just got introduced to an imaginary friend called “fiasco”. given the insane affective atmosphere that this lad has brought with him, you might conclude that his name has distinctly performative quality.

“please suffer with us”. i’m on it.

the age of innocence (about to leave prime) is really good. one of the few films from 1993 i hadn’t seen (iykyk) until last night. it’s an excellent illustration of a point i often try to teach. it is shame, much more than money or love, that makes the world go round. at least until very recently.

i’m sure one day i’ll look back fondly on this year’s personal music replay top 5 featuring bowser (jack black) singing ‘peaches’, k-pop dh’s ‘golden’, and kate nash singing ‘boudicca’ from horrible histories movie. not today. but someday.

submitted an article on the last day of term. happy with it. see you in march reviewer number 2 🤼

On International Migrants Day, let’s celebrate the generations of migrants who’ve helped make London what it is today - the greatest city in the world.

interesting clip of the black panther's bobby seale explaining how he got a load of maos little red books ("never read the thing") to sell as UC campus gates, by way of an SF Chinatown import/export connection youtu.be/jw6c9kkMqW4?...

may or may not have just written a sentence that contains the phrase “piss and pickles”.

apple music should ask for a refund from whoever taught it to beatmatch 🫨

another snooker club about to bite the dust. it can be saved: c.org/zncYhXcpx9

the cleanup of the yellow brick road #bricklane x #wicked collab has damaged the road surface of brick lane. dearly hoping that @universalfilms pick up the tab and not @towerhamletsnow.bsky.social taxpayers

enya’s trending.

solidarity to everybody leaving the house before sunrise. we’re nearly there.

Liverpool Street 🙌 The centre of my world. And it doesn’t need redeveloping… it’s doing FINE!

www.bbc.com/news/article... imho this is really good and solves both: what to do with a huge piece of infrastructural investment around the albert docks, that hasn’t proved to be as attractive as planned. and retaining these essential marketplaces. 👏 ⭐️

how to describe the uk.gov treatment of higher ed other than deeeeeply uncomfortable.

the state of the nation, the void in progressive imaginations and cultural innovation is captured perfectly in EVERY CHRISTMAS ADVERT

this fresh hell

“sentenced to death for crimes against humanity” is a bit of a discursive mess.

how is anybody supposed develop a sense of home and belonging, when it can all be taken away with the click of a button in 20 years’ time? that’s not asylum.

underwhelming experience at the fragrance counter of a well known cooperatively owned department store. “i don’t know really. it’s all just a matter of personal taste isn’t it?”

earlier this year, meloni’s italy held a referendum on halving the length of time required for settled status from 10 to 5 years. turnout was poor, so no change, despite a majority of votes for the change. but you see the direction the referendum was nudging towards. and yet 🇬🇧 🤦‍♂️.

aldi shoreditch (actually spitalfields!) landed in an affordable-grocery-desert. the scenes 😧.

things i wasn’t expecting from popbitch this week: incisive critique of zizek’s butchering of a gramsci quote.

hats off to the team of faceless chemical engineers and corporate tastebud donors who came up with dr pepper blackberry

a visitor to london yesterday pointed out to me that the pigeons seemed absent. she was right! on my walk to work this morning, this park (former quaker burial ground btw) is normally full of pigeons. not a rock dove in sight. just the crows. what does this augur?

half way through alan moore’s jerusalem which i had assumed was merely a bible-length ode to northhampton. it’s not. it’s a whole metaphysical treatise. *spoiler alert* it turns out that, according to his proletarian metaphysics, all life on earth is decided by a bunch of builders playing snooker.

the assortment of various types of custard filled asian bun i can buy around brick lane, and E1 in general, has increased significantly in the last 12 months. this is a delicious and fascinating thing.

‘History won’t forgive us’ if UK falls behind in quantum computing race, says Tony Blair. He actually gets himself to sleep at night by listing the things that history will, and will not, forgive us (and him specifically) for. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

some new fonts would really help refresh the left in the uk. placards laden with ‘impact’, ‘arial black’ and ‘helvetica bold’ aren’t helping.

miss the days when people said ‘overly demonstrative’ or ‘disingenuous’ rather than performative.

Campaigners have launched a petition calling for control of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel to be transferred from Greenwich Council to Transport for London. The tunnel was originally run by London-wide government, but control was handed to Greenwich in the 1980s.

labour weren’t counting on a green insurgence when they lowered the voting age were they? “dad… what do you think of the green party? you know i get to vote next time around!?” (a 13 year old) heads up!

“Our results further show that respondents with lower standards of hygienic habits engage significantly more in intimate self-inspection (sniffing body parts such as genitals, anus, or navel).” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

😢.

nobody seems to have studied mortuaries, morticians and the smell of death. as a death and smell denying society, this makes sense. but i was hoping somebody else could fill this gap… 👃 💀 💨

london’s gini coefficient (income inequality) seems to have dropped post covid. kind of interesting (though a bit less so before housing costs)

i wish my borough had a different mayor.

this looks good, though i’m not sure chinese restaurants would be the best metric in the uk… fried chicken shops? greasy spoons? also begs the question as to the role of particular food outlets and related community networks in warding off, or mitigating gentrification and displacement.

Pubs to stay open until early hours in Labour push for UK growth. Record high of 10,473 alcohol related deaths last year. There are other drugs, that the legalisation and taxation of which would actually do something positive. But boozy cultural conservatives rule the roost.

male grooming products that purportedly smell like big foot wearing a leather jacket riding a motorbike through a sandalwood forest smoking a cigar. i’m not saying that they’re the cause of all the world’s ills. but they’re not helping things either.

how do you teach about the emergence of the modern nation state? with 40 year old pop cultural references. that’s how.

Happy New Academic Year! To get things rolling, we hosted the first School of Global Change Symposium - Excellent contributions from Sociology, Anthropology, History, Politics and Law academics and students 💥!

www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mon... Xenophobic swan-eating panic has happened before and it’ll happen again. Here’s your primer for all migrant-based meat madness.

can’t remember who i was talking to about ‘Your Party’ last month, but whoever it was… i told you so.

i think the smartest people i know are also the best gossips.

i’m thinking a lot about olfaction and postmodernity. i guess i’ve been thinking about this forever really. at least since i read baudrillard’s ‘cool memories’. but maybe, just maybe, i’m going to finally write something about it. we can never be modern.

for a londoner, the number of DRIVERLESS CARS in san francisco is mind blowing.

i know people say londoners are cold and unfriendly. but try walking around at 04.55am. everybody i just saw said ‘good morning’ or nodded/chin lift. there’s a shared camaraderie in the last hour of dark.

the latest evidence of end times? needing a subscription to watch pétanque championships.