The best thing I can say about Wormwood by Errol Morris is that it's ponderous. The most accurate thing I can say about it is that it's tedious.

Re-upping for the not awoken at 2.30am this morning by a thunderstorm crowd

"(Sounds of crystal surprise you where you lie In your nest of darkness; and of the gold Gone dead on pieces of mahogany, On edges of bound books, only a sugar-like Grain is burning in the shell Of your eyelids still)" Eugenio Montale, The Storm, trans. Edwin Morgan www.nybooks.com/articles/196...

Is there any critical writing on the significance of the Umayyad state of Córdoba in modern Arab poetry (broadly conceived)? Adonis has a whole early book about Abd al-Rahman's journey there; Mahmoud Darwish mentions it; Habib Tengour's Poems for the Millennium book of North African literature...

It's a legitimate question & I don't mean to offer my own "this one thing", but I do want to point out that "fairly united party" is a clanger here. How Starmer "united" his party & what polls now tell you about a previous two party duopoly are glaring factors partially obscured by this phrasing.

Resigning to spend more time with Ryan Bridge

Is there a game like maptap that isn't so biased towards the US & conspicuously exclusive of vast areas of the world, notably Africa

Some good work being done here by @nichemusicmemes.bsky.social on Insta (h/t: @maggieserota.bsky.social):

At the Reflecting Pool, and guys, this doesn't look right

"Are you kidding me man? They must have no water over there in Scotland" 😂 www.heraldscotland.com/sport/262031...

Legal defense fund for the 15 brave folk arrested in Minnesota yesterday: chuffed.org/project/1865... Fuck ICE, please donate & share 🖤👊

Roars around the neighborhood as DR Congo equalise against Portugal. Haven't been able to bring myself to watch Racism Fest so far but this is a reminder of why London is amazing at World Cup time 🤗

Best write-up I've seen of how Brighton went on Saturday: anticapitalistresistance.org/brighton-car...

Watched this last night. A court room drama, but not as you know it. The IMF & the World Bank put on trial on behalf of the African people in a courtyard in Bamako with a capricious doorman, a beautiful singer, & various neighbourhood characters coming & going outside.

Maybe it was always predictable that some of the commentators interested in Andy Burnham would be so obviously undeterred by his support for Mahmood's immigration policies, even if they had deplored them previously. Genuine migrant solidarity has a troublingly narrow constituency in the UK.

Joan Eardley at Edinburgh's Modern Two - small but free

My computer is warning of "heavy t-storms", which I suspect will tickle some of you 🤗

What’s your sign?

Murals in Southsea, Portsmouth 🤗

50 spades of whey

Staines is Zuriched

If you're in London or passing through before 18 July, stop by Hollybush Gardens in Farringdon & catch Candace Hill-Montgomery's first solo show in Europe: hollybushgardens.co.uk/exhibitions/...

I didn’t eat any chicken in 1961 x

I just misread a sign for a restaurant that serves Hunan tapas in a very sinister way

Excuse me

There's a movement our cat makes that suddenly brought the Scots word "skite" to mind this morning so I looked it up in the Concise Scots Dictionary (Aberdeen University Press) & would you believe it, there's an alternative spelling "skeet" 😂

Five years ago. The liberal world order has since been radically overhauled by the illiberal ... left?

@drsnax.bsky.social Sam! I didn't realise you were on here 🤗

All that time spent carefully not finding out who Hasan Piker is & now I find out he's with genocide denying grifters the Young Turks? I miss ignorance already

Saw Backrooms yesterday & really enjoyed it. Curious to understand why a director who wasn't born when the 20th century ended chose 1990 as a setting: to me it sets up a certain parallel between the vast, empty, redundant spaces that the film evokes so well & the birth of virtual space.

Attended a very illuminating conversation between translator & poet Sam Solomon & M Syd Rosen of Jargon ( a London cultural initiative with a focus on Yiddish) about the poet Celia Dropkin, who was active in New York in the early 20th c. Wonderful to hear readings from the Yiddish as well as English

The contrast between the care taken over the writing of this article, the evidence of its sustained pursuit of the truth, & the neglect & lies of social services & the council that it reveals, is in itself staggering, beyond the desperate sadness of the story it tells.

Following up your murderous bombing campaign with real estate development plans... what can even be said.

“the peculiar ways buildings end in the air” ❤️

Fool myself once, shame on me. Fool myself twice... more shame on me, wow. Fool myself a third time,

We urgently need to get these people in front of a charts guy who can explain to them that they actually have nothing to complain about. Some of the wonks on here might have to work around the clock to achieve this but surely this is an opportunity they won't be able to pass up

Beyond Thunderdome, just as the Floundering Fathers envisaged

Not a word on immigration policy when Meadway talks about Burnham.

Due to *gestures wildly at life, work & other commitments* It's taken me a LONG time to not really finish this list of news sources, orgs, people etc that I read, listen to for #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar. While massively incomplete... here's the WIP (which may / may not get finished)

A boost for this in case any of yez missed it first time around 🤗

Ruin a band by replacing a word with a bodily fluid The Violent Phlegms

Ruin a band by replacing a word with a bodily fluid I Love Urine But I've Chosen Darkness

How's that lesser evil working out.

How is firing guns at the White House not political speech, protected by the first and second amendments.

“Places are limited!” Arrgghh!

Reminds me of something I saw on holiday once… which was mildly triggering

But I don't need any more practice

Introduce yourself with 10 bands/musicians you've seen live while trying to console yourself you didn't see Butthole Surfers at CB/GBs like Barry: Fugazi Jawbox Throwing Muses & also Kristin Hersh solo! 🤗 Shellac Nomeansno Low Alice Donut Lyrics Born Brainiac Eddie Palmieri

Wow, did you know that Iran brought terrible violence by the US & Israel on itself in order to "tie the US down" too far away to prevent a possible future invasion of Taiwan by its ally China? No, neither did I because unlike these guys I didn't inhale a vat of industrial solvent before writing this