what is going on here

My story for @service95stories.bsky.social on @sosmediterranee.org's Ocean Viking. The Libyan 'coast guard' opened fire, risking the lives of survivors and crew. It was a privilege to see them in action - truly incredible people #searchandrescue #Mediterranean www.service95.com/the-reality-...

The problem with people my age and younger going on Masterchef is that 90% of the time everything they cook feels a liiiitle bit too Mob Kitchen. The Ben Lippett effect needs to be studied.

Obsessed with the name of this baby carrier.

New @hepi-news.bsky.social report shows continued fall in foreign language study in England at A-level. Language teacher recruitment consistently falls well below government targets – in 2024, just 43% of the target was reached. on.ft.com/4l5SYX4 (Full report www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/07/31/n...)

One in three Gazans goes multiple days without eating. Malnourished mothers can no longer produce milk to breastfeed their children and hospitals have run out of nutritional supplements to treat gaunt babies https://on.ft.com/3H9L154

Incredible wall signage at the Titanic Immersive Experience

Lot of big celebrity deaths of late. I feel in my waters a 2016-wave is approaching. We need to keep tabs on Al Pacino or so help me god

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

It's time for a new kind of political party - one that belongs to you. Sign up at yourparty.uk.

Terrible. When I got my AHRC PhD funding I applied directly to the AHRC with my own project. Now students are increasingly tied in to what universities and partner organisations want them to do, stifling research independence - plus fewer projects getting funded overall.

Friends getting married, what a concept!

Yesterday Palestinian mums & kids were queuing at a clinic to get nutritional supplements when Israel attacked. At least 15 people were killed, including at least 9 children. James Elder from UNICEF tells how one of those young children had spoken their first word that morning - mama

AI technologies and other techno-utopian potentialities are currently ripping through film, television, music and the platforms through which they are distributed. The last time I (a layperson) remember a similar story in the Noble Arts was NFTs, and no one’s talking about Beeple anymore.

I also read this as a consequence of gig economy/doggedly monetising your hobbies. Obviously rich celebrities don't NEED the money, but I think now it's an expectation that you publicise/professionalise anything you do for 'fun'

Maybe it speaks to an implicit, unspoken recognition of the devaluation of their original art medium (i.e. film, tv, music) and a retreat (however naive) to a medium of art perceived as more ‘concrete’, ‘traditional’ and resistant to devaluation by current trends?

Real trend at the moment re famous people (actors, musicians etc) releasing to the media news of their artistic practice, almost always some terrible version of abstract expressionism and/or cartoonish version of pop art. A way to get cheap clicks? Media boost with faux sense of intelligence?

"I was under no illusion that The Collected Prose would solve the mystery, or lay to rest the lie, of how Plath was absolutely ordinary up to the point that she wasn’t." Brilliant Patricia Lockwood piece on Sylvia Plath. Cracking intro, too. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I think about this clip alot.

I don’t know why and it’s simply not rational but those electric salt and pepper mills make me really angry, like you know when a dog hates something for no reason and barks every time they see it, that’s how I feel about them

On LBC @zoejardiniere.bsky.social lists 3 previous instances where military aircraft have been targeted by campaigners in order to prevent them being used in war crimes, and she describes the govt banning Palestine Action as terrorists as an abuse of state power. Well said.

seeing Heat in the cinema is a lifechanging experience

lovely jonathan jones here as he loses it in excitement at the thrill of seeing one painting he thinks is great. often clumsy and embarrassing yes but the rare person who bothers to treat any of this as having real emotional stakes (it does!) www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Shut up and make Don Jon 2

Dickie & Sylvia caught several sea-trout. Thought of you, your ankle & Bert's bolster. Remember?

If it is a stunt by some anti AI group, fair play but also I’ll be sick from the humiliation of taking it too earnestly on the internet.

will just be interesting to see when the interests of vying big business will start worrying about what AI will do to many other aspects of the economy that relies on society structured as it currently is. you can't have a city in essence as we have it now when AI has taken all the white collar jobs

Yeah not to be over-reactionary about this but I really think adverts like this should be illegal. This is plastered all over Old Street station.

Walked out of Old Street station where the interior ads are almost entirely dedicated to posters that read ‘DON’T HIRE HUMANS’ for a company offering its AI services, to an enormous billboard on Laura Bates’ new book about how AI is reinventing misogyny.

You know a 3,200 km thru hike across France’s great national parks hates to see me coming

the early days of birth control organisations in cities are just a cavalcade of horror stories

one of the more gut-churning things about the yassified mary barbour mural is that she was one of the people who opened Glasgow's first birth control clinic in an environment of extreme misogyny. the mindset of "let's make her young and sexy" is even wierder in that context

Sci-fi view of The Future: We'll all have flying cars and holidaying on Mars! Disease will be fixed with a quick blast from a Star Trek thingy! The Actual Future:

Pope Leo at his weekly audience now: "In the Gaza Strip, the intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers who hold tightly to the bodies of their dead children."

Museum “rehangs” are everywhere, most recently at London's National Gallery. They inspire furious debate about mixing old art & new politics, but we forget that museums have always done that: their Victorian roots have never been more visible.

You can read the amazing review of Fair: The Life-Art of Translation in The Observer online here observer.co.uk/culture/book... @prototypepubs.bsky.social

All parents want is for their children to also enjoy the latest Guy Ritchie series, Mob Land. Unfortunately, they have achieved their goal.

Per Kirkeby, Untitled, 1995 #artbots #tate https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1122095

Me when I say I like activity dates

Such a beautiful, moving piece of writing

I’ve given up Instagram whilst I’m in Scotland for a week and have already read one book in less than a 24 hour period (Still Born, Guadalupe Nettel) and so maybe there is something in the - Instagram reels is atrophying my brain - discourse

Alice Notley got it. She GOT it.

looking forward to next weeks anti net-zero intervention from shub-niggurath, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young

My heart bleeds for what this woman had to go through to see justice www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Experienced a sort of, brain rot stroke trying to understand the below.

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.

just yesterday was disheartened to learn that my favourite ice cream place has now switched to oat soft serve – a notable decline in quality. luckily I think involuntary veganism is just the kind of issue my new reform councillor, an onlyfans psychic, will take seriously.

This is the stuff my work-based nightmares are made of

Will go to bat for Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr which fucked me up good as a child. I'd include naïvely reading American Psycho as a 13-year old, but after that first terrible torture chapter, I was quick to learn that if I simply skip the chapters called "girls' it was much less awful.

“No one lives less than these men, and yet they want to live forever.” emmagarland.substack.com/p/gabrielle-...