Planetary boundaries sound very abstract & high level, this year, for the first time @eraju.bsky.social & I contributed a chapter how breaching these boundaries has affected people around the world: losing lives, livelihoods, health… & for whom the limits of adaptation have been reached.

Wilhelm Leibl is such an interesting artist, especially in the later works where realism is still a commitment but starts to open out. Remembering the first lockdown when I started assembling thoughts for a possible essay about him. Peasant filling his pipe, 1890s. #WilhelmLeibl #ArtHistory #Kunst

‘You can tell a lot about a society’s priorities by what it tries to protect itself from…. really I should say ‘a government’s priorities’.’ My piece in Solicitors Journal contrasting the treatment of Palestine Action and violent far-right movements. www.solicitorsjournal.com/sjarticle/wh...

I should add to this and say that we, Hypha Studios, have three galleries in the iconic 1 Poultry for a year, 24 exhibitions of which 8 are architecture adjacent in a gallery that will become *the* cultural place to be. Find out more: hyphastudios.com/hypha-galler...

I am supporting this fantastic group of folks S.L.A.E who are fighting against the government on the Luton airport expansion. Reeves went against environmental planning advice and pushed this through. They have been awarded a date for a judicial review in November. Please help share this 🙏 🧵

A month ago, the famine in Gaza, deliberately created by the Israeli government, was officially confirmed by UN agencies. Since then, there has been an eerie silence in the media here, with far fewer reports than there were before. But it hasn't ended. On the contrary, it has intensified.

To the Charterhouse for Islington in Bloom awards -- a good event for one of the most nature-deprived boroughs in the country. I am there as '+1, with watering cans'. Ceiling of the Great Hall.

Picked up some Lib Dem stats at conference. Some of these surprised me (especially given media coverage): 1. The Liberal Democrats now control more councils than the Conservative Party 2. In May's local elections in England, the LDs elected more councillors than either Labour or the Tories. (1/x)

Poem titled 'RAIN' by Maurice Scully. From Certain Pages (form books, 1992) #rain

Just to illustrate how much worse it's got, I have received more abuse over the past year and a bit - including death threats and a large volume of antisemitism - for what I write than in the previous 15 years of covering migration and the far right put together.

You want to read this book.

Advice please: what are the new local journalism outlets sticking it to power? I'm thinking of publications like the Bristol Cable, Inside Croydon and West Country Voices. Which others should be on the list? Thanks.

Three books in reading Ayi Kwei Armah (b. 1939, living quietly in Senegal) -- one of the key #AfricanWriters who began publishing in the 60s. The books are not that easy to get hold of, even in libraries. Armah's own publishing house Per Ankh makes them available. /

Wooop! With the last ratifications in last night 🇲🇦🇸🇱, a landmark treaty to protect nature in 2/3rds of the world’s oceans can now enter into force. If you need a refresh on what it means and took to get here, @giulianaviglione.bsky.social and I have you covered. www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does...

How to report on majority councils elected on low turnouts channelling denialism and worse? I think (hope) that financial incompetence will undo them, and the shine will start to come off, as it has a bit for the AfD. Meanwhile I am glad of local news coverage like this.

As someone who campaigned for a Climate Emergency declaration by the council where I live, I hate any signs of denial being legitimised. But the financial havoc Reform bring and their grandstanding (over eg stalling sell-off of County Hall) will take some of the attraction away. #KCC

Arrived in the post today, the ‘hard’ copy of the ‘Transnational Working-Class Literatures’ collection. Check out the wide range of contributions. Order a copy for/from your library! #WorkingClassLiterature #WorkingClassStudies

Witches, padel and nature recovery What a bust cabinet meeting last night! Cllr Claire Kehily's motion to honour the murdered 17th century witches received full support (the trial was bigger than the one in Pendle). I will also be writing to the Home Secretary calling for a posthumous exoneration…

“We might not have power but not doing anything is so much worse. Even if your voice is heard by just two people, it’s something.” - Edizon Musavuli.

In her blog, Mxhalisa shows how capitalism now commodifies its own waste. This shift creates an exploited “counter-productive labour” engaged in waste picking activities in a rotten system hellbent on producing more rubbish than goods for profit. #climatechange #globalwarming buff.ly/HSiFigX

Re-read Municipal Dreams, having bought it for the 2nd time after giving one away. It's an important book not for specialists in housing & architecture, but for the thinking about positive transformations of social history through C20 and the state (local as well as national) as a creative power.

Google data centres coming to Hertfordshire?! Sounds a lot like the final nail in an already well-nailed coffin for the local chalk streams. Or will the water be sucked out of the Thames at Teddington for it under Thames Water’s current plans? Keep your beady eyes on this.

🔴-->🟢 3 more Labour to Green Council defections today... in Barking and Dagenham Warm welcome to Faruk Choudhury, Moin Quadri and Victoria Hornby 👏 Greens on a roll and there's so much more to come!

