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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"Shanks's pony" - a phrase my father still uses but not one I recall hearing from anyone younger.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I'd lean towards both. They're not exclusive.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

It says that "kiss-me-quick" was used from the 19C for a type of bonnet, a ringlet by the ear and for various plants but that the use for a felt hat with the phrase written on does date from the mid 20C. It doesn't answer the original qn though of whether "quick" means "briefly" or "soon".

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Information online suggests that the Milla-Song difference is the largest gap *on the same team* and the Vozinha-Yamal difference is the largest gap *for debutants*. The specificity of the qualification in each case suggests there is a larger gap for opposing non-debutants but I haven't found it.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Difference between Essam El-Hadary (15/1/73) and Ramadan Sobhi (23/1/97) is 24y 8d. But difference between Roger Milla (20/5/52) and Rigobert Song (1/7/76) who played together for Cameroon against Brazil in USA 1994 edges that at 24y 42d.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

A man with a remarkable range of contributions. More or less forgotten now in economics but an important innovator in graphical analysis of supply and demand. Yet his main field was engineering.

One of Fleeming Jenkin's 1870 supply and demand diagrams showing a downward sloping demand curve and two upward sloping supply curves

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

But such a tax function could not be monotone increasing (see Lebesgue)

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

The design appears to be the same as this 2017 sculpture at the UN Office in Geneva by the same Azerbaijani artists www.ungeneva.org/en/about/pal...

ungeneva.org

Ariana Park | The United Nations Office at Geneva

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

This seems to call it a square twist: origametry.net/ast/ast.html

origametry.net

The Augmented Square Twist

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

If so, happy to accept. It is a question, I suppose, why Ozzy's mom should have been attending maternity facility there. But Solihull council website suggests it was then part of Meriden Rural District administered from Coleshill www.solihull.gov.uk/about-solihu...

solihull.gov.uk

Marston Green history | Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council

The history of Marston Green in Solihull.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Thanks. I have no expertise at all on Osbourne. But I grew up close to Marston Green and it is surely some way from Aston.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Actually, Meriden, I think, when he was born, not Bickenhill. Still not Aston.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

But this seems wrong. Marston Green was, yes, then not in Solihull but was never, as claimed, in Aston. They are six miles apart. Prior to 1974 it was in Bickenhill, Warks. Osbourne's family lived in Aston and he was born in Marston Green, not Aston, because there was a maternity hospital there.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Strands accepted it from me as a non-theme word in Sunday's puzzle this week. Do they use a different word list?

The word 'turd' in the NYT Strands puzzle, Sunday 25 May 2025

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

According to OED, the use as a singular count noun, chiefly in economics or business contexts, dates to 1898. As an economist, I find it untroubling.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Also RAYners lane and more obscurely barkingsIDE, covent GARden, kew GARdens, ruislip GARdens, woodsIDE park

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

First of those should have been eaLING broadway, also add CHARing cross

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

eaLING, eaLING common, hilLINGdon, north eaLING, south eaLING, turnPIKE lane

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Thanks, Cormac. Other Irish-born economists' graves on the walks include Robert Torrens (in Kensal Green) and Richard Cantillon (probably in St Pancras Old Church). On the topic of Edgeworth, there's also his house in Mt Vernon, Hampstead.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

"... But when the seats of power and authority have been attained there should be no more poetic licence. On the contrary, we have to count the cost down to the penny which our rhetoric has despised." From a passage about the "silliness of the doctrinaire"

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

The next tweet confirms the menace: "The proscriptions of Marius forced the proscriptions of Sulla." That repeats something he tweeted in May 2024 (but with "led to" upgraded to "forced"). But did Sulla ever actually say that? It's a Scottish motto, used to be written round the edge of £1 coins.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Nor me. But I don't think she drowns in Night of the Hunter either. She is killed with a knife and the body disposed of in a river.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

According to Wikipedia (I haven't seen it) she was run over in Great Gatsby too. And, strictly speaking, in Poseidon Adventure I think she has a heart attack after swimming rather than drowning.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

The Poseidon Adventure and A Place in the Sun. Bonus point: Lolita

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

It is allowed because it is a valid five-letter word and can be a useful guess in eliminating options but it can't be the solution because it is a plural ending in S. That used to be something you could infer from experience, now actually ruled out: www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/wordl...

digitaltrends.com

Wordle answers just got tougher, courtesy of a NYT change

The New York Times just announced that Wordle now has a dedicated editor. It's bringing changes to how answers are selected and what words are valid solutions.

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Ian Preston @ianpreston.bsky.social · 17/05/2024

I tried to persuade English Heritage 20 years ago to put a blue plaque on his home in Hampstead but they rejected it. They told me he was more significant to the history of Manchester than London and should be memorialised there if anywhere. Don't know of anything in Liverpool.

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