Pope Leo XIV tells a gathering of the Bizot Group of international museum directors at the Vatican that, “...every museum is a place of memory, beauty and history, fostering encounters between generations and promoting culture and human creativity.”

Pope Leo XIV addresses international museum directors at the Vatican

“Every museum is a place of memory, beauty and history”, said the pontiff to an audience that included the directors of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in N...

theartnewspaper.com

The Best #CultureWar Money Can Buy The Guardian investigates the small group of Right Wing academics, journalists and millionaire media owners who are behind attempts to stall the Church of England's attempt to pay compensation for the church's role in chattel slavery. (Oh and also #RestoreTrust)

Lobbying, lawyers and a media blitz: the fight to kill the Church of England’s £100m slavery compensation fund

Some of Britain’s wealthiest financiers, including Sir Paul Marshall, have given a platform to critical coverage or are linked to its leading opponent

theguardian.com

Combining three of my favourite subject areas, Culture, current affairs, and the inequities of #AI, the best one liner on BluSky today (probably).

pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky”@pixelatedboat.bsky.social · yesterday

Sad news for cinephiles: Tilly Norwood has been killed in a Ukrainian drone strike.

#Schadenfreude News It's not been a great few days for Elon. Not only has the critical documentary "Musk" opened, the world's richest broligarch punted letting his Grok #Theftbot go shopping. Ooops! His screenshots had enough information to let mean people try and spend all his money on Lego.

Elon Musk Bragged About His Grok Lego Star Wars Haul. Then X Users Punked Him

Musk, we find your lack of security disturbing.

wired.com

“This is not a story about fractions and SAT problems...This is something that is happening to human knowledge and human expertise from top to bottom and from grade-school students all the way to the leading experts in the world.” Study show #AI use damages the very abilities needed by researchers.

Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things - Berkeley News

A UC Berkeley researcher co-authored a study that raises profound questions about how we interact with artificial intelligence in education — and daily life.

news.berkeley.edu

"This is all hugely divisive and will not end well.” Staff at Cardiff University respond to cuts imposed by the University SMT, including in research time and conference attendances.

Research cuts make Cardiff Uni ‘a Russell Group university in name only’

Martin Shipton Staff at Cardiff University fear that the near-halving of allocated research time for academics will compromise its status as an elite higher education institution. The university is pr...

nation.cymru

#WhoWouldHaveGuessed News After all, what with those boozy lunches with the Russian Ambassador, an ex-KGB colonel hosting parties attended by the UK's Foreign Secretary (without his security detail), those spots on RT & a Farage friend doing time for taking the rubles, there was never any evidence.

Carole Cadwalladr@carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 2d ago

NEW: Prime Minister Andy Burnham finally breaks a decade of UK govt silence…& reveals there was ‘clear’ Russian interference in the Brexit vote. 1/

Allegations that OpenAI used unpublished research without permission or credit, to "solve" mathmatics problems and in the process trashed the research of early career mathematicians and destroyed research programmes.

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 3d ago

“This recent dump of papers on Tuesday destroyed the careers of early-career mathematicians. We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday by their dump … they have all the mathematicians research programs in their training data” - Tristan Buckmaster on OpenAI solving unsolved math problems

“The first crime was building the dam in the first place,”...“The second was blowing it up.” The Guardian on the Ukrainian Archaeologists, Ecologists and Scientists seeking to understand and preserve the "Great Meadow" left by the Russian destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro.

Don’t rebuild the dam: Ukrainian experts urge Unesco to protect site uncovered by Russian sabotage

As archaeologists find treasure trove along new floodplain, conservationists say another Nova Kakhovka would be ecocide

theguardian.com

"After the first two hours, audiences will learn that he is better at engineering everything around him to suit his ego and his bank account than he is at engineering his many products." "The second two hours are when it gets really scary..." The Roger Ebert website reviews Alex Gibney's "Musk".

