In Icelandic we have 'Ókind' for monster. But the translation is un-sheep. So everything not a sheep is dangerous.

Another addition to the collection - back to the early 90’s with a Eurostar poster

Reminding myself that I don't need to be well-informed about everything, particularly when I don't have a vote. I am not required to have a view on Zohran Mamdani. I don't need to know anything about Graham Platner besides the Nazi tattoo. The world will go on without my opinion!

Pet peeve: please stop calling people “diverse.” People themselves are not “diverse.” That’s a fundamental and really worrisome misunderstanding of diversity and politics (and humanity, really).

The Artemis II crew legitimately posted this: 😂😂😂

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”

Bangor station buffet. Something for everyone

Do you happen to be interested in how artists cope with life under a repressive regimes? Brilliant poetry by Lev Ozerov about Soviet-era authors, composers etc, published by @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social www.nyrb.com/products/por...

I think we are actually going to get him formally removed from the succession by act of (multiple) parliaments. this would have been such exciting news in 1720

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

The Bukhara Biennial is an illusion, an oasis in a desert of repression. Transforming unused caravanserais, madrasas, and one mosque into a maze of miniature galleries within the Uzbek city, there are moments when it is a beautiful, affecting, and wonderful mirage.

(If I were writing British politics as an episode of The West Wing, I'd have Starmer activate the "Hail Mary" option of saying he'll rejoin the EU in a second term. Re-polarise the electorate along Brexit lines and hope the shifts in demographics/material reality force a winning coalition.)

A collation of 25 years of audio, video, photos, orbital ephemera and other documentation from the International Space Station – all in mission context. Utterly staggering in scale. issinrealtime.org

Enormous news in literary arts philanthropy: Literary Arts Fund, initiated by the Mellon Foundation in collaboration with Poetry, Ford, Lannan, Hawthornden, & other foundations, will distribute $50 million to literary nonprofits & fiscally sponsored lit orgs & publishers over the next 5 years.

Despite its essential role in American culture, literature receives less than 2% of arts funding, leaving the field persistently under-resourced.

Probably should have specified - there's a writing retreat coming up, from Friday 28th - Sunday 30th November. Great weekend away, easy trip from London & by public transport too...

Seems the fallen leaves, which I swept into a pile yesterday, has gained sentience overnight. It’s now emitting a low hum of hunger, and moving about the gardens like a worry from a John Wyndham story.

Braziers Park is such a lovely place to spend a weekend writing. Highly recommended. web.braziers.org.uk/winter-write...

We tried to place this story - very expensive polling, the first of its kind, strong quantitative data about what trans people feel about Britain: bluntly there is no better way to tell the story - with the BBC but it said it was "too weak". But it will pick up any old piece of transhating garbage.

Better than being lost in New Hampshire, where (so the old chestnut goes), the farmer just says "you can't get there from here."

These artists built a light installation that activates at high tide, showing future sea levels and demonstrating the climate brittleness of the art center that commissioned it, currently sited in a building near the...

Most of the books I read these days are so good that I sometimes feel a little dizzy.

Il y aurait tant à dire sur le Musée juif de Vienne qui est vraiment extrêmement bien fait. Mais je ne partagerai que cette superbe affiche d'une exposition temporaire géniale sur toutes les questions brûlantes d'aujourd'hui.

I keep telling my colleagues this and they look at me blankly.

First sighting of Schattenfroh in the wild - on the special order shelf at @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk. I snuck a quick look and I'm not sure I dare, honestly.

Diaspora was one of the main themes of 20th C history and will surely be even more important in the 21st. Always surprises me that it's not more central in SF: surely this is a theme that SF – or at least the literature of space travel – was born to consider.

Overheard in @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk poetry section: "I open to a page at random, and if I see the verb "to be" anywhere, I put the book down."

Apparently it needs to be said: The best (and possibly only) living conditions for humanity are on Earth. Space wants to kill you all the fucking time. You can visit, but not for significant portions of your lifespan. Seriously, look it up. Fix, cherish, and live on Earth. Visit space.

I was there yesterday and it's just brilliant

"In March 2022, Linor Goralik travelled from Israel to Tbilisi, Yerevan and Istanbul, documenting the mass exodus of people from Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine... echoes of writers who chronicled previous waves of emigration, such as Teffi" www.pushkinhouse.org/whats-on/eve...

Hopefully I'll be able to help in some small way.

New to me: a woman working in/adjacent to Mission Control in 1961. I have a few guesses as to identity but only guesses. (Photo by Bill Taub, from "Photographing America's First Astronauts," shared by Gavin Price on X.)

Let's say a person wanted to avoid other essays they were writing and started thinking about the current wave of New Weird descendants. Mordew, The Works of Vermin, Dawnhounds, the Tyrant Philosophers, City of Glass, what else? Maybe the Locked Tomb. Weird fiction in secondary cities, what've we got

Really surprised to learn that the whole of Labrador barely has more inhabitants (c. 27k) than Shetland (23k). More believably, both have less than half the population of Greenland (57k) or the Faroe Islands (55k).

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

To be clear: deportations to increase cultural homogeneity is the text book definition of ethnic cleansing. Demands that come even close to this are so far outside any democratic norm and the rule of law. What has happened to a country when this is not condemned in the strongest possible terms?

Maybe British universities should be treated like failing rail franchises, getting gradually nationalised as they go bust one by one, then run cooperatively, democratically, comprehensively, strategically and collectively for the public good.

Edinburgh castle failing to render, likely thanks to the AWS outage

you don't understand. as someone who isn't inherently good at art, stealing paintings from the museum is the *only* way i'm able to express myself creatively. i wouldn't be able to paint beautiful portraits. but by breaking into a museum and stealing the paintings, now i am

Can't work because AWS? It's a good time to read this piece if you haven't! www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-r...

With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.

My parents went on a No Kings protest in a small New England town. "Guess where they had us park?" says my mother. "In the National Guard parking lot!"

yeah I can't think of a reason roman artifacts would be in britain

Basic income for artists works. www.artnews.com/art-news/new...

This is tomorrow, for anyone interested.

EXPLOSION DE LA CRIMINOULITÉ EN FRANCE

In a good mood because I found a £20 note on the pavement when I went out to buy milk! Once I found £10 on Cowley Road but think this is the lifetime jackpot so far. (£50 would be too difficult to spend anyway.)

History faculty at Columbia & Barnard decrying the harassment of @mark-bray.bsky.social: "This is the first case in recent memory of a historian who has fled the country after receiving death threats on account of the history that they teach."