Tony Clay

[Petronella Wyatt @PetronellaWyatt]

Whenever someone mentions "The Sun", I invariably remember this hilarious scene from the great BBC television series, “Yes, Prime Minister”.

[Dave @surlydave_40]

Here I go again. I pick back up the Ulysses S. Grant memoir and he blasts me with another line that knocked my flip flops off.

“The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this.”

— Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. 1 (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885), chap. 14

Grant wrote that in 1885.

Not 1905 or 1965.

What struck me is that Grant was already recognizing the mythmaking around Lee. He had watched men enrobe Lee with what Grant himself called “almost superhuman abilities.”

I believe Grant understood that the myth of Lee born during the war would spread and grow long after it.

What that myth eventually became and what Lee himself represented are entirely different discussions. I’m not getting into those here.

My point is Grant has time and time again in this book made observations that continue to impress me.

And you’re slowly going to hear my thoughts on them. I have more saved up.

#UlyssesSGrant #CivilWarHistory #aihistory #militaryhistory

[Stephen R. C. Hicks @SRCHicks]

Best Insults in History:
1. “He had delusions of adequacy. “ — Walter Kerr
2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.“ — Winston Churchill
3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.“ — Clarence Darrow
More here: https://t.co/DrGLC3KlKc

[Tony Clay @TonyClay247]

@usludurkizim 14

[𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜 - 𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞 - 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞⭐️❤️ @NgocThach74]

The 1999 performance of "After the Gold Rush" by the trio of Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris on the *Late Show with David Letterman* stands as a deeply moving, historic moment.

This live performance served as a powerful statement of their comeback, propelling the album to Gold status and earning a prestigious Grammy Award.

A highlight that lent an ethereal quality to the performance was the inclusion of the unique glass harmonica, played by Dennis James, which left the studio audience spellbound and silent in awe.

To this day, the video of that performance remains an iconic pinnacle of the art of acoustic vocal harmony from the pre-digital era.

In an age before Auto-tune, the crystalline soprano of Dolly Parton, the powerful vocals of Linda Ronstadt, and the impeccable harmonies of Emmylou Harris blended together in perfect unison.

The performance serves as an exemplary lesson in artistic generosity, where three major talents listened to one another to elevate each other's contributions, creating a true sonic paradise.

[brad ❤️‍🔥 @brrr_add]

We all probably have a favorite Dolly story, this one’s mine 🥹

[Adrian Weale @Edeaulx]

This just about sums it up:

[Kara Richey @Kara_Richey]

If you make this the last thing you listen to tonight before you go to bed I promise you won’t regret it

[Stu Smith @thestustustudio]

You have to watch every second of this to fully appreciate it. Genuinely one of the best tributes to Dolly Parton ever.

[Dolly Parton @DollyParton]

A message from the family of Dolly Parton.

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

Locked alone in a solitary confinement cell, a man serving a long sentence for murder passed the endless hours with sudoku puzzles — until the day he noticed another inmate handing out little envelopes full of math problems. He asked for one. He solved it. He asked for another. And what happened next, from inside a prison cell with nothing but a pencil and paper, would astonish mathematicians on the other side of the world...

His name is Christopher Havens.

Let's be honest about how his story begins, because it matters. In 2010, Havens took a man's life in a drug-related shooting. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years in a Washington state prison. He was in his late twenties, his life in ruins, and he struggled badly in his early days behind bars. After an altercation with another inmate, he was thrown into solitary confinement for about a year.

And it was there, in that isolation, that something completely unexpected happened.

To pass the crushing hours, Havens started doing sudoku. Then he noticed a fellow inmate passing around small envelopes stuffed with math problems, and asked if he could have one. He worked it out. Then he asked for another. And another.

Something about mathematics — its logic, its order, its quiet, unshakable truth — connected with Christopher Havens in a way that nothing in his life ever had before. He hadn't been a math student. He'd never chased the subject. But now, alone in a cell, it found him. And he threw himself into it completely, studying, by his own account, as much as ten hours a day.

He devoured every math book the prison library had — and then he ran out. So in 2013, Havens did something audacious. He sat down and wrote a letter to an academic mathematics publisher, asking how he might subscribe to a research journal, and whether any mathematician in the world would be willing to correspond with a prisoner about advanced mathematics.

Most letters like that go straight into the wastebasket. But this one found its way to a number theorist named Umberto Cerruti, a professor at the University of Torino in Italy.

Professor Cerruti was skeptical, to put it mildly. He assumed Havens was probably a "crank" — one of the many amateurs who fall in love with numbers and convince themselves they've discovered something. So, to test him, Cerruti mailed him a difficult problem to solve.

