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The Government’s Autumn 2024 Budget included several major fiscal changes, including a revision of the method by which national debt is measured for national accounting purposes, an upcoming rise in national insurance contributions for employers and commitments related to regional devolution. Some of these changes could significantly influence London’s economic trajectory. On October 30th 2024, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, revealed the newly-elected government’s first Budget, which was …

Maxine and I got away for nearly two weeks, combining a trip to Berlin to see Ruth & Cory with the usual visit to Stuttgart. Having special assistance at Gatwick took us on a buggy to some rather obscure parts of the airport, and we were loaded into the side of the plane! Arriving in Berlin, the family weekend included a boat trip and lunch with Cory’s home made (and …

I've written about Gaburi before but it remains the absolute best karaage I've found in years of searching. Just order the boneless fried chicken thighs ("momo karaage, hone-nashi") and, if you drink, enjoy the $10 all you can drink course for two hours. Can't afford not to.

I’m sick in bed the week of Thanksgiving, which is mostly bothering me because I was looking forward to using the holiday lull to finally get some work done. This sounds bad, I know. But my family doesn’t even do Thanksgiving! My whole life I’ve made do with (and enjoyed, to be fair) turning up at other people’s celebrations. This year I’m starving for a secret pocket of time instead; …

Reviewed by Harriet Sequels can be very enticing when the initial book has done well. Readers want to know what happens to a character they’ve connected with. So says a literary agent in this witty, exciting thriller, which is itself of course the sequel to Korelitz’s previous novel, The Plot, which I reviewed on here back in 2021. In that book Jacob Finch Bonner, a failing novelist, gets a job …

I achieved the dream of walking out of Tesco with something I hadn’t paid for. I bought a carton of oat milk that had a promotional price of £1.50 on the shelf edge, but after checking my receipt I saw that I’d been charged £2. Out of principle, I immediately headed for the customer service desk to point this out. The employee disappeared off to check and came back with …

Every Thanksgiving since 1924 (with a brief pause during WWII), towering balloon characters float above Manhattan’s streets, following a grand route from the West Side to Herald Square in a holiday tradition. This Scholastic video takes viewers inside the Macy’s Parade Studio, revealing how Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons are...

Here’s a special edition of my weekly picdump that features Thanksgiving-themed pictures, infographics, and meme. Happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the pics! The post Special edition picdump for Thanksgiving 2024 appeared first on The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

My first serious foray into Oxon earlier this month yielded 32 ticks (well one was in Bucks but it is near enough to the border to be included). In true BRAPA tradition, I'm ranking them from worst to best across the next five blogs. Probably too early in my BRAPA career to rank all counties in a similar order, but if you imagine the current Championship league table, Oxfordshire probably …

Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went anywhere, but I found it exciting at the time. One piece that particularly spoke to me was the notion of including data in websites so that web scrapers could easily get at it. This was supposed to make the web more open and interoperable. The problem was that the data needed to …

Dear Darling Ones, Recently, I had a social media that has been stuck in my craw since happened. On this particular day people are ranking their favorite Wilco go albums from best to worst. Since I stopped paying attention around “Sky Blue Sky,” I didn’t participate. Besides, everybody knows “Summerteeth” is the best one. However, I did jump in when one man said, “Hell yeah, dads are ranking Wilco.” Grrr. …

Book Now Available [limited] & Paperback Launching February 10, 2025. It took over a decade, but perhaps that timing is perfect? There is much concern and plenty of gloom-and-doom about the future. I’m reminded of one my favorite M*A*S*H episodes in which Hawkeye jumps upon on the table, bangs his tray, and leads a chant of “We Want Something Else.” This isn’t just another book about what’s wrong with capitalism; …

As usual, I am caught up in many things, including an article on Goethe's 1774 play Clavigo, which I am completing (the footnotes took ages) for publication. It is not a play that we in the U.S. hear much about, and at the time of its publication there were people in Germany who didn't believe it was by Goethe. It appeared in the same year as The Sorrows of Young …

From 2008-2022, I aggregated every online year-end book list I discovered into one post. This year (like last year), I will collect essential and interesting year-end book lists in this post and update it daily. Please feel free to e-mail me with a magazine, newspaper, or other online list I have missed. Please consider making a donation or leaving a tip to Largehearted Boy to support posts like these, the …

Online reading“I feel connected to my organization’s culture.” Only 40% of leadership, 23% of management, and 19% of staff agree with this statement.My pal Jenny Zhang recently gave a superb conference talk on ways it might be more useful to think about values (fit/mismatch/tension) in the workplace, instead of culture.I particularly enjoyed this:The expected return of going to leadership with negative feedback is terrible. Risk alienating your boss for the …