincolnshire where I learnt how to herd deer, went stoat spotting and almost fell into the reservoir! www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/2d2198f...
telegraph.co.uk
‘We’ve always treated our 6,000-acre estate like an elderly relative that needs looking after’
Great Estates: village charm and bustling business keep Revesby relevant in the 21st century
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This week I have been doing a lot of specifically Not Writing work so am desperate to actually use my brain and Write Something, yet here is a 101-minute tape that I have to transcribe first and OH the indignity!!!
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
People say that stuff is iconic and it almost never is but perhaps the Crooked House in Lavenham actually is. A very civilised Monday morning indeed
The Crooked House in Lavenham, Suffolk with a blue MGT GT outside
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
On the Other Place MrMemory (who isn't on here?) points out that Hilary Benn leaving government means that Andy Burnham will be the first Labour PM who has not, so far, had a Benn in his cabinet. Of course, there's still time, given that Lord Stansgate remains in the Lords, ironically
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Philip Coggan @philipcoggan.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Andy Burnham definitely going back to the 1970s by appointing a man called Healey as chancellor
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William French @wtfrench76.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Ach, really sad news with which to start the week. RIP. --> BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton dies aged 68 www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...
theguardian.com
BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton dies aged 68
Corporation pays tribute to ‘outstanding’ journalist who presented shows including Today and One O’Clock News
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
This week's Great Estates is on the outrageously beautiful Broughton Castle where I had a gorgeous day with Lord Saye and Sele – or rather, Martin Fiennes as he prefers to be known. On new money, old money and why (just) being posh doesn't cut it in the big house www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/3a00d20...
telegraph.co.uk
‘Being posh doesn’t pay the bills. Castles need passion, commitment and money’
Great Estates: Broughton Castle has survived war and tragedy but heritage alone won’t secure its future
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Slightly inevitably I wrote about George Cottrell, Nigel Farage and the aristocracy for the Spectator spectator.com/article/the-...
spectator.com
The aristocracy is still very good at producing black sheep
Wouldn’t you be a bit odd if you were from a family that lived in a massive house and had endured generations of being waited on?
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Huh, so David Ross has a peerage at last I see. He's changed his tune. This here from my 2021 interview with him where he was brusque, if not rude – and his PR told me not to mention the fact that we were meeting behind a big black door with '10' on the front www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/...
"There is an EdStone in my garden." The original? "You'd have to go and look at it," he says. Where does the motivation for political donation come from? "Political donations are not philanthropic in [the same] sense." There is a pause while he taps a paperclip on the table. Would he like a peerage? "No."
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
The thing about Kemi Badenoch's purge of any Conservative member to the left of Enoch Powell is that she's so close to a Tory revival if she only realised it. All she needs to do is to lead a party that is not obviously mad and wait for Reform to crumble, but she can't even manage that
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
I am too tired and weary to fully articulate what a dumb own goal this is, truly. Not for the first time, I miss Cameron
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Slightly inevitably I wrote about George Cottrell, Nigel Farage and the aristocracy for the Spectator spectator.com/article/the-...
spectator.com
The aristocracy is still very good at producing black sheep
Wouldn’t you be a bit odd if you were from a family that lived in a massive house and had endured generations of being waited on?
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Reposted by Eleanor Doughty
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
This was a really moving interview. We're enormously proud of Peter at Queen Mary. He's been a lone voice for a particular kind of virtue in public life: not as something we admire in ourselves, but as something we practice towards others - and especially our opponents. And he really embodies that.
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
One of my favourite things is when I accidentally put Classic FM on and it happens to be playing music I know backwards from orchestra and it just happened now, with Vaughan Williams’ Folk Song Suite while I am walking in the cover crops with my dogs, and nothing has ever felt more appropriate
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Dorian Lynskey @dorianlynskey.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Journalists who use LLMs to do the actual writing should not be in journalism. What's the point? Quit and let someone who likes writing do it
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
This week's Great Estates is a biiiiig one: it's Badminton and my third duke of 2026, the Duke of Beaufort. I've been trying to get him to give me an interview since 2018 and it's finally happened! It was a pleasure and yet again I must say how much I love my job www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/35a37eb...
telegraph.co.uk
‘We own 50,000 acres, but every great estate has to do things to keep the roof on’
Great Estates: Home of the horse trials, Badminton is opening up to new ways of generating business
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
This week's Great Estates is a biiiiig one: it's Badminton and my third duke of 2026, the Duke of Beaufort. I've been trying to get him to give me an interview since 2018 and it's finally happened! It was a pleasure and yet again I must say how much I love my job www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/35a37eb...
telegraph.co.uk
‘We own 50,000 acres, but every great estate has to do things to keep the roof on’
Great Estates: Home of the horse trials, Badminton is opening up to new ways of generating business
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
It was SO lovely to be mentioned on last week's @countrylifemag.bsky.social highlights pod! 'When it comes to knowing what there is to know about the British aristocracy, there is no one better working in the business than Eleanor Doughty' My ep from March here! www.countrylife.co.uk/podcast/the-...
countrylife.co.uk
The secret lives of the British aristocracy, with Eleanor Doughty
Eleanor Doughty has spent years getting to know the aristocracy of Britain — and she joins us on the Country Life Podcast to talk about their lives.