Musk review: Alex Gibney shows Elon, warts and all (mostly warts)

May be the most important film of the year.

rogerebert.com

The Guardian follows Hope Not Hate and alleges boss of “a specialist recruitment and build-with talent partner for companies operating across AI” is behind a now deleted X-Twitter account involved in the doxxing of RNLI staff and volunteers and anti-racists and created a, so called, "Traitorbase".

Recruitment boss accused of being behind ‘doxxing’ campaign against RNLI and anti-racism activists

Tom Watson, of Worcester, alleged to be behind Big Time Charlie X account that created so-called Traitorbase

theguardian.com

#AI will do away with the need for lawyers (except the lawyers suing #AI companies (unless the cases are brought using #AI to write the submissions)). Press Gazette with a running total of the media organisations which are suing #AI companies and those which have reached licencing agreements.

Who's suing AI and who's signing latest: USA Today Co sues OpenAI

News AI deals revealed: Which publishers are suing and which are signing deal with the tech giants over generative AI.

pressgazette.co.uk

Friday Debate... This House prefers its journalism* written by an #AI assisted reporter producing 50+ stories per day, rather than it being researched, written, fact checked, legalled and published by human beings. Discuss *and academic articles

Press Gazette@pressgazette.co.uk · 4d ago

The Quartz website now mainly produced by one reporter writing 50+ stories per day. Digital marketing expert Cris Tolomia appears to be making heavy use of AI. pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

Harvard educated South African jurist of Tamil Heritage, Navi Pillay, who was today awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has had a stellar career in Human Rights and International Law, including campaigning against the death penalty. We await the reaction of the winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.

Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 4d ago

Navi Pillay last year: "The commission finds it is genocide" Pillay has just won the Nobel peace prize.

Just when you thought the use of the death penalty in the US had reached an unsurpassable depth of the grotesque...

Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed

The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be “public.”

apnews.com

More on the abrupt shuttering of major international CRM company Chronicle Heritage by its hedgefund owner Riverside, including questions over the fate of site archives and whether the $1m Riverside have allocated to close out projects is adequate. Spoiler Alert: Almost certainly it isn't.

The Nation's Largest Archaeology Firm Abruptly Shut Down. The 600-Plus Layoffs Aren't the Biggest Concern

Chronicle Heritage closed more than 20 offices without a public announcement, leaving employees shocked and major archaeological projects facing an uncertain future.

inc.com

Just Asking Questions (And one really big question) Get early access to the final episode of Graham Hancock: A Life NOT In Archaeology by signing up to the #Archaeosoup Patreon for as little as £1 per month.

Graham Hancock: A Life NOT in Archaeology: 11. Finale - Just asking Questions? | Archaeosoup Productions

Graham Hancock: A Life NOT in Archaeology: 11. Finale - Just asking Questions? by Archaeosoup Productions on Patreon. Join Archaeosoup Productions's community for exclusive content and updates.

patreon.com

The Cybertruck is the ugliest, most pointless, vehicle ever inflicted on the roads of the world. Jaguar Landrover: "Hold my beer."

The Jaguar Type 01: a £150k gargantuan getaway vehicle utterly useless in the city

Too costly for most, too large for UK car parks, and wheels bigger than a warlord’s pickup truck. But it does come in ‘London red’

theguardian.com

It is often said don't speak ill of the dead, but in the case of serial liar, convicted purjurer and subject of a lifetime's worth of other accusations of wrongdoing, Jeffrey Archer, people are finding it easy to make an exception.

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare obituary

Bestselling author and Conservative politician whose scandal-ridden career ended with a prison sentence

theguardian.com

The Atlantic on how the Trump White House is using an obscure, but legally binding, budget mechanism to threaten $190m of the Smithsonian's funding unless the organisation complies with the Executive Orders regarding spreading what it describes as "divisive narratives".

Trump’s Unlikely Strategy to Control History: Footnotes

The White House is threatening $190 million in Smithsonian funding.

theatlantic.com

Wired asks...If #AI renders mathematicians obsolete, who checks if AI theftbots, built on the work of real mathematicians, have reached a correct solution, and how can the working be checked if the result is dumped into the media via a blog post for PR reasons rather than via a peer reviewed paper?

