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Casmilus

@casmilus.bsky.social
1.6K followers 977 following 26K posts

www.discontinuednotes.com

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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Here's something from 2010, but there was plenty more years earlier and since www.theamericanconservative.com/what-war-wit...
Among other critical targets would be the Silkworm anti-ship missile sites on Iran’s coastline that would menace U.S. warships and oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Any Iranian attack on ships or seeding of mines would likely close the gulf and send world oil prices soaring.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati...
The effect of the bombings on the peace negotiations is debated. On 22 December, Nixon asked the North to return to the talks with the terms offered in October and warned Thieu that he would sign the agreement even if Thieu did not. The North agreed, and Nixon ordered a halt to the bombings on 30 December. The North Vietnamese delegation stated that the campaign played no role in the decision to return to negotiations, while an aide to Kissinger remarked that "[w]e bombed the North Vietnamese into accepting our concessions". On 27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed along the same terms as the initial October agreement.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Well at least something still means something
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Fuck sake. I only came here to see Ikon Gallery. Didn't know I'd have to go round this shit show
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Situated lower-ground floor
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Does he ever say anything that can't be immediately visualised as a Lloyd Bridges moment from Airplane
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
IT'S CHRISTMAS
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Nothing is working in London while Andy and the Westminster crew are all away.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Incredible he still gets out and about. What a trouper.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
@greavesian.bsky.social @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social I hope you know BC is in the new BFI Daniel Farson collection
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Let's ask young people what they think about sex before marriage. The young people:
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Revelations
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Here's dear old Barbara Tuchman, who I'm paraphrasing ("The March Of Folly")
Neither a liberal nor a conservative, Kennedy was an operator of quick intelligence and strong ambition who stated many elevated principles convincingly, eloquently, even passionately, while his actions did not always match. In the major offices of government and the White House staff, he put men of active mind, proven ability and, as far as possible, a hardheaded attitude to match his own. Mostly men of his age, in their forties, they were not the social philosophers, innovators and idealists of the New Deal.In the Kennedy camp the word usually attached to idealist was “slob” or “bleeding heart.” The New Deal was another era; world war and cold war had intervened and the far right still rumbled. The new men in government, whether Rhodes Scholars, academics from Harvard and Brookings or recruits from Wall Street, politics and the law, were expected to be realistic, sophisticated, pragmatic, tough. Toughness was the tone, and whatever their varying characters and capacities, Kennedy’s group adopted it, as the court around a monarch or a working group around a dominant chief to whom the members owe appointment is likely to do.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
BLEEDIN ELL MATE IT'S THE WORKING CLASS GETTING THEIR WORD IN
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
You may disdain this man's religious beliefs, but you can't deny that his call for the abolition of Sunday newspapers has been vindicated by History.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Would public trust in science be restored if we went back to having chaps like this explaining firmly and clearly that there's no evidence you can make carrots grow bigger just by thinking about it?
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Watching the new BFI anthology of Dan Farson programmes and stunned at how much deference was given to men with posh voices saying absolutely any old shite.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Lock & load
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"Lowering the tone", TLS, July 9th 1999 Buckle up, lads
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The great question: was Mosley the target of "the Rt Hon David Mayot" as imagined by John Buchan? gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/030...
This for a man like Mayot was tremendous news—how tremendous will appear from a short recital of the chief features in his character. He was that rare thing in the class to which he belonged, a professional politician. A trade-union secretary looks to a seat in Parliament as a kind of old-age pension, and the ranks of Labour are for the most part professional. But nowadays the type is uncommon—except in the case of a few famous families—among the middle and upper classes. Mayot would have made a good eighteenth-century politician, for the parliamentary game was the very breath of his nostrils. All his life he had been the typical good boy and prize pupil. At school he had not been regarded as clever, but he had worked like a beaver; at the University there were many who called him stupid, but nevertheless he had won high honours in the schools. It was the same with games. He was never a good cricketer, but he was in his School Eleven, and at Cambridge, by dint of assiduous professional coaching in the vacations, he managed to attain his Blue—and failed disastrously in the 'Varsity match. He seemed to have the knack of just getting what he wanted with nothing to spare, but, since the things that he wanted were numerous and important, he presented a brilliant record to the world.He was the only son of a well-to-do Lancashire manufacturer, and had no need to trouble about money. He was devouringly ambitious—not to do things, but to be things. I doubt if he cared much for any political cause, but he was set upon becoming a prominent statesman. He began as a Tory democrat, an inheritor of some threads of Disraeli's mantle. He went to Germany to study industrial problems, lived at a settlement in Rotherhithe, even did a spell of manual labour in a Birmingham factory—all the earnest gestures that are supposed to imply a tender heart and a forward- looking mind. He got into Parliament just before the War as a Conservative Free-trader for a Midland county constituency where his father had a house, and made himself rather conspicuous by a mild support of the Government's Irish Home Rule policy. In the War he lay very low; he had opportunely remembered that his family had been Quakers, and he had something to do, from well back at the base, with a Quaker ambulance. After peace he came out strong for the League of Nations, bitterly criticised the Coalition, was returned in '22 as an Independent, made a spectacular crossing of the floor of the House, and in '23 was the Labour member for a mining area in Durham, with a majority of five figures. He was an under-secretary of the Labour Government of '29, and, when Trant became Prime Minister, he entered his Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. As such he was responsible for the highly controversial Factory Bill to which I have referred earlier in this story.A rich bachelor, he had no other interest than public life, or rather every other interest was made to subserve that end. He used to say grandly, in Bacon's phrase, that he had "espoused the State," which was true enough if husband and wife become one flesh, for he saw every public question through the medium of his own career. In many ways he was not a bad fellow; indeed, you would have said the worst of him in calling him an arriviste and a professional politician.