A small front garden I pass on my way to the pharmacy, literally all over it, ivy bees are nesting! Hundreds. Every single garden that is sealed for car parking is part of a loss of habitat, actual and potential. #bees #KentWildlife

Had a few conversations recently that make me think, for the first time in ages, there are some exciting things happening in media. This is one of the highlights: Equator, a new magazine set up by Nesrine Malik, Pankaj Mishra, Jonathan Shainin and others. Sign up for info here: www.equator.org

Britain's democracy is in crisis. Our First Past the Post voting system increasingly delivers results that have little to do with what the country wants. This #DemocracyDay, I'm calling for a fair system where every vote counts. It's time for Proportional Representation. #PRnow

Stumble, humble and bumble, however, are linked by a word crucial in any scientific endeavour, 'um'

‪ 'Their [India & Qatar] expressions of anger and performances of friendship are to demonstrate to the US that these states are not quislings, and other mates are available.' Nesrine Malik as always: informed, clear-eyed perspectives on coming realignments #Qatar www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

#Dardenne Brothers retrospective -- ICA notes, 2015. Time for another one.

18 boats set sail from Sicily yesterday. Today, ships from Tunisia and Greece join them, uniting in international waters on their journey of solidarity toward Gaza. #BreakTheSiege #SailToGaza #AllEyesOnTheFlotilla #FreePalestine

Radical Anthropology Autumn talks list: London's longest running evening class, open to all (Bloomsbury & online) starting Sept 30. Tuesday evenings, 6.30pm. @radicalanthro.bsky.social radicalanthropologygroup.org

Bramble -- a tip that had must have started rooting? I am imagining my head growing roots, my feet fusing & leafing, as the sap reverses, but of course these are just tales of what it wd be like for me to be a bramble, not real bramble news. #FavouritePlants #WildflowerHour

There are also signs in India PM Modi’s aura is waning especially as hard economic realities are seeping in. The upcoming Bihar elections will be revealing.

McCarthyism is here, and gender scholars and equality activists and even basic human/legal rights proponents are in its sights. I have learnt so much from Judith Butler and now this: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This stuff may well be for show, but nonetheless over the past 4 days there has been a remarkable realignment in the Gulf after the Doha strike www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...

Just done autumn seed order to Emorsgate Seeds for a meadow on clay in the N London/Herts golfbelt-- this is an image I keep on my desktop and don't tidy away #meadows #BSBI #botany

Sarah Howe has a new book of poems coming out, Foretokens -- I like Loop of Jade. Have just seen that she is included also in this anthology of conversations between poets of ESEA heritage. #poetry

John Wilkinson writes about Jennifer Moxley's poem for Stephen Rodefer. fortnightlyreview.substack.com/p/elegies-on...

I'm very excited to learn that my book The Unnatural Trade is one of the final seven candidates for the 2025 Society for the History of Natural History Book Prize (The Thackray Medal). My thanks to the @sochistnathist.bsky.social readers! You can see the full list at >> shnh.org.uk/news/announc...

EXCLUSIVE: England’s farms are being fertilised with a cocktail of toxic landfill juice + sewage sludge. 750,000 tonnes of landfill leachate tankered to sewage works every year → mixed into sewage → spread on farmers' fields. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Young Mothers is powerfully consistent, so moving and thoughtful -- try to see it in a cinema if you can! I can't remember quite how many films by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne I have seen. None for quite a while. Would love to see a retrospective. #film #Dardenne #Dardennes

Darfur news, so grim https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/shelling-hunger-humiliation-escaping-residents-describe-siege-sudans-al-fashir-2025-09-09/

Today (celebrating as it doesn't happen often) going out to see a film before it vanishes from the cinemas. Our film is Young Mothers by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne.

Out from behind the paywall are three pieces about ICE, by Yanis Varoufuckice, Liv Veazey, and Jack Norton and Judah Schept. Read our editors’ introduction here: www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...

Latest voting intentions in London: 🤩 Onwards!

Guest post on Municipal Dreams by Christiane Felber, about the exhibition at Lambeth Archives, on Lambeth's glory days -- required viewing for all current Lambeth councillors. It is on only until 26 Sept. #Housing #Lambeth

For everyone else reading the news this morning about the Kent and Greenwich merger - it's been as big a shock for us too. Rumours always abound with constant cuts and redundancies, but they remained rumours until 7.45am this morning.

Was at a funeral at Friends Meeting House Exeter and was struck by this exciting building nearby. West of England Eye Infirmary, now 'Hotel du Vin' - where wine goes on holiday. 1898-1901, by Alfred Brumwell Thomas, who fast became a full-on Edwardian Classical Revivalist (eg Belfast City Hall) /

The 1950s are a strange time for fiction. I have read little from that time & know little about US writing in general. Silly to single out a single influence on this big book - Ellison read widely - but he is one of the only writers who knew in this period (and subsequently), what to do with Kafka.