"A former neo-Nazi who was jailed for posting anti-semitic material and harassing a Jewish MP can become a Tory councillor but not an MP, Kemi Badenoch has declared." What is she playing at?! www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kemi-b...

Kemi Badenoch Says Former Neo-Nazi Standing For Tories Can Be A Councillor But Not An MP

The Conservative leader said she would not want to give Joshua Bonehill-Paine “a national platform”.

huffingtonpost.co.uk

A writer goes in search of her most vicious online troll and finds a middle-class 74-year-old woman who has made more than 120,000 trolling comments on the Daily Mail alone, but sure, it's teenagers who need their online experiences surveilled and censored. Archive link. archive.ph/pPrha

I'm a Leftist, and I am entirely confident in the ability of Leftists in a Leftist bubble to still argue with each other. Its stopping them from arguing with each other that's the trick.

Paul Bernal@paulbernal.bsky.social · 2d ago

The new CEO of Bluesky wants to change Bluesky from being a leftist bubble. The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with being a leftist bubble: the idea that everything has to be all-encompassing and suitable for everyone is a trap. 🧵 1/4

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

How parents and pupils took on 'cruel', 'authoritarian' schools - and won

Discipline at an academy trust went too far - parents, pupils and former teachers tell BBC Panorama.

bbc.co.uk

"Kew Gardens has had a weather station since 1871. This July was, based on third party analysis of Met Office data collected at the site, the first calendar month on record where no rainfall was measured at Kew."

London's first month without rain

Plus: There's nowhere to bury the dead • London wants to keep its money • When will it stop being so damn hot • Who is to blame for turning off the air conditioning in the tower block?

londoncentric.media

It's possibly not healthy that whenever a public figure dies we are required to pretend they didn't say or do all the things they said and did, or the Daily Mail will write an article about you and you'll lose your job. For a democracy that's possibly not a great direction of travel.

No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...

Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation

PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...

theonion.com

He was a Polish immigrant and I have no idea why he decided *Scarborough* of all places he could have gone. The world was his oyster and he chose a whelk.

Corey@coreysoper.bsky.social · 7d ago

Said ancestor used to drive a horse-drawn cart to take tourists to and fro from Scarborough beach and town, and he had both a Labour and Tory rosette on his cart which he would swap depending on the class of his fare in hope of a better tip. I think I'd enjoy that.

Said ancestor used to drive a horse-drawn cart to take tourists to and fro from Scarborough beach and town, and he had both a Labour and Tory rosette on his cart which he would swap depending on the class of his fare in hope of a better tip. I think I'd enjoy that.

Revan@revan.eurosky.social · 7d ago

Enough “what would you do on the commune questions” If you got sent back 100 years and were given your grandparent’s job, what are you doing?

mildly funny that X is having blazing rows about Nolan’s Odyssey because he cast black people in it and Bluesky is having blazing rows about whether a noted Homeric translator’s LRB review of it misses the point or not

I don't think a film in which the protagonist hangs the serving-women in his household for their "disloyalty" would work for a modern audience. I think a modern interpretation which reflects modern concerns is probably an inevitable part of the process of adaptation.

paul khruangbin (Dan Lehner)@danlehner.bsky.social · 2w ago

very funny that after all the “Emily Wilson is going to longhouse Western Civilization with her woke Odyssey”, Emily Wilson herself is like “yeah, a bit too much ‘healing trauma’ and not enough ‘relishing in the blood of your enemies’ in the new movie”

How sad it must be to live like this - unable to engage with any culture because it has Some Black People In It.

Corey@coreysoper.bsky.social · last wk.

Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic in the Clytemnestra/Helen role, too. It's a great casting - she sells the unworldly beautiful and the storm of emotions concealed by poise that Helen has; and the bloody vengeance of Clytemnestra.

Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic in the Clytemnestra/Helen role, too. It's a great casting - she sells the unworldly beautiful and the storm of emotions concealed by poise that Helen has; and the bloody vengeance of Clytemnestra.

Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 2w ago

It is genuinely bizarre that we’ve become acclimatized to right wingers throwing a tantrum every time a black person (particularly a black woman) is cast in something, but are also supposed to pretend that this is not racism but related to some other substantive concern.

The most radicalizing thing about this era is listening to the most powerful people in the world speak about any subject whatsoever. gizmodo.com/elon-musk-ec...

