The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire, 2011, painting by David Hockney (b.1937).

These infographics are always highlights in my morning scroll. In a minute I’m going to the kitchen to boil an egg and the top part here - how the people of the old tongue hatched ‘egg’ from ‘bird’ - will bubble away. #langsky

My God. I hope there are many steps, many people, saner people in the sign off process for a nuclear strike and it doesn’t hinge solely on the unhinged Commander-in-Chief.

Agree. Full speed ahead. Create facts on the ground.

Two weeks ago, the Hungarian opposition was bracing for a false flag operation, an "emergency" that would allow Viktor Orban to turn the tide or even cancel an election he is losing. Now it appears to have arrived

If they’re not going to remove him from office (they should), some sort of physical restraint is surely now necessary, to stop him posting this sort of lunacy.

Wow, gorgeous object from a hazy time in the historical record. Londinium lay abandoned in what is today the financial quarter, the City. I’m not clear, though, why the Anglo Saxons centred their town further along the Thames. Silting up, that sort of thing?

I feel sorry for this guy, sacked for trying to tackle shoplifters. Seems nice, in his fifties, just moved into his own place after decades of sharing rented space. May now become homeless.

Just finished episode 1 of Film Club. Nice premise - are the two mates who meet up to watch films just mates? Looks like it’s going to be an interesting, sweet little series, created by and starring Aimee Lou Wood. But answer me this: why are nearly all BBC drama series six parters? #tvdrama

I dunno man, not an expert, but I think Trump is bastard enough to give bastard Netanyahu the nod to cut off electricity to Iranian civilians. It would be a colossal war crime.

Imagine saying this about telephones, when those were the new communication technology. Like if someone called you up and made a death threat, and people went "It's only telephone stuff, who cares. The telephone isn't real life."

In case you're too confident this is all bluster. Reuters: "Israel is preparing to ​attack Iranian energy ‌facilities but is awaiting a green ​light from ​the United States, a ⁠senior Israeli ​defense official said." www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Spaceship Earth NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels towards the Moon. Credit: NASA. flic.kr/p/2s5HiF9 🧪🔭 #Artemis

Different language but same general tone as Ayatollahspeak.

Interesting piece by Simon Tisdall calling for religious defiance of Trumpism. I’m not an adherent of any religion but I recognise unholiness when I see it. American Christian nationalism is an unclean abomination.

Lovely subjunctives here. #langsky

Being outside the EU is sort of the natural consequence of leaving the EU and not punishment for it… www.majorcadailybulletin.com/news/local/2...

Inès de la Fressange: “Cuando era niña, una mujer de 60 años era una abuela con moño. Hoy hace deporte, sale a cenar, es activa”. El nuevo ensayo 'La edad experimental’ analiza la vejez no como declive sino como laboratorio de posibilidades

ICE has kept a disabled double amputee prisoner for over 14 months. Rodney Taylor has been denied access to his prosthetic legs. Forced to crawl across dirty floors to access food. Placed in solitary. Denied medical accommodations. They’re killing him & he needs the community to make noise!

For those, like me, who were baffled as to what exactly this view was of, continent-wise 😆 A whole other world view, literally.

ok if we just shut up and give them this one then play the long game, it opens up a lot of poetic irony come 2028

A ‘string of arrests’ of wholly innocent people becomes a wave, a wave becomes a tide… that’s how tyranny always grows.

🚀🌔 Stunning views from NASA’s Artemis II mission and the International Space Station showcase Earth, the moon and even Venus, captured during humanity’s first crewed lunar mission since 1972. 🚀🌔 Follow all our mission coverage here: spklr.io/6001EyN07

Super Happy Forever (Kohei Igarashi, 2024, Japan). Lovely little film, this. It’s a romance and it’s about coincidence and little moments and little things - notably a cheap baseball cap - that mean a lot. There’s also tragedy in here, but subtle, kind of exquisite. すごい! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bill McGuire has some some blindingly simple - and true - truths to tell. The UK must, absolutely, not drill for oil in the North Sea. It is the very opposite of what our response to the Iran war should be.

Wow ♥️

Artemis II is a thing of beauty open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

Pathetic from Labour, even more pathetic from Ed Miliband who knows more than most that there’s no environmental, energy security, economic or even political logic to this.

Honestly I've let dozens of these go but this endless stream of antisemitism just proves everything I was saying in the post. (For the hard of thinking the ambulances were used for the whole community regardless of religion, and even if they weren't racist arson would still be unacceptable.)

Polyglot tip: record yourself speaking your target language every week and listen back. Your ear will catch errors your teacher won't. Self-monitoring is a superpower that doesn't require a tutor. #Polyglot #LanguageLearning

Wait he wants to submit to a trans continental European power structure?

Two Prosecutors (France/Germany; Russian language; Sergei Loznitsa (Ukrainian), 2025). 1937, the height of the Terror in the USSR, an idealistic prosecutor tries to right a wrong in Stalinworld. Resonances, of course, for our dark times. Slow, brilliant, nightmarish. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Noem, Bondi…. Next up in the purge of the Politburo will, I think, be Hegseth.

It’s arguably less a war than it is just a string of war crimes

“To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” –Justice Robert Jackson, Nuremberg, 1945

My wife, my granddaughter and I saw Moonwalkers a few weeks ago. You should too, if you can. The Artemis mission is one of the few bright spots in an increasingly dark time for Earth.

These people have never thought anything through in their lives.

Very interesting on the upcoming radical overhaul of grammatical gender in German. Remember this day - it is April 1st! #langsky

I mean, the UK could, as China and other countries are doing, negotiate with Iran for passage of tankers through the strait. If, as is very possible, US armed forces can’t open it militarily, that’s what an utterly humiliated US itself will eventually have to do.

#Israel passed a new law imposing the death penalty on any Palestinian convicted of a fatal attack. Highly discriminatory, & applied to sentences imposed on 'trials' based on torture-induced 'confessions'. Obviously does not comply with #humanRights #IntLaw. www.dw.com/en/israel-pa...

Wow. Career ending in any normal times. "A broker for Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter." www.ft.com/content/744e...

10 years late to the BBC’s 2016 adaptation of War and Peace but we’ve just watched it on iPlayer and it’s brilliant: so much of the texture and nuance of Tolstoy’s masterpiece in just 6 hours of TV. The BBC at its very best. #booksky #TVdrama

Tbh all this is my most likely scenario, with Iranian civilians and the future sustainability of Iran's economic model and state cohesion likely to suffer most

Trump’s threat here to disable Iran’s civilian electricity and cut off water supply would, if carried out, be just about the most grave war crime he could commit. Iran has a population of 93 million.

Country decides to go it alone in a referendum. Chaos results. Country has the sense to change course.

If there’s a ground invasion, many more children will die, men will be tortured, women raped. Always happens in war and always much worse when the men at the top are dumb and evil, like Hegseth.

I once saw Petula Clark coming out of Caffe Concerto on the Kings Road!A friend of a friend kind of knows her and says she’s really nice! She is a superb polyglot and I love her and her songs across several languages!

This photo.

This claims to be the most working class cabinet in history and it’s not a claim without merit. But it’s a weakly made claim, one that could have been used in a highly political and advantageous way to Labour had not been in the hands of legacy New Labour children afraid of ‘class’ politics.

Would make a great movie! Chocolate Heist. (Hollywood ofc swaps Kit Kats for Hershey bars and adds a multiple pile up on Interstate 10.)