Darren Adam
@darrenadam
British-Icelandic / Chris' partner / RÚV English & RÚV English Radio: English language radio from Iceland’s national broadcaster / former @LBC.co.uk / I like cars/vinyl/brutalism/cold (happily)
It feels unlikely that an object could exist that makes Zuckerberg seem even weirder than usual, but it’s stranger still that he invented it himself.
Digital was once prized above all. Now Decca have released this defiantly all-analogue record of Varèse: no digital stage anywhere between that performance in LA 1971 and these speakers in 2026. It sounds absolutely incredible. And it’s also perhaps the cleanest vinyl pressing I’ve ever heard.
An unsurprisingly unpleasant story: and I know it’s only a headline, but it feels like there really ought to be a comma after “free”.
I need to buy some nails. I’m in the hardware store and assumed they’d be next to the screws. However, it’s all screws, everywhere, thousands of them. It all feels like something about which Alanis Morisette would write a moaning song.
What is the point of any paper, website or other entity, generating, publishing or accepting ads, which consist of such manifestly off-the-page-nuts moonhowler batshittery? It's not as if the outlet which ran this has any trace of credibility to spare in the first place.
For whining heliophobes like me, sunglasses are essential. Which is why it’s at least a little annoying that I lose, and have lost, countless pairs. Happily H&M are selling these for an almost-free 200 ISK. And they’re properly dark.
Pressing “play” only to get this message somehow makes it even more perfect.
Under 200 ISK for the first time in what feels like forever. Nature is healing!
Hearing Andrew Neil talk about his love for the music of Pet Shop Boys, and Being Boring in particular, made for a somewhat surprising start to the day.
I bought this when last in the UK, in May. 10p, in B&M or The Range or somewhere. Six Xmas chocolate mixes (and in date until after next Xmas). It is now time to deploy them. (“You’ll never drink those”, opined Chris, wrongly.) Dumping them straight into coffee (because who has time to heat milk?)
The “north” starts at Inverness. (The “midlands” are at Penrith: literally the middle of the land.) Manchester is about three-quarters of the way down the land. It is not in any definition of the north of the country, unless one holds the map upside down. These are all simple geographical facts.
We’ve just discovered season 17 of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia on Disney+. Joy is unconfined. And I recall when we drove to this oddly familiar location in Los Angeles (not Philadelphia…)
And so now I have to phone EE to complete a very simple task, doubtless first listening to a recorded message for half an hour telling me that I could do it on their manifestly broken website.
However good you think these will be, I promise that you will vastly underestimate their goodness. Then, just as you think you have finally and accurately assessed their level of goodness, a new and higher level of goodness will reveal itself. This will continue to the heat death of the universe.
Sorry, but some days seem to demand an even greater expression of gratitude for our location and home than others.
Just found this, from our most recent trip to the USA. We shall return to the States - one day!
Just over 30 minutes ago the northern hemisphere hit this year’s summer solstice. From today, the nights will lengthen and the days will shorten. Summer now sees its gruesome reign of terror start to decline. Haust, Halloween, Mariah: they’re all just moments away.
No. NonononoNO. We really are in the stupidest possible timeline, aren’t we?
Something of a rather excellent Moray Firth Radio reunion in Inverness yesterday. About to fly home from Edinburgh now (not least to escape the heat down here).