The first point to remember is that he had not a very generous allowance of brains, but made his share go a long way. He carefully nursed his reputation, for he knew well that he had no great margin. He cherished his dignity, too, cultivated a habit of sardonic speech, and obviously longed to be respected and feared. A few simple souls thought him formidable and most people esteemed his industry, for he toiled at every job he undertook, and left nothing to chance. For myself, I never could take him quite seriously. He was excellent at a prepared statement, which any Treasury clerk could do as well as a Minister, but when you got to grips with him in debate he funked and rode off on a few sounding platitudes. Also I cannot imagine any man, woman or child being moved by his harangues, for he had about as much magnetism as a pillar-box.The second thing to remember is that he knew that he was second-rate, in everything except his industry and the intensity of his ambition. Therefore he was a great student of tactics. He was determined to be Prime Minister, and believed that by a close study of the possible moves of the political cat he might succeed. So far he had done well, for he would never have had Cabinet rank if he had remained a Tory. But one realised that he was not quite easy, and that his eyes were always lifting anxiously over the party fence. Let me add that most people did not suspect his gnawing ambition, or his detachment from anything that might be called principles, for there was a heavy, almost unctuous, earnestness about his oratorical manner. He was clever enough, when the ice was thin, not to be too fluent, but to let broken sentences and homely idioms attest the depth of his convictions.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Me reading your posts
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I respect our British culture. DO YOU?
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I respect our British culture. DO YOU?
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
There's a big audience for this sort of music. Marketing experts call it "the Ezra Pound".
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Is it the "debt collecting" and "home repossessions" sectors. Or is it literally just the people working in 2 fields, one in Norfolk the other near Gloucester, and when they've finished digging and ploughing then they'll be as fed up as the rest of us
Britons sense of job security slumps for all but workers in 2 fields
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
An image of Britain (Quote from an American novel published 2004)
'Oh right. I've seen the signs.'
'Ask him,' one of the men called in a hard British accent, the sort that suggested gray terraced streets and soccer stadium thuggery. 'He looks lively.'
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Forgot to add the link but helpfully it appeared right next to one anyway
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
We've held a village referendum
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It's the same picture.
Carter Burke, the company guy in Aliens.Sam Altman of OpenAi
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Being associated with extremist views could be damaging to the franchise
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I've always wondered if a large part of the self-mythology of characters like James Orr is that they see themselves as like the God-figure in "The Green Man", stepping in to a world led astray by flabby trendy vicars discontinuednotes.com/2024/01/14/t...
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Oh what's this... nah
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The thing about getting old is that tatty 2nd hand books just aren't fun anymore. Once I could get excited by even a poor quality Penguin Modern Classic. The trouble is Amazon made it easy to find decent quality copies with no legwork.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
As a contrarian I have an inherent bias to support unpopular figures but I dunno
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
While the metropolitan punditocracy struggle to interpret Starmer's latest move, I'm out in Real Britain where Real People are Really Real.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
CHECKMATE, TRIFFIDS
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Er... yeah... can we catch up on this another time?
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
New Reform housing policy: this is the new social housing (actual size)
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Named in honour of the great British character actor (1912-1988), star of "I Say, Governor-General!" (1956)
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
One effect of training LLMs on old texts will be the reappearance of archaisms like "to-day" and "good-bye". They still existed in "The Dark Sisters" (1929), which this is a 2026 scanned reprint of.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The final version includes deserters getting shot, and it's not a lot of fun being in the Nationalist Army. Here's the dedication of the start of the version released to English language audiences:
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Incredible to think this is where the populist revolutionary leader Nigel Farage learned to be a freedom fighter against the oppressive Establishment.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"As the trend for Tolkien theme pubs sweeps the UK..."
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
No, no, no, absolutely not, no, no, my God no...
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Yeah... *every* Fall album, including total crap like Interim and 27 Points. I'm hardcore.
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Never doubted it mate
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Casmilus @casmilus.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
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