👏👏👏

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... There isn’t a single convincing argument in the article, by either minister quoted, for having done this. So tragically banal.

Wait what?

Site of the first Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Battle Creek, Mich. Founded by Millerites after failed 2nd Coming predictions, known as the 1st and 2nd “Great Disappointment.” Right by the Battle Creek Sanitarium. J.H. Kellogg used church beliefs to build a wellness empire and invent the corn flake.

"With dismay we witness our university leadership making soulless choices that hollow out our institutions from within and erode the critical and self-reflective fabric of academia". [from Guest et al., 'Against the Uncritical Adoption of "AI" Technologies in Academia']

Best comfort lunch ever.

My favourite equivalent was jr high school English teacher (1970s) who had a huge poster of this w/ a piece of card taped over the weapon so when inevitably asked, she could explain phallic symbols.

Conservatives are desperately trying to make Charlie Kirk their new Jesus because they don't like anything about the actual Jesus

Hard not to become a tourist on an evening like this. ‘Bridge of Sighs’, Hertford College; Clarendon Bldg beyond; Oxford.

One of those coincidental pairings that looks great: aeoniums and green and purple basil. Hoping for one more batch of pesto from the latter.

Sparkling after rain.

In case you missed it. This deserves every drop of scorn it can attract. HINT: universities and colleges listen more to donors and alumni than to current academic staff or students.

Crest fallen.

I am physically sick. I don’t see the point of doing what I do anymore. F*ck genAI and those who prostitute themselves for it. This, like Starmer’s plans, is only about filthy lucre, and damn the rest of us and any higher ideals. I really do want to just get off this planet.

Et tu, Brute?

Little Oxfam haul of ‘90s alte Musik. Shouldn’t be listening to such memory-inducing things when fragile with pre-term stress, the world, etc., all filtered through the passing of years. But beauty that pains is often the best kind.

Congratulations to these two remarkable young poets. Wonderful to read these and other excellent entries with fellow judges Alicia Stallings (Prof of Poetry) and Jonathan Katz (Univ Orator). (And I'm chuffed that the theme from Donne prompted the winning entry!) english.web.ox.ac.uk/article/engl...

I love London so much. So much. Did you know that London has the lowest level of ethnic violence of any city of comparable size in the world? Multiculturalism has in fact worked here. They just don’t want it to be true because we happen to have a Muslim mayor.

Envy Month Icon, Day 16: Jonas Salk he didn’t patent the polio vaccine, didn’t cash in, and didn’t hoard the cure. When asked who owned it, he replied, “Could you patent the sun?” That humility, that choice to serve humanity over self, makes him the kind of figure envy can’t touch

I'm running for president on the manifesto that Adobe Acrobat and its cousins should be put in a cannon and fired into the sun.

We all need more friends like Henderson of Milton.

Devastating winds in Oxfordshire.

More posts like this would raise the spirits. Here’s mine for a bit of inspiration and peace this Sunday afternoon:

What a depressing day. Indecency with a megaphone, decency apparently struck dumb.

The almost indescribable irony of government USING XTWITTER to issue their condemnations of fascist violence. Where has sanity gone???

It's physically unsafe for people like me to go into the centre of our home city this Saturday on account of the colour of our skin. Most politicians are either failing to stand up to this or actively contributing to the situation. We don't owe any of those politicians our votes. Not one of them.

Mind off Other Things: I do love every step of making apple pie, right down to the wheels with the crust off-cuts. And yes, thinking about my mother.

they should build roundabouts for shy people

It is also time for us to try (again) to get our institutions to leave that hellsite.

Starmer has now even managed to give Badenoch the chance to sound like a leader of the opposition. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Good.

These dangerous vanity vehicles really must be banned.

Slightly diminish a book. XCV Sermons Lancelot Andrews (very niche, sorry; #earlymodern)

A political party, that's topping the polls, lauding someone who called for human beings to be burned to death should be a moment for national self-reflection. This is not who we are nor who we should become. Reform UK are a plague on our national humanity. We must never permit them to govern.

Long-time fan of @thebotanics.bsky.social Edinburgh, so delighted to get to its outpost at Benmore. Curation top-notch, along with commitment to education and the arts. Loved the cultural/botanical counterpoint of whole Highland ridges devoted to Chile and Tasmania.

The jellies are like crazy-paving. Ettrick’s Bay, Isle of #Bute.

Sundown over Arran from the Isle of #Bute.

One for the medievalists, from the ‘dark-age times’ of the Ministry of Works: St Blane’s Church, Isle of Bute.

BREAKING: Whole Labour Party defects to Reform.

I want to share some tracks over the next few days from our new @peterhousecam.bsky.social Choir Naxos CD: William Smith’s Responses are well-known, but have you ever heard his incredible festal setting of Psalm 85? I think it’s fabulous: open.spotify.com/track/2hXPpZVH…

I’m leaving a big part of my heart in Glasgow. I’ll always kick myself for not knowing it decades earlier.

Metropolitan Cathedral of St Andrew, Glasgow (1814, restoration 2009-11). What a knockout. Top font, centred on a St Andrews cross traced in the aisles. 👍

Words fail me yet again

‘No YOU’RE the one moved to tears by an organ suite of tunes from ‘Oliver!’ at Kelvingrove.’

Serious claim to fame. Glasgow Necropolis.

Morning.

oh look at that it can be done

Just finished an all-the-way-around, every-pin-I-own, umpteen-layers-at-the-neck seam and need to lie down. Also afraid to turn it out to see if it’s ok. 😬