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Today I did a speech and gave out prizes at my old school’s prize giving and it was so emotional and nice and bizarre. Feel ancient but so touched to have been asked, and wrote about it a bit here www.instagram.com/p/DaDjTnrtNl...
instagram.com
Instagram
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This week’s Great Estates is on a house that for centuries was kept so private that when it was listed, inspectors had to do it from the road as Lord Sandys wouldn’t let them in. It’s Ombersley and it’s for sale! www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1308383...
telegraph.co.uk
‘I’ve spent almost a decade renovating my 300-year-old country house’
Great Estates: Grade I-listed Ombersley is on the market for £13.5m
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
This week’s Great Estates is on a house that for centuries was kept so private that when it was listed, inspectors had to do it from the road as Lord Sandys wouldn’t let them in. It’s Ombersley and it’s for sale! www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1308383...
telegraph.co.uk
‘I’ve spent almost a decade renovating my 300-year-old country house’
Great Estates: Grade I-listed Ombersley is on the market for £13.5m
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
There’s truly nothing (so pleasing?) like using your own book as the main source of prep for an interview
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Is the aristocracy dead like Daphne Guinness suggests? Not on your nelly! But perhaps we’re calling them the wrong thing… by me in today’s Telegraph, ft a good amount of eye-rolling from peers and Lord Balfour's defence of hedgies buying up in the Cotswolds www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/e89fdd9...
telegraph.co.uk
The decline and fall of the British aristocracy
The final hereditary peers have gone and billionaires are buying up our stately homes and historic estates. What do the nobility do now?
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Is the aristocracy dead like Daphne Guinness suggests? Not on your nelly! But perhaps we’re calling them the wrong thing… by me in today’s Telegraph, ft a good amount of eye-rolling from peers and Lord Balfour's defence of hedgies buying up in the Cotswolds www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/e89fdd9...
telegraph.co.uk
The decline and fall of the British aristocracy
The final hereditary peers have gone and billionaires are buying up our stately homes and historic estates. What do the nobility do now?
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Had an absolutely excellent time last night at an utterly gorgeous dinner to celebrate the paperback of my book Heirs and Graces being published but I can't get away from the fact that I did my liquid eyeliner freehand on the circle line standing up en route and it was the best I've ever done it!!
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
It’s…. paperback day!!! HEIRS AND GRACES is now available to buy in all forms including with this absolutely gorgeous cover by the magic team at Hutchinson c/o Slim Aarons’ 1960s mastery ⭐️ www.penguin.co.uk/books/453305...
A copy of my book Heirs and Graces in paperback
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
'I went to Eton and Oxford, so to say that I’m not part of the establishment is ridiculous!' For this week's Great Estates I went to Wales to interview Sir Charlie Gladstone at Hawarden – and see the Grand Old Man's desk – and it was very good fun! 10/10 day out www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/163c5a5...
telegraph.co.uk
‘People in my position who swan about doing nothing are neglecting their duty to society’
Great Estates: Sir Charles Gladstone turned a debt-ridden inheritance into a desirable place to live
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
'I went to Eton and Oxford, so to say that I’m not part of the establishment is ridiculous!' For this week's Great Estates I went to Wales to interview Sir Charlie Gladstone at Hawarden – and see the Grand Old Man's desk – and it was very good fun! 10/10 day out www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/163c5a5...
telegraph.co.uk
‘People in my position who swan about doing nothing are neglecting their duty to society’
Great Estates: Sir Charles Gladstone turned a debt-ridden inheritance into a desirable place to live
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Bit of a jumpscare – is that the word? – seeing the name 'Vance' appear in this particular book chapter
The text reads: 'Illusions and Delusions about Hitler'
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Press Gazette @pressgazette.co.uk · 05/06/2026
City AM issues broadside against flood of AI slop being submitted by writers for its pages: "if you can’t be bothered to write it, why should anyone be bothered to read it?" www.cityam.com/there-should...
cityam.com
There should have been an op-ed here but you filed AI slop
City AM's inbox is drowning in AI pitches. Anna Moloney, who spends her days copy and pasting them into detection software, has had enough.
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Bit late to this, as I’m currently resident in the 1930s, but listening to podcasts about Farage/Starmer this week I find it extraordinary that any traditional county Tory voters (of which I am self-evidently one) could ever even consider voting Reform, however hopeless the Tories currently are
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Eleanor Doughty @brushingboots.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Rarely a cheery paragraph ahead when, while writing you're leaving a gap that says: 'SLAVERY HERE'
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Jonathan Bernstein @jonbern.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
this is not true, and this guy doesn't speak for me! nymag.com/intelligence...
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