If, like me and, apparently, Rembrandt, you can’t draw dogs, then copy someone else’s drawing . . .

Tylenol/paracetamol and #scicomm - what is the strategy? Is there a strategy? Or is even firefighting wrong in this context? makingsciencepublic.com/2025/08/09/f...

Notice, #earlymodern #skystorians, the logo at the middle of the photo? The VOC (Dutch East India Company). All the more reason to reckon with the legacies of these companies and how they integrate (or don't) with shifting ideas of globalisation, integration, capitalism, and national identity.

Love this picture. I used in Dutch Light as illustrative of the Huygenses’ household music-making (although Constantijn Huygens played the theorbo, and there isn’t one here).

21st century Britain where it's illegal to project an image on a wall but not illegal to supply weapons to mass murdering genocidal psychopaths

Slightly diminish a book: Drive Your Car over the Mini Roundabout near the Cemetery

Asylum seekers can now volunteer in Norfolk thanks to two local charities, New Routes Integration and Voluntary Norfolk. Fantastic news for International Charity Day

Constantijn Huygens was born on this day in 1596. As he grew older – and older – he wrote himself little birthday odes. On his 70th: ‘How many Septembers, Lord, and how many fourth days will you suffer me yet?’ At 82: ‘Cease murderous years and think no more of me . . .’ (He died at 90.)

From the conclusion of my Christiaan Huygens biography, Dutch Light. Now unexpectedly and horribly pertinent.

This is a great resource, much more searchable by theme than the BBC Sounds archive. Not sure what Thomas Browne would make of rubbing shoulders with ‘John Bull’ though.

Lovely opportunity here to explore Constantijn Huygens’s music and adventures in perfumery.

Will spend the rest of my life considering how we were rushed into "going paperless" for the good of the environment only for the next generation of digital tools to become far worse for the environment.

Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?

Off to the seaside (II)? The English word seaside, meant as a holiday destination, was coined by the Dutch Constantijn Huygens in 1670. This is his verse to the painter Peter Lely (then in England) containing its first usage:

Off to the seaside (II)? The English word seaside, meant as a holiday destination, was coined by the Dutch Constantijn Huygens in 1670. This is his verse to the painter Peter Lely (then in England) containing its first usage:

Off to the seaside? Wondering why the sea is blue? This man found the answer, and won the first non-western Nobel Prize publicdomainreview.org/collection/r...

Lovely Lübeck, Hanseatic city. From the days of trade before nationalism.

In Hamburg, disappointed to find no commemoration of Hennig Brand at the site in St. Michaelisplatz where, in 1669, he was the first person to discover a chemical element – phosphorus.

Location footage fans! Last night Together TV, which screens some incredible 1970s curios at the weekends, unearthed a film from 1974 called Got It Made, described by its sole IMDb reviewer as ‘the most Norwich-centric film ever made’. I wonder if @djtaylorwriter.bsky.social knows about it?

This article by Vincenzo Latronico in today's Guardian, about fiction in translation and the domination of anglophone literature, is excellent. 🔗 www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

beyond.ignites.curiosity is in Taiwan anyway!

Cannibalism isn’t all bad! publicdomainreview.org/collection/m...

Cannibalism isn’t all bad! publicdomainreview.org/collection/m...

Really identify with this. Sad that undergrad physics teaching at Cambridge, especially the ‘practicals’, clearly didn’t improve over the years between my time and yours. Sadly I stuck with it too long to switch to HPS.

Dik boek en verbazingwekkend goed leesbaar. Misschien dat Christiaan Huygens m’n nieuwe grote vriend wordt. Waar dat bezoekje aan Hofwijck al niet goed voor was.

When Karel Čapek. – the Czech writer who coined the word ‘robot’ – came to England, he admired the trees and the policemen but hated Sundays. At Madame Tussaud’s, the mass-murderers’ waxes he has been looking at turn out to be Bernard Shaw, Blériot and Marconi. publicdomainreview.org/collection/k...