He does some version of this post - that *this* is finally the adult, professional political operation we've been yearning for - about every single new Prime Minister since Sunak.

"my neighbour is a cannibal who screams throughout the night" yeah we've all lived in a flat share mate, deal with it

Gonna give a shout out to the Clare North Penelopiad series which does the feminist-retelling-from-Penelope's perspective thing, and absolutely reckons with the wounded masculinity and casual brutality of Odysseus's return to Ithaca.

Big Joel@bigjoel.bsky.social · 2w ago

The feeling I can’t shake is that I don’t think the Odysseus the film depicts would lock the door and slaughter tons of suitors. Like I’m not really seeing it for him

The Odyssey isn't set in an actual historical period. It's set in the imagined 'heroic age' past of a mythologised proto-Greece. Homer's work is full of anachronism before you even begin to talk about cyclopes and witches. But as usual, 'historically accurate' is code for 'white, male, cis'.

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 2w ago

This would very easy for him to do. But we’ll see if he actually does it.

Oh look at that, literally the first policy Burnham announced and the Home Office are already in the way. Good thing he appointed a progressive and supportive colleague there to take an open-minded look at where immigration restrictions are having perverse effects, eh?

Steve Peers@stevepeers.bsky.social · 2w ago

There's a Home Office-sized obstacle in the way of ending rough sleeping

UCL's Centre for Holocaust Education is looking for history teachers of autistic and non-autistic pupils; if that includes you, we do commend their survey to you.

Corey@coreysoper.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I am conducting research into how autistic pupils experience Holocaust education as part of my doctoral research. If you're a secondary history teacher of autistic and non-autistic pupils, I'd appreciate it if you took the time to complete the following survey: qualtrics.ucl.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_...

It should be illegal to have a terrifying headline for an article where the third paragraph quietly tells you that the entire premise of the article is basically false.

Police figures show racist hate crimes in London are up 9% in the past 12 months, with nearly 18,000 reported offences. But campaigners say the true scale is likely to be higher, as many incidents go unreported. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Londoners share racist abuse stories amid hate crime report rise

With racist hate crimes on the increase, young Londoners speak out about the abuse they have faced.

bbc.co.uk

Good job we beat Norway or they would have annexed the whole Danelaw.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 3w ago

???

Have to say, I really, really don't like that we seem to have settled on a policy of publicly announcing people's race so the public knows how to respond to the crime they're accused of.

"I may have disagreed with some of Dark Lord Sauron's policies, but I will remember his love of handicrafts and the generosity of his gifts"

Sen. Adam Schiff@schiff.senate.gov · 3w ago

What I’ll remember most about Senator Graham was his sense of humor and how he deployed it to move his policy positions forward. Though we did not often agree, Senator Graham was never disagreeable.

Translation: She was kind to powerful and influential people who could respond in some way, and malicious to the powerless and downtrodden who simply had to bear it.

Robert Shrimsley@robertshrimsley.bsky.social · 4w ago

Sad news about Ann Widdecombe. Very good and nuanced obit from the Times. Didn't share many of her social views but she was a woman of strong principles, far better and kinder than her caricature. This last par captures here well: www.thetimes.com/uk/obituarie...

The most prolific readers I know basically devour every single new Romantasy that hits the shelves and you know what? Fine. Enemies-to-lovers dark romance werewolf smut may actually save literate culture at this point.

Martin Concagh@mconcagh.bsky.social · 4w ago

This is why I just can’t bear literary snobbery anymore. If at some point last year you read to the very end of a Colleen Hoover book or a Star Wars novelization and can talk about the characters and what the moral of the story probably was that puts you in top third of the population

This Supreme Court ruling empowers a small sub-set of oddballs to become the Gender Police - and to question anyone who doesn't comport with their ideas of femininity. Grim.

ændra.@aendra.com · 4w ago

I really question whether I'll still live in the UK a year from now.

Our research team which works on the remarkable International Tracing Service Archive is visiting Windermere Library to offer a free event, exploring this complicated history and how the search for the missing continues. Join us on 11 July with the Lake District Holocaust Project:

Recovery and Repair: The Search for the Missing After the Holocaust, one-day event at Windermere Library - The Wiener Holocaust Library

A team from the Wiener Holocaust Library is visiting Windermere Library to offer a free event, exploring this complicated history and how the search for the missing continues today. Join us for this…

buff.ly