OpenAI Is Pissing Off a Bunch of Mathematicians—Again

“There’s a perception of mobster behavior” from leading AI companies, one mathematician tells WIRED as OpenAI prepares to release more than 100 new solutions to unsolved problems.

wired.com

This is like that scene in The Thick Of It where Malcolm Tucker's rips into Ben Swain's hand gestures.

Farrukh@implausibleblog.bsky.social · last wk.

Conservative Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith Waves his hands around trying to get Conservatives to clap

Matthew Mckeague, Chief Executive of the Architectural Heritage Fund, calls for lessons to be drawn from Scotland, including need for adequate funding to allow maintenance and equalising zero rate VAT for rebuilds and newbuilds, to replace crisis capital grants, in the upkeep of heritage buildings.

Scotland’s fires provide many lessons for the heritage sector

Tragic events in Glasgow should prompt a UK-wide reckoning about maintenance, funding and what genuine regeneration requires, writes Matthew Mckeague, chief executive of the Architectural Heritage Fun...

bdonline.co.uk

"Great stuff guys. Thanks for another enjoyable and interesting episode." Episode 10 of Graham Hancock: A Life NOT In Archaeology is out now on YouTube, where we dabble with Dibble, go rogue on Rogan and identify the Two Horsemen of the #Hancockalypse. Join us & please Like, Share and Subscribe.

Graham Hancock: A Life NOT in Archaeology: 10. From Fantasy Fiction to Joe Rogan & Flint Dibble

YouTube video by Archaeosoup

youtu.be

Shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith to pledge that, if the Tories return to Government, they will “streamline regulations”, including by abolishing Natural England & leaving the Aahus Convention. No specific mention of Archaeology, but environmental protections would be diluted. #AttackOnNature2

Tories to pledge to scrap Environment Agency and Natural England

Shadow chancellor will also promise to scrap affordable homes regulations as part of strategy to refocus on growth

theguardian.com

Affectionate memories of taking 125's on the Great Western line from Paddington to Bristol, going to Uni. They looked the business, but a joke at the time was based on a British Rail marketing slogan and alleged shortcomings and outdated ideas on the network. "125. This is the age of the train."

Justin on eurostar@eurostarjustin.bsky.social · last wk.

On this day 50 years ago, the revolutionary British Rail Inter-City 125 entered service. Fantastic to see a set restored into 1980s livery arrive at Manchester Piccadilly this afternoon. #TheJourneyShrinker

"It’s a cultural and historical atrocity...” The Las Playas Intaglio, a 6500 year old geoglyph, claimed as the oldest so far dated in the Americas, situated in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona, irreparably damaged during construction of the Trump Border Wall.

Trump’s border wall construction cut into an ancient ground carving older than Stonehenge

The Las Playas Intaglio carving of a huge fish is at least 2,000 years older than the first Egyptian pyramid, according to researchers’ estimations.

nbcnews.com

In the 90's I was at an Anti-Racism event in the Old Town Hall in Newham. Among the speakers was a veteran East End activist who had been at #CableStreet & who cut through the platitudes saying, "The only way to fight Fascism is on the Streets." Still true although now the Streets extend online.

Municipal Dreams@municipaldreams.bsky.social · last wk.

On the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street (in which Jewish, left-wing and trades union activists battled police to block a fascist march), here's the mural unveiled in 1983 designed by Dave Binnington on the former St George's Town Hall to commemorate the event.

The penultimate episode of "Graham Hancock: A Life NOT In Archaeology" drops soon. Catch up with previous episodes on the #Archaeosoup playlist. You know #BigArchaeology wants you to.

If this isn't satire then presumably the Tory Party comm's team have forgotten, if they ever knew, that the Bayeux Tapestry depicts an episode of European integration brought about by an army of fighting age men arriving on the South Coast in small (by modern standards) boats where the English lost.

Twlldun@twlldun.bsky.social · last wk.

Honestly guys isn’t this a bit weird? This is a bit weird