Futtocks

When Luciano Pavarotti is having one of his increasingly-frequent “sicknote” moments, who do you get to sing Nessun dorma? Aretha Franklin, of course! Non-embedded video: https://youtu.be/k33sINjn9o0

For fans of John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes or Karel Capek's The War with the Newts, you can now visualise what rising or sinking sea levels would do to the world map. https://slidingshores.com

A one-club man and a fine one to boot.

She was wonderful in NBNW.

They are one of the milder forms of game birds, like pheasant or guinea fowl (which isn't technically game). In other words, they taste like chicken used to taste before mass farming blanded everything out. You can still buy chicken with this much flavour (Sutton Hoo, Poulet de Bresse), but you'll pay a serious premium for the quality.

I remember driving down Farndale a couple of years ago and the car suddenly being surrounded by hundreds of partridges. They do look really nice (but they taste good too!).

I spotted a brace of red-legged partridge recently. They arrived at my front door in a box with plenty of ice packs. One was cooked on Sunday and the other is in the freezer for later.

The micro-USB recharging socket on my old Kindle is beginning to act up and doesn't always start charging without a bit of wiggling. Just wear and tear after years of use, but a shame that the rest of the reader (which is perfectly good) should be made unusable for the sake of a component that should be replacable and would cost pennies. But that's the modern world; technology we barely dreamt of as children, deliberately made unrepairable and wasteful.

CBeebies' take on the franchise. Purists are already irked, but you wouldn't expect otherwise, would you? https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2026/doctor-who-cbeebies-animated-adventure-first-look

Well, if it’s 6 October, it’s the 83rd anniversary of the day the world was deprived of Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln, who was born a Hungarian Jew, elected to the House of Commons, spied for Germany in both world wars, and eventually declared himself the 14th Dalai Lama.

The full BBC obituary is a little less mealy-mouthed, all the way to the final sentence. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80095q7p7jo

Convicted criminal, biographical fantasist and literary plagiarist Jeffrey Archer, aged 86. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckj0l401dvpgo

I remember watching the last Roses match in a pub and I was the only person there apart from the barman (a long-suffering Warrington fan). The match was a one-sided blowout between Yorkshire's 2nd-choice and Lancashire's 3rd-choice players and the stadium atmosphere was stone dead. Nobody wanted to be there.

For the millionth time, what works well in one place is not guaranteed to work at all in another. Both Rugby League's War of the Roses and the AFL's State of Origin series died of apathy and club disengagement.

Yes, that seems quite possible, but there's absolutely no way of knowing at this point.

There's a fair amount of cultural inertia involved, I suspect. Club RU coverage has gradually begun to slide, years after it would have been warranted. The RU Varsity Match still got attention for a long time after the public had clearly lost interest and the Boat Race is going the same way.

Woman hurt on Las Vegas mechanical penis ride sues downtown bar https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/woman-hurt-on-las-vegas-mechanical-penis-ride-sues-downtown-bar/

The short drop outs might have been okay for a team that wasn't absolutely knackered well before half time, because the Knights are pretty decent competitors under high kicks.

18:10 Here are the highlights. Now PNG know Australia are beatable who knows what could happen?

Adolf Hitler re-elected. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/adolf-hitler-uunona-namibia-election-b2874229.html

Just got back from the shops and it looks like a great day for a final. Bright, breezy, not too warm.

And, now Louis McCarthy-Scarsbrook has retired, safe.

Nine have live rights to the GF and Origin series. Fox have their own commentary, but they can only use it in repeats, not live.

So close, yet so far. Congratulations to the Chooks! Sorry that Newcastle couldn't emulate Wakefield's exploits of yesterday.