Won the famous Prince George pub quiz for the first time in ages, with @bat020.bsky.social and others

hullo hullo, looks like one of JLM's senior cadre has just politically evaporated overnight in very mysterious circumstances. barnetpost.co.uk/2025/04/02/t...

Tesla is hanging by a thread. With collapse in resale market they are toast.

coming soon: 'Starmerism without Starmer'

some of the details in this BBC investigation of Reeves at HBOS are jaw dropping. this is a regulated retail finance company. every employee has to take a compliance test once a year that covers exactly why this sort of behaviour is a big fat nope. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

quick thread on how Trump's manner is gonna intensify the crises within the US's Western allies. all imho and who the f am I ofc.

went to see The Man Who Fell To Earth on the big screen last night and while the shots of New Mexico are amazing and Bowie is a treat, I'd kinda forgotten that pretty much nothing happens in the final third of the film.

the 1976 bbc horror series BEASTS: specifically this episode (= "Baby") (@bat020.bsky.social posted this image on twitter last year and the hairs on my arms stood up in shock-memory)

thumbs up for Nosferatu, an atmospheric and original take on classic material. tips over into the hammy at times but hey it is a vampire movie. ending worked well I thought.

seeing as the body of an enemy is floating by – here's a snap of the Anti Nazi League website in April 2003, hand coded by me in HTML using Windows Notepad. wayback machine link: web.archive.org/web/20030601...

PSA: commutative diagrams in category theory are MUCH easier to read when drawn from right to left.

if you want something GOOD and FREE to do in London for an hour or so do check out the Peter Kennard exhibition Archive of Dissent which is on at the Whitechapel Gallery until 19 Jan.

TIL >> Quine's "From A Logical Point Of View" was named after a Harry Belafonte calypso track he heard in Greenwich Village on a nite out

These are hard times for lots of people - sometimes too hard. Just heard my mum’s oldest friend has lost her son to suicide. I remember him from when we were kids. It feels so wrong that I’m here but he is not. Please, if you’re feeling very down, ring Samaritans first: 116 123 www.samaritans.org

Excellent interview with Syrian-Swiss writer/activist Joseph Daher. Detail of events on the ground - for example regarding the rebellion and the politics of HTS - with sharp analysis about international politics and how the British and American left should respond. tempestmag.org/2024/12/unde...

v detailed account of what has happened in Syria in the last few days drawn from multiple sources. theirantiimperialismandours.com/2024/12/07/t...

archive of today's Bloomberg article on Labour shitting it at Starmer's political incompetence. it's a hoot. one thing to note: everyone quoted burbles on about "messaging", "boldness", "imagination": questions of political ~direction~ are still off limits. archive.is/80bIO

absolutely glorious reading all these news reports about how the motive is Unknown and everyone is Baffled by how it could have happened, do keep it up chaps.

Agence France-Press, the French news agency, reports that Assad's troops have left Homs. The Syrian Human Rights Observatory confirms it. I think that's it. If true, and I think it's true, it's all over for Assad

late nite spitballing here: senior cadre of today's British r/c were university students in the late 80s/90s (my generation), ie *after* the critical class battles of the period had been fought and won by the ascendent neoliberal order. >>

must-read piece on Syria from David Hearst here: detailed, well informed and clear eyed. www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-...

Found a translation of Le Petit Prince into Piemontese dialect, assumed that with a mix of French and Italian I'd be able to make most of it, proved to be badly wrong

sorry to be a cynic but circa 80% of the Oxford students voting to condemn Israel tonight will ditch and bury their "principles" within five years, ie the moment it becomes inconvenient to their precious careers.,

"With public anger in Saudi Arabia at fever pitch over Israel's actions in Gaza, Mohammed bin Salman has again made recognition of Israel conditional on it taking concrete steps to create a Palestinian state, two Saudi and three Western sources said." www.reuters.com/world/saudi-...

"it is unusual for the military chief to travel abroad during wartime." — so the IDF's chief of staff travelled to Britain on Monday for a face-to-face with his military allies. why would that be I wonder. perhaps the weather here is clement. www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...

At COP29 wealthy nations have forced vulnerable countries into conceding hollow agreements through coercion. The poor world has to accept crumbs for fear of collapsing the entire Cop process while the rich dodge their moral and historical obligations. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

it's really important that this issue is forced into the mainstream. Britain's support for the genocide is not confined to arms sales. www.middleeasteye.net/news/british...

A long read by me on Euripides, Women and Slavery: Gender Transgression in Ancient Greece. Classicists seem to like it. annebonnypirate.org/2022/01/20/e....

chanced across Amnesty's 2024 xmas bumf catalogue and credit where it's due

getting very into Euclid of late my droogs. was always vaguely aware of this stuff but reading it carefully is a revelation. so many subtleties where I can now see he prefigures mathematical breakthroughs that took place centuries later. we are still insufficiently Euclidean.

Sad to hear that John Prescott has died. I would very much liked to have talked to him about the Blair years. Here are two recent finds from my new archive research on science/environment policy under Blair, that show that Prescott was a much more interesting figure than his caricatures suggest …

was dimly aware of Prescott growing up but by the late 1990s he was a pathetic and clownish figure; the left derided him for selling out to New Labour (Steve Bell depicted him as Blair's grumpy pet bulldog), while the right could scarcely conceal its snobbish contempt. >>

did another TikTok for @rs21.bsky.social , two minutes on what happened today and next steps. vm.tiktok.com/ZGe1S31ev/

[copypaste of thread I did on the other place – am lurking here mostly for now] >> re From The River To The Sea and the rise of what you might call a one state vision >>

recorded this 3 min TikTok last night for @rs21.bsky.social on Gaza and what we can do in Britain to stop the unfolding genocide. vm.tiktok.com/ZGJKXYQJf/

my TikTok debut (gulp) >> a 3 minute summary of the emerging new global solidarity movement with Palestine and how the demos today are part of that // thx @rs21.bsky.social vm.tiktok.com/ZGJwMKLXV/

For Gaza Day of Action we stand with comrades to demand that the Labour Party calls for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation. #GazaDayOfAction #StopArmingIsrael #EndLabourComplicity

Thanks to @bat020.bsky.social for talking to us about the shifting landscape of Palestinian solidarity campaigning during the siege of Gaza, and how the mass movement is affecting the geopolitical strategies of western imperialism and the Arab states: www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...

thanks to rs21 for asking me to do the lead-off at a Palestine solidarity organising meeting last night in Whitechapel. here's what I said – it's like a ten-minute capsule analysis of what I think is going on, mboi to people more generally. youtu.be/_a22RChugoI?...

[quick thread on Bat's First Prom Experience copied & pasted over from the place, sorry not sorry if that's some massive breach of etiquette or something]

bought a new wall clock that starts at 0 like all clocks should do.

macabre roadside scene.

this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more.