I can offer suggestions - @kateraworth.bsky.social @annpettifor.bsky.social @dhnnjyn.bsky.social @timjackson.org.uk New ideas instead more of the old failed ones of #austerity and making the disabled, ill and young pay as the have-yachts coin it www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Never thought of it quite like this. This is absolutely the point, and the problem.

Today in 1662, Christiaan Huygens writes to his brother Lodewijk: ‘At Hofwijck there’s also masses of fruit, apples, cherries and melons, of which we ate the first yesterday.’ (here’s the evidence!)

The degree to which the fossil fuel industries have clocked the populist far right as their last chance to slow the energy transition - and is funding them to undermine it at every step - is one of the biggest stories in global politics, largely and widely ignored.

Queen of Sheba coming on strong to Anthony. She’s trekked miles to see him, her ‘bel ermite’. On an onager! And she’s broken a nail doing it!! Flaubert’s La Tentation de saint Antoine shaping up to be one of the most bonkers books I’ve ever read.

The important characterisation of the UK pop'n from More In Common highlights v low levels of trust in most former 'authoritative' professions. Scientists are the exception. Trust both fragile & valuable. We scientists must continue to *earn* it. Science communication is more important than ever.

This is as if postal services suddenly announce they are going to slit open your envelopes, have a good look through, and sell on whatever they find in them.

Fascinating post here about the metaphors we use to describe the weather and climate and their limitations when discussing climate change.

‘If asked to name our favorite French composer of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, most of us would reach straight for Erik Satie’? ‘Most of us’? Really? Nothing against Satie. But Saint-Saens? Ravel? Debussy?

I'm very honoured with the awarding of the 2025 Stevin prize for my research. And I'm particularly pleased that this prize goes to a philosopher, as it recognizes that we not only do blue sky research, but also analyses that can make a difference to the world. www.nwo.nl/en/prof-dr-i...

This looks sumptuous! Given the visual emphasis, I’m hoping Palissy, Bruegel and Teniers make an appearance. Perhaps even Anselm Kiefer

Delighted that Dutch Light is coming out next month in China. Here’s the brilliant cover from China Worker Press.

Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection models itself as an update of Perec for the extremely online age. It struck me as more like Bouvard et Pécuchet with wifi. Bonus: it’s also designed in the undesignery house style of @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social that its protagonists would surely approve. Recommended.

Sounds like a case for Sir Thomas Browne!

Amid all the gushing tributes to Alan Yentob and his impact on culture and the arts on the BBC it might be nice to have some explanation of why there is now no arts and culture on the BBC.

Very sad to hear that Alan Yentob has died. I first saw him at the British-themed Aspen Design Conference in 1986 (!), where he was already essaying his great lifetime role as BBC creative lynchpin

Some great new words here (in Dutch) by and about Christiaan Huygens from the Pentagram bookshop in Haarlem, including Daphne Stam‘s new translation of his speculation about life on other planets, Cosmotheoros: spiritueleteksten.nl/kosmos/boeke...

The brilliant Christaen Huygens was also an accomplished artist. This is from his sketchbook: Scheveningen, Hofwyck, and 'De mallemolen'. UB Leiden, Hug. 14

Went to the Fitzwilliam for the Dürers, but lingered in the brilliant and disturbing ‘Rise Up’ exhibition

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening. That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

Exactly the same energy as Theresa May's infamous 2016 claim that "if you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

An amazing scholar and talent. I wrote a short profile of her here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/t...

This is a brazen political attack on Germany’s democracy. Clearly the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution did everything right to prompt reactions from Trumpist leaders.

A fun architecture / geography / politics quiz here: 36 mystery European parliament buildings for you to work out. (in fact the cover of a fascinating book by @sophiapsarra.bsky.social which is also open access here: uclpress.co.uk/book/parliam...)