I'm reminded of a bit in Sue Townsend's The Queen & I where a prime minister is caught on a hot mic insulting Manchester, where his ratings plummet, but they are balanced out by rocketing approval in Liverpool, Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.

‘Andy Burnham understands something that Starmer grasped too late: the unaffordability of everyday life has become the central issue in British politics, around which everything else revolves.’ @will-davies.bsky.social on Burnham’s political economy. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Charles-François Daubigny and Eugène Boudin both made Villerville, a fishing village located between Honfleur and Trouville, familiar to art collectors. This work by Félix Vallotton belongs to a series of four paintings, all dedicated to the same subiect in 1902.

'Ann with Indoor Plants.' (1971) Alfred Heyworth's career-long fascination with painting indoor plants began with his friendship with Lucian Freud. His works capture the individual characteristics, form, and texture of many plants including aspidistra, tradescantia, and ficus.

UK Bluesky is normally really easy to follow, except the one week a month it descends into incomprehensible screaming because someone from North Flobershire dared refer to themselves as a Galbrilander despite their nan having actually been born south of Brookingsmarch-on-the-Tarrowack.

Why the fuck should a school have a social media presence anywhere actually?

No school should be on X or oblige parents to get updates from it. A site that actively promotes porn, bullying, hate and fascism is not an appropriate place to post pictures of sports days.

Basically true.

[The NCA’s deputy director] said online platforms were “enabling and supporting direct offending”. “no longer isolated behaviour, but increasingly organised”

"In the fight between you and the world, back the world." I.M. Franz Kafka (3 juli 1883 - 3 juni 1924)

Split, Croatia, Church of St Andrew de Fenestris. Little known 7th century church built in rooms formerly part of the 4th century Palace of Diocletian.

I do think a lot of Starmer-friendly journalists underestimated how bad this made him look tbh. I think they expected anger from disgruntled Corbynites, but didn't factor in that even people who weren't at all sympathetic to Labour or the left were basically getting introduced to this guy as a liar

#fridayreads by Saint Augustine 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

6/10. I enjoyed it, it was FINE for what it was, but basically ‘Good Will Hunting’ as a heist thriller. That trope of the ‘blue collar prodigy hunk’. The Coke ad fantasy except the guy can do quadratic equations or play Mozart and has an outsider trauma background *bites lip 😂

Painted in 1892, this work exemplifies Gustave Caillebotte’s love of sailing.  The scene is that of the Seine alongside Ile Marande, just across the river from Argenteuil; a favourite spot amongst the Impressionists including Manet, Renoir and Monet.

My mom is mad at my dad because a feral peacock keeps coming to their house and staring through the glass door into the kitchen and it turns out it's because my dad has been secretly feeding it

a list of the most important literature of my life, as an English literature professor:

Just a quick heads-up that Our Friends in the North is currently showing on BBC iPlayer - a stunning piece of social and political history: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Sometimes I feel like doing a phd (on 17th century poetry) but I know I’d end up regretting it. I know of people who had doctorate breakdowns.

It's interesting how everything people used to proudly call "public" when I was growing up (public parks, public libraries, public schools, public transportation, public television, etc) is suddenly "socialist" now that rich people are spinning it.

This made me lmao. samkriss.substack.com/p/everyone-i...

Heterosexuality is hopeless in the same way God is dead according to Nietzsche. Just like there will continue to be churches and believers, there will continue to be heterosexual couples and marriages. But heterosexuality as an institution, as an idea, as a societally organising concept, is dead.

That's a wild generalization. Most people, extrovert or introvert, don't want to be alone. Introverts just have a difficult time opening up around people. It doesn't mean we don't *want* to. You're confusing introvert with misanthrope.

Graeber’s Utopia of Refusal

'View of Rhenen.' (1908) Around 1895, the Dutch painter Ferdinand Nibbrig began experimenting with divisionism to help him capture heat and light; how he has succeeded here with a painting that has the composed grandeur of a fresco.

Self-loathing is bourgeois

“Born in 1972, Tabakis grew up in the port of Piraeus, in a household so poor that his parents had tried to have him aborted. “Twice!” he says. “Both times, the doctor was out.” “

‘Techno in a monastery – are you ready?’ The Greek priest whose doom metal album is the year’s hippest record

Predators and prey sharing the same waterhole in the Serengeti. Scientists call it the "watering truce" , when thirst overrides the hunt.

The new CAPE FEAR is fucking LUDICROUS and I love it. Like Flannery O’Connor or Tennessee Williams with a hyper-saturated EUPHORIA aesthetic. It looks like how it feels to be mentally unwell, in a good way. 😅

Edinburgh Writers’ Museum a bit disappointing but Burns collection really good. Love how they kept locks of each other’s hair back then (Armour was his wife).

This is a really good article. I know a lot of folks on the broad left are suspicious of people who change their minds, but we lost in 2024 because more of them than us came out, and we’d do well to have some space in our coalition that’s accepting of those folks as they come over.

Interesting on John Milton’s relationship with a uni friend (they’d exchange letters ardently longing for the ‘sublime delight’ of each other’s company); and while maybe not gay in the modern sense it illustrates a spiritual elevation of male love in contexts women were systematically excluded from.

Didn’t watch Blade Runner for years because of the fact that one of the most beloved moments in the film involves a character called Roy Batty, whose place is quite obviously in a kitchen-sink 60s drama rather than dystopian sci-fi.

Red Terror stuff is such a load of shit. Because yes the Soviet Union was largely a catastrophe but there is a ZERO chance of that mode of political organisation returning. It really was a one off. And to the extent that it could it would be in some fashy, nationalist Juche form.

How many of the Farages' constituents in Clacton can afford to buy gold bars?

My favorite part about the ancient Greeks is how they saw a hippo and decided it was a river horse.

I reckon people love their dogs and cats so much these days because they’re the only thing that isn’t capitalism.

‘Reticence is a central quality of Celia Paul’s artistry as both writer and painter. Her paintings and her writings seem unflinchingly to scrutinise their subjects (often herself). But they leave out a lot, as well.’ Marina Warner on the life and work of Celia Paul: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

'Keir Starmers' should be Cockney rhyming slang for pyjamas.

We'll survive.

My cat still doesn't understand that the vacuum isn't a mortal threat. I don't think he can beat the odds in Vegas.

It takes a young horny population to appreciate sex in this kind of heat. But at my age if you even try to shake my hand in this heat I will spray you with my water bottle like a misbehaving dog.

'Woman Descending a Staircase.' Carl Holsøe studied with Vilhelm Hammershøi at the Royal Academy of Copenhagen and with Peter Ilsted formed the Danish School of Interior Painting. Holsøe's works are generally less austere than those of his contemporaries and have more glow.

not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin

Goodwin's descent into the pit is wild - he's excluding most of the 20th century's Jewish Anglophone political figures here