Tessera

Just read that Sepp Blatter, that well known paragon of integrity, has voiced concerns about FIFA corruption under Infantino. We have officially reached peak absurdity in an already farcical World Cup. The tournament is not worthy of the sport it is facilitating.

Lots to agree with here - and yes, it’s true that it’s ‘easier’ to get a place to study languages than other more competitive subjects, even at ‘elite’ universities. BUT the piece gives the impression that only Russell Group really counts - a myth that really needs to be challenged.

Cutting language courses puts social mobility at risk, say UK experts

Exclusive: University moves and falling exam entries fuel concerns about opportunities for working-class pupils

theguardian.com

So I’ve just discovered the E-bay app is now fully unusable because of ‘magic’ AI you can’t switch off. It refuses to let me list a pair of women’s trainers in the ‘women’ category because it can see they are mainly black. And because women obvs only wear pink. Enshittification par excellence.

I love the eccentric details in this story. 'The painting belonged to a Seville family [...] who were in the habit of taking it on holiday with them.' People take books to the beach so, hey, why not art too ;)

Valuable Spanish painting left on street salvaged by man who liked its frame

Andrés Hurtado found work by Joaquín Sorolla after its owners mislaid it, before responding to theft alert

theguardian.com

Good work BBC Verify here. This sort of thing needs to be more widely understood. ‘Infantino's travel is believed to have produced roughly the amount of CO2e in just over a fortnight as about 78 people might produce across a calendar year.’

World Cup 2026: How Fifa president Gianni Infantino is jetting around

Gianni Infantino has clocked up thousands of air miles across North America so far.

bbc.co.uk

I have a feeling it‘s too hot and humid for me to understand the physics here. Useful article though. www.newscientist.com/article/2531...

You should turn off fans when it's too hot – but how hot is too hot?

Fans can make you hotter rather than cooler, but the temperature at which you should turn them off depends on several factors, including your age and the humidity level

newscientist.com

Ffs, It’s 7am and around 24 outside, and rising. Suddenly clothes seem overrated, may not bother with them any more.

Homer Simpson Walking Nude in Kitchen

ALT: Homer Simpson Walking Nude in Kitchen

static.klipy.com

Summer style from Marlene at the Hotel du Cap, Antibes, in 1938. My own vibe in this weather is more like an outtake from 'Ice Cold in Alex'.

Marlene Dietrch reading a newspaper in a deckchair in a sunny, coastal spot.

So it will be a coronation. A shame, as I was intrigued by Streeting starting to position himself further to left. A contest might at least have given a chance to address the continued nonsense of Brexit. Burnham wont't do anything about it.

Wes Streeting will not stand for Labour leadership as Andy Burnham announces candidacy

Former Greater Manchester mayor will be overwhelming favourite to succeed Keir Starmer

theguardian.com

Have just enjoyed an incredibly rich and enjoyable first day of the Rethinking Weimar Cinema Conference in Oxford. Super papers and equally good discussion and chat. Even Tommy Robinson‘s shameful presence in Oxford (‘debating’ at the Union) couldn’t spoil it.

A colourful border in Worcester College Oxford.

A building at Worcester college surrounded by trees and grass.

Sara Hall presenting her keynote lecture.

The Kristallnacht playbook in the age of social media and AI. The key elements remain the same: a ‘trigger event’ followed by disinformation and co-ordinated racial violence masquerading as ‘protests’. And just imagine if Reform were actually in power.

How Belfast knife attack became the latest far-right ‘trigger event’

The rapid spread of footage shows how social media is pivotal in enabling far-right agitators to mobilise internationally

theguardian.com

Our recent episode of 'In Our Time' on Joseph Roth is now available globally wherever you normally get your podcasts - e.g. Apple podcasts, Spotify, as well as BBC Sounds. (And also kudos to the panel who did the episode in front of a live audience at the Hay Festival last week!)

Joseph Roth

Podcast Episode · In Our Time · 4 June · 55min

podcasts.apple.com

Roland Smith@rolandmcs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The far right have been wanting a martyr figure, and clearly see this as a potential ‘Horst Wessel’ moment (compare how Nazi newspaper Der Angriff weaponized his death in 1930). Shame on the Telegraph but I expected no better.

The Telegraph's response to yesterday's antics: to platform Farage. Morning.

An interesting reflection on immigration and identity from Robin Lustig (I particularly like his speculative suggestion that asylum seekers might be invited to join the British armed forces, as happened to his father - can you imagine the reaction from Reform types).

My father, the German refugee who fought the Nazis as a ‘secret listener’

As the far right fulminates about who ‘belongs’ in Britain, let’s remember Fritz Lustig, who arrived here in 1939, just months before war broke out. Initially jailed as an ‘enemy alien’, he played a v...

theguardian.com

Suki guarding the emerging canna lily #caturday

A grey cat sitting in half-barrel next to a canna lily.

Ray Beckerman@raybeckerman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Remember the scene in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN where the sailors are served maggot-infested meat, and it's basically a metphor for the corrupt and rotten state? Well... 👇👇👇

Greg Gutfeld on the federal detention center at Delaney Hall: “Maggots or not, the food is dietitian approved” www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/gre...

Jon Hughes@riderjon.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Breakfast time. The chicks here queuing like good little Brits, which unfortunately doesn't work so well with predators. Hard to watch the one at the back get left out. It's not always the same one however!

Screenshot of 3 peregrine hawk chicks being fed.

Highly recommend @royalholloway.bsky.social's live feed of their nesting peregrine falcons (as long as you don't mind watching chicks feasting). They are currently having a late lunch. www.youtube.com/live/NDv_Q9Q...

Screenshot of the falcon feeding her chicks.

Steve Shilstone @steveshilstone.bsky.social · 2mo ago

now THIS is a lamp #art #deco

Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 2mo ago

I love how we're the go-to global example of Doing Stupid Stuff

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2mo ago

Iceland’s foreign minister fears ‘Brexit moment’ in EU accession referendum

Current soundtrack for another afternoon marking dissertations and exams. So good.

Album cover for the soundtrack album for John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.

We stopped buying farmed salmon a while ago because of these concerns - and it's even worse than I thought, by the sound of it.

Millions of salmon deaths at Scottish farms disclosed after watchdog’s ruling

Animal and Plant Health Agency forced to release reports showing scale and cause of deaths on some fish farms

theguardian.com

'Hitzewelle' / 'Heatwave' - cartoon by H. M. Bateman published in Das Magazin, 1929. I'm currently the guy in the third panel. 35 degrees outside, which is just insane.

6-panel cartoon, 'Heatwave', showing city commuters suffering comically in the heat.

So it's DOWNFALL but from the perspective of Hitler's dog. I'll see this for sure but I'll take some convcing that this is a film that needed to be made...

‘We needed a Hitler who really vibed with the dog’: meet Lexie, the world’s first cinemadographer

A new film, Blondi, takes audiences inside the Führer’s bunker in the final days of the Third Reich, from the point of view of his beloved dog

theguardian.com

Jon Hughes@riderjon.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