So interesting.

What an embarrassment Trump’s second state visit to the UK is, with all the royal nonsense. Starmer was under no obligation to do this.

Very close to going full 'Kristallnacht', on a very similar pretext. Remember: on 9 November 1938 the police were ordered to stand down while homes and synagogues burned. The equivalent feels entirely conceivable in the USA today.

Drop some eyes👀

Exactly my thoughts. Seeing the capital awash with Nazis and our streets adorned with England flags is the opposite of healthy. It’s a sign of failed political education, historical ignorance and hostility to mainstream values. To celebrate it is just appalling.

Shocking to see a large scale (de facto) Nazi rally in London. Yaxley-Lennon proclaiming ‘Britain has awoken’, presumably a deliberate echo of ‘Deutschland erwache’.

In about the only positive in a shitty week, I have miraculously managed to buy Radiohead tickets after surviving a week-long process involving registration, a lottery for an 'unlock code', a waiting room, a different verification code, multiple page crashes, and a randomized 'queue'.

Question: how is a 'three-month pause' that does not affect the eventual deadline a 'pause' in any meaningful sense? More absolute nonsense from the world's worst 'framework'.

This is funny, as the mistake is so obvious, but often it isn't. And the 'AI Overview' is now the first thing you see after any search. It's *insane* this is seen as acceptable - imagine if other everyday tech (like GPS or, say, light switches) was this flawed!

The Routledge Handbook to Auschwitz-Birkenau is out, a massive labor of love by Sarah Cushman, Joanne Pettit, and Dominic Williams. The preparations went back to summer 2021, so four years ago. I am indebted to the editors for all their hard work, help, and also light touch in dealing with us.

I recently received these lovely signed copies of recent books by Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social after having my name drawn from Tom’s hat. Suki has given them the sniff test and approved - really looking forward to reading ‘1983’. Thanks Tom!

Here’s 10 questions MPs might ask about the royal family - if only they were allowed to www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/monarc...

Boo. #Caturday

‘Bask’? Ffs, I wish the BBC would stop implying 30+ degrees is ‘good’ weather. It isn’t, it’s too hot, and homes in the UK aren’t designed for it. We’re not lizards.

Most of the Temu-bought flags put up by these numbskulled ‘patriots’ look like they are flying at half mast, presumably because their ladders aren’t long enough. Well done for making it look like your communities are in permanent mourning, lads.

Found a dragonfly in the garden - deceased, but at least that meant I got to admire those wings up close!

Suki with her current ‘craft project’. #caturday

6 hours into my stint at the Clearing coalface. My paranoid trepidation that I might have nothing to do (hey, I work in a Modern Languages department) has proven unfounded!

Wishing good luck to those getting their A-Level results tomorrow! If you enter Clearing keep calm and don't worry. We will have places available on courses including Languages, Liberal Arts and Comparative Literature and Culture. Call us from 8am on Thursday! Tel: +44(0)1784 772455

Ronald Searle's fabulously evocative drawings of the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the months afterwards. Originally published in Punch magazine; in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.

I'm not sure this merits a prominent news story - it's hardly a scandal and the Holocaust galleries are superb - but it does seem odd the IWM isn't going to remove the word 'observant' - it's just plan wrong here, no question. www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Happy #caturday!

A first visit to the new Goodwood Art Foundation in West Sussex today. Art (by Rachel Whiteread and others) interacting with landscape to great effect. Plus a great restaurant.

BOTD 1900 - Robert Siodmak, a pioneering film director first in his native Germany, then in exile in France and the USA. Co-director and instigator of PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (1930), and also known for brilliant films noir such as THE SUSPECT (1944), THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) and THE KILLERS (1946).

Current home office POV. He stopped doing this a while ago but has clearly decided I’d got way too used to working without loud purring, clumps of cat fur, and a head knocking against my wrist. #catsofbluesky

Infuriating BBC ‘impartiality’ in this push notification - phrased as though some experts think RFK might ‘have a point’, even though the article confirms that none do - the consensus is that it is a ‘stupid’ move.

First pumpkin (‘Midnight’) from the garden, way earlier than expected but at nearly 1.8kg it was threatening to break the plant! Hopefully it’s good to eat. Suki however was sceptical 😼 🎃

An important statement which I wholeheartedly support.

25 July 1908 | Bronisław Czech was born. An eminent Polish #skier, 24-time Polish champion, 3-time Olympian, mountain-climber & rescuer, glider pilot. In #Auschwitz from 14 June 1940 (no. 349). He died of exhaustion in the camp hospital on 5 June 1944. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronis%...

Canna lily showing off in the sunlight this morning.

Nothing says '2025' like an online news article about the devastating impacts of AI, accompanied by a prominent advert for AI implying you can get rid of human staff.

The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State. Available now as an Ebook! (print copies will start shipping in a month)

Welcome to the future. 🤦‍♂️

I was bitten twice by horseflies (=small flying Nosferatus) on Wednesday and 2 days on it's approaching body horror territory... I'm guessing David Cronenberg didn't know about the little bastards or else it wouldn't have been a housefly inside Jeff Goldblum's pod thing.

One of my favourites: Lotte Laserstein, 'Self Portait with Cat', 1928. Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.

When you’re already struggling with the tiny font in a 1980s paperback, and then you’re hit with footnotes like this… I wonder if can claim a magnifying glass as research expenses…

My running route around local fields has me channeling my inner Roger Thornhill at this time of year. No crop dusters spotted.

Seriously, We Transfer has just said they'll scrape anything you send through them for AI.

BBC Wimbledon final coverage = 50% tennis / 50% shots of toffs and celebs in the ‘Royal box’ 🙄.

It’s currently around 28 degrees in our living room, and I think Billy has the right idea. 🥵

30 years on. I remember the sense of disbelief that something like this could still happen, in Europe, after all the optimism of 1989-90. Sadly it's unsurprising to learn that the process of remembrance, and even the historical record itself, is so threatened today.

Have been in glorious Cornwall this week. The experience only slightly diminished by a rented cottage with low ceilings and doorframes (not mentioned in the description) on which I am, predictably, banging my head every 5 minutes. My battered brain refuses to adjust 🤕

There’s a new info board at our local woods, and I like this all too believable nugget of wartime history. A cautionary tale to young men everywhere…

A propos of the weather, an iIlustration by Leo Ledvinka for Mocca magazine, Vienna, 1933. 'Die ersten warmen Tage - und ihre Folgen' ('The first warm days - and the consequences').

Such a haunting, strange, brilliant film.

Here's a 1931 drawing of Peter Lorre (BOTD 1904) in M by Joe Grant, best known as an artist for Disney - he later created the Queen in Snow White and many other characters. Via npg.si.edu/object/npg_N...

Job klaxon! We are advertising for a permanent lecturer in German (Teaching and Research). Come and join our team here at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. Deadline 9th July. @lcsleeds.bsky.social jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

"The interesting thing about German grammar is that it is quite “frontloaded”. This means that learners will encounter many of those challenging new concepts right at the beginning. You need to understand these basics ... to produce even quite simple sentences." theconversation.com/learning-ger...

The article also confirms that the world's 'oldest boomerang' would not have come back to the thrower. Which means it's *not* in fact a boomerang, right? Not all curved objects are boomerangs... 🍌