What came back in the mail stopped him cold.

Havens mailed back a strip of paper nearly four feet long — about 120 centimeters — covered in one single, enormous, handwritten formula. Cerruti, half-expecting nonsense, carefully typed the whole thing into his computer to check it. And to his astonishment, it was correct. Completely correct.

This was no crank. This was a genuine mathematical mind — one that had taught itself, alone, in a prison cell.

From that moment, a remarkable transatlantic collaboration was born, conducted entirely through handwritten letters crossing the ocean. Cerruti began sending Havens real material in number theory — one of the oldest branches of mathematics, with roots going back more than two thousand years to the ancient Greek Euclid. And here is the part that makes it truly extraordinary: the work was never dumbed down for him. Havens was handed genuine, unsolved research problems — the kind that challenge trained, professional mathematicians — and he worked through them with nothing but a pencil, paper, and the prison mail. No computer. No classroom. No professor down the hall.

The obstacles were constant. When Cerruti tried to send him math books, the prison blocked them, until Havens negotiated with the administration to let them through. With no computer to typeset his work, he taught himself LaTeX — the intricate coding language mathematicians use to format equations — entirely by hand, visualizing every symbol in his head and mailing pages of handwritten code to his collaborators.

#drthehistories

[Andrzej @PopmusicPL]

Metallica - Whiskey In The Jar 🎶🎤

[Ruslan.. 😎 @Kipr2000]

🎧🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎧

[Olivia Smith @OliviaSmith042]

Just a Labrador doing Labrador things 😂🐶

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @BarnabyHistory]

75 foreigners are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The highest-ranking is British Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill.

He is one of only two men in the entire cemetery honored with an equestrian statue (the other is Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny).

Dill was born in Lurgan, County Armagh, in 1881. Fought in the Boer War. Rose through the ranks in the Great War. Commanded in Palestine between the wars. Knighted in 1937. In 1941 he was Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

Churchill sent him to Washington as his personal military representative and head of the British Joint Staff Mission. There he forged a deep friendship and working partnership with General George C. Marshall that helped hold the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff together.

President Roosevelt later called him “the most important figure in the remarkable accord” between the two nations.

Dill was diagnosed with aplastic anemia in 1943. He chose to stay in America rather than return home. He died at Walter Reed on November 4, 1944.

Marshall used the influence he had to help get him buried in Arlington. Congress passed a joint resolution. FDR signed it.

On November 1, 1950, President Truman dedicated the bronze equestrian statue by Herbert Haseltine. Marshall unveiled it.

[Marble Chops @Marblechops79]

This is extraordinary - and damning

From about 39 mins in

"Effectively Cambridge swapped me (Starkey) for Jason Arday!"

"David Sainsbury, the most important Labour benefactor has had bearing on such matters"

"the quite extraordinary Labour Party wheels within this"

"Morgan is malign"

Hits the nub - the universities are ideologically captured by lefties.

[Basket a todo Ritmo @BasketatodoRitm]

Es hipnótico ver y oír el solo final de Mark Knopfler en "Sultan of Swing". Qué manera de moverse los dedos del bueno Mark sobre el mástil y el cuerpo de su guitarra.

[Anaheim Ducks @AnaheimDucks]

"Excuse me, I need this real quick" - Beckett (probably)

[Felix Rex @navyhato]

As the US made George Floyd a Saint.
The UK will make him a GOD.

>Compulsive plagarist
>he lied about raising £5 million for charity (he raised less than £7000)
>lied about volunteering in africa (the charity he claimed to volunteer for had no record of him)
>lied about having professorships at Nelson Mandela University, the University of Glasgow, and Ohio State
>lied about appearing in a documentary which stopped airing before he was even born (fucking mental)
>claimed he had ran 600 miles in 6 days (this would make him one of the greatest ultra runners to ever live)
>claimed he had ran 30 marathons in 35 days, doing 15 of the marathons with a broken leg (hahaha)
>claimed he had played football at a semi-professional level (refused to name the club when questioned about it)
>lied about not being able to read or write until he was 18.
>lied about having epilepsy and autism
>lied about being a snooker champion (records showed he competed in one amateur tournament and didn't finish in the top 10)
>claimed everyone in his family works in sociology (none of them do)
>lied about someone coming into his office in a mask and giving him racist abuse (when the cctv was checked there was nobody)
>lied that someone sent a severed pigs head and bullets to his mothers address (his mother had no knowledge of it when questioned by press)