'Lunch with the FT' is a lightweight regular feature and sometimes disappointingly so, as in today's with Morgan McSweeney, by George Parker [he's over at X] who offers a soft mouthpiece for myth-making and nothing resembling journalism. I'll save the world the link. @financialtimes.com

This loss is significant. Another database, the Colonial Film Project, exists still as a database but no films are viewable as the original project ran on flash (!).

“As a technology, AI has pros and cons; as a rushed project of rapacious elites, it is transparently obscene … rolled out in the most reckless, self-serving way one could imagine, by the worst people, for the worst reasons. It’s not the machines you should be angry with.”

I’ve just seen James Parnell - Josh Simons axis described as “Continuity neo-liberal Zionism”. That just about sums it up.

It's that time when you think 'Thank God I don't have a subscription'.

Popping this up again

Regulator left hand and right hand entirely out of sync, so dumb

The perils of working in the garden. This just fell on my keyboard. I was I in mid-sentence.

These are the people who are running the show. Weep with me. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

BREAKING: Man optimistic he can replace hated prime minister and win over the public by doing the exact same policies, but in a Mancunian accent ♥️

Free link giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Breathtaking article in the FT on the impact of smartphones and social media worldwide reducing socialising (by up to half) coupling and birth rates. “Women have moved leftward, men have not, and coupling and births have cratered.” app.ft.com/content/fba3...

Without comment: On sale at London Rare Book Fair today, a copy of Maariv newspaper announcing the creation of the state of Israel, edition 18 May 1948.

Eye on the ball, runners and riders, best team on the pitch … the Radio4 Today programme reduction of politics to a sporting contest, with three Labour MPs assisting as able pundits-without-principle

William Prinsep’s voyage from Calcutta to Singapore in 1838 began as a family affair, with Pattles, Dashwoods and Jennings. It became a cloak-and-dagger commercial intelligence mission on a second leg to Canton in Dwarkanath Tagore’s opium clipper, the Water Witch. eaho.substack.com/p/9-william-...

William Prinsep’s voyage from Calcutta to Singapore in 1838 began as a family affair, with Pattles, Dashwoods and Jennings. It became a cloak-and-dagger commercial intelligence mission on a second leg to Canton in Dwarkanath Tagore’s opium clipper, the Water Witch. eaho.substack.com/p/9-william-...

On the replacement of education by regulation: "Between 1976 and 2011 [in the USA] non-faculty professional positions, especially in student services and administration, grew by roughly 369%, while full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty grew by only 23%." hyperallergic.com/the-death-of...

On the replacement of education by regulation: "Between 1976 and 2011 [in the USA] non-faculty professional positions, especially in student services and administration, grew by roughly 369%, while full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty grew by only 23%." hyperallergic.com/the-death-of...

'Dutch universities have welcomed new detail from the country’s recently formed government about how it intends to restore a substantial portion of the funding for research and higher education that was cut by its predecessor.' Good sense and good science policy prevails in the Netherlands. 1/2

Huge congratulations to Factum Foundation for winning a European Heritage Award Europa/Nostra Awards laureate, as Heritage Champion. It's Europe's most prestigious recognition for outstanding work in cultural heritage. You can vote for Factum in the public choice award here: vote.europanostra.org

I'm strolling down Jermyn Street with a Dr Martens shopping bag. Tut tut.

As someone who discovered a mouse under the sofa yesterday (the cat died two months ago, leaving the guardroom vacant) I found this thread particularly interesting.

I heard the first cuckoo of the year yesterday, a kilometre away across the bay de Beaussais, the water carrying the sound. This kestrel was hunting above the cliff where I was standing, listening. Two minutes after the picture was taken it began a violent struggle with a rival …

We @pelagios.bsky.social are looking to evolve Peripleo, a browser-based tool for the mapping of things related to place github.com/britishlibra..., to make it easier to use by historians and archaeologists as a research tool. Let me know if you're interested.

I made a whole BBC TV series (2020) about the remarkable resilience of the people of Iran and their culture over centuries of threat and callous rule. You can watch it right here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Evening tide coming in, St Jacut de la Mer

The masterpiece of David Mitchells’s ‘Thousand Autumns…’ is the description of a technique of lithotomy performed in Nagasaki in 1799, and its Greek and Arab precedents: “The doctor lengthens the bloody incision with his scalpel: Gerritszoon shrieks….The stone is as big as an acorn...

“The renewed Israeli assault on Lebanon was launched after Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group – fired rockets into northern Israel in response to the killing of the former Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in joint US-Israeli airstrikes.” The Guardian 31.3.26

The book censoring Manchester secondary school academy has been named:

In 1846, after the British victory over the Sikhs at the battle of Sobraon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning said prophetically, "Some of these days our ‘great Indian Empire’ will stand up on its own legs, & make use of our own rope to scourge us to a distance.” substack.com/@wdowen/p-19...

Nobody wants to use Locker No.13. Proof if needed that the Age of Reason passed members of the London Library by.

I'd just like to say: Spurs 0 - Nottingham Forest 3

Emboldened ultra-rightist headmaster at work in Manchester. The 200+ school library books banned were selected using AI to catalogue them. Librarian intimidated. LA response inadequate. When will we learn which school? What will be the political response to Index on Censorship's excellent reporting?

Jay Rayner slices up Gordon Ramsay in the FT (free link) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

A note on the massive structural impact of a 20% squeeze on oil supply over the longer term - if this war goes on much longer - thats not yet priced into any market, and its impact on the poorest countries hbr.org/2026/03/the-...

Al-Aqsa mosque closed for Eid by the Israeli occupiers: “a grave violation of the existing historical and legal status quo in the Islamic and Christian holy places … a provocation to the feelings of Muslims throughout the world .. a violation of freedom of worship & the sanctity of holy places”.

A useful, well-informed and balanced article on the current state, options (for both sides) and possible outcomes of the American-Israeli war on Iran. substack.com/home/post/p-...

'Iran Is Not Gaza': Arundhati Roy's scathing speech on the US-Israeli illegal war on Iran and its people. zeteo.com/p/iran-is-no...

A case of ‘where the rule becomes the objective’. Cf BBC R4 Sideways this morning on hypernormalisation and the absurdities of bureaucracies.

BBC reporting (R4 Today) “the people of Iran are suffering this bombardment in enforced silence”. This is 2 minutes after reporting the police ban on the pro-Palestine Al Quds day march in London ‘which may express support for the malign regime in Iran.’ Shall we suffer in silence?

10 worthwhile minutes with Michael Rosen

Congratulations to the Migration Museum

In case you missed this being swept under the carpet www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Is it though? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

FT hasn’t caught up: its not a split in the left wing vote; its a growing popular realisation that Labour is not a left wing vote. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

TALKING IN SHOUTY APHORISMS IS … (complete as you feel applicable)

Anyone who has read the preface to Paul Holden’s ‘Fraud’ (on the tactics of MacSweeney and Labour Together) won’t be surprised by the strange coyness of the last two paragraphs of this shocking @theguardian.com story www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

If anyone has time on their hands, take a look at this: a visualisation of the Epstein network (people and corporate/state/media entities) with relevant documentation and events. Mind boggling. Helps to pick an individual (try Tony Blair) and a single topic/tag. epsteinvisualizer.com?utm_source=c...