It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet, when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels… —Alastair Reid (1926–2014), “Scotland” published in WEATHERING: Poems & Translations (EP Dutton, 1978) #BookWormSat #poem #poetry

The World Cup's had its soul ripped out of it. Never fear though, proper football returns when the new National League season kicks off on 8th August...!

57 years ago, on the 28th of June 1969, at 1:20 AM, the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, one of the few gay bars in the city at the time. They intended to have female officers take patrons they perceived to be women to the bathrooms to verify their sex, to then arrest trans women and drag queens. #otd

False compliance, as James C Scott called it. Maybe the best example I’ve ever seen.

Happy #PrideMonth! Enjoy a Tesla getting smashed by a light rail train with a pride flag.

Have you read this week's long-read on how Académica de Coimbra's players and fans helped bring down Western Europe's longest-running dictatorship? 🇵🇹 Politics and football, eh...? 📸 Formidável outsidewrite.substack.com/p/the-studen...

Clamence helps a stranger order a drink in a bar below sea level, then spends the novel building a private court the stranger never asked to sit in. Camus's The Fall turns confession into the most controlling act available. New review. www.notesonbooks.net/the-fall/ #LiteraryFiction

The internet was invented for stuff like this. Fabulous.

In some obscure way this feels relevant to today's friendly with Pollok. (Hat-tip to i_miti_greci on Instagram) #PTFC #MTLN #auspices

Ilse Bing. Greta Garbo Poster, Paris. 1932.

Castelfranco Madonna, 1503, oddly sad & disconnected. Only altarpiece painted by Giorgione, whose day is today.

Orient v Belfast Celtic, Thurs 13th Sept 1934 #LOFC

Feeling rather vindicated looking back on when people who tried to gaslight those of us who objected to Swinney's last choice of deputy FM.

Here is @leeannequinn.bsky.social writing about her new @carcanet.bsky.social collection Landscape with Question and how it draws together personal memory into meditations on image, time and space carcanet.substack.com/p/landscape-...

Offered by the wood with no explanation.

Last day at my current place of work after 18 years 🥳🍾. New start coming up, but first some well earned rest 🍻🌞

it's true that AI is wrong and looks like shit, but personally the most repellent part of it is that the people who use it of their own accord are doing it because they believe what rich people say and do what rich people tell them to do

Local Waterstones had a mysterious clearance bay appear today; entertaining, but not good for the bank balance. #Books #BookSky 📚🖋️💙📚

Midsummer-ish in Applecross... Took this at midnight last night. Thanks to the neighbours for keeping the hall light on for added atmosphere 👍

@ Morocco

Charity exists to solve the failures of government. The Environment Agency has been defunded and defanged, and now they’re using what little power and resource they have left to go after *checks notes* volunteers removing rubbish from rivers for them. 🙃 www.mylondon.news/news/east-lo...

Check out this handy Andy Burnham is "one of the good guys" starter pack:

J. M. W. Turner’s “A Boat and Red Buoy in a Rough Sea” (c. 1835-40). Out of _Impressions in Watercolour: Turner and his Contemporaries_ (The Holburne Museum, Bath, 2025). Barely a splash of red paint, buoy like an afterthought. I love the title: how it reduces the immediate world to its essence.

Our society has spent the entirety of teenagers' lives systematically destroying every alternative to online interaction, from youth-clubs to broadcast TV, and now wants to cut off their access to the one thing that was sold as replacing it all.

The Bible’s Deleted Scenes: A Guide to the Strange Biblical Stories Known as the Apocrypha

#OtD 15 Jun 1937 Spanish Republican police under Communist Party control raided the Hotel Falcon. They converted it into a prison, and took Andreu Nin, of the anti-Stalinist POUM, to interrogate and murder him stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8691...

2/2 Not just Ashdod, but Arcadia too! Et in Arcadia Ego, Death is here as well, 1650. Cheer from Nicolas Poussin.

‘Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament, Labour’s number of seats has dropped in every single election. In May it won just 17 out of 129, tied with Reform in a distant second place after the SNP, which is about to enter its third decade in government.’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A wee group of angry balaclava and mask-wearing anti-immigration guys tried to stop the good people of Glasgow showing solidarity with migrants and standing up to racism and fascism. Well, the far right are far outnumbered... #RefugeesWelcome #MigrantsWelcome #NeighboursNotStrangers #Glasgow

Late reggae singer Stranger Cole often claimed “Bangarang” was the first reggae single, Produced by Bunny “Striker” Lee in 1968, its rhythm and tempo signified the moment ska evolved into reggae. Recorded by Cole w/ saxophonist Lester Stirling. #RIPStrangerCole #Reggae m.youtube.com/watch?v=Elgm...

Emmet Gowin / El Khazneh from the Siq, Petra, Jordan, 1985

What did ministers spend two years trying to keep hidden? Previously secret minutes show Scottish Government talks with an Israeli diplomat about: ▪️ Israeli tech in NHS Scotland ▪️ Tourism ▪️ Renewable energy ▪️ Future diplomatic visits Full story 👉 bit.ly/4ooF5q9

World Cup of war and plunder

GenAI is a tech bubble of hype and absurdity. It runs on nothing but vibes and dollar signs in billionaire's eyes. But that's why we must resist it. We broke NFTs, we broke the Metaverse, we can break this nonsense too.

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

Yesterday it rained. I have finished my Mexico 70 book.

Great to see the Dublin Review of Books here on Bluesky—why not give them a follow: @dubreviewofbooks.bsky.social

#OtD 11 Jun 1968 police killed two striking workers at the Peugeot factory in Sochaux, France, after most May 68 strikes ended. In Flins, 12 children fleeing police jumped into the Seine, where they were beaten with truncheons, killing Gilles Tautin stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8324...

Sorry but hate presenting this as “ooh this is the scary future under reform” like this isn’t the Scary Present under Labour. This is not Reform’s Britain, this is Labour’s Britain. Its here its now and laying responsibility explicitly outside of the Actual Current Gov is a major mistake

Things newly read: 'Faithful Place' by Tana French. #Books #BookSky 📚🖋️💙📚

there are no legitimate concerns about immigration

Don't tolerate the media legitimising thugs who attack people for the colour of their skin. They aren't 'anti-immigration campaigners' like the BBC said this morning, they are violent scumbags. www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/norther...

It’s always the ones you most expect

The problem with this though, @antoniabance.bsky.social, is that you're not a left-wing government. You're a deeply authoritarian, racist, transphobic, ableist government who hate poor people and love billionaires, tech bros and genocide. NOBODY is voting for you next time.

This nt just on the racist fash weasels Farage, Lowe & Goodwin who've explicitly incited these race riots frm their brownshirts. This is also on Lab for agreeing racists have 'legit concerns' & mainstreaming their racism & the BBC for leading with & megaphoning their racism at every opportunity

Techbros shrug: “Do we really need 50,000 people?”

Norfolk, 2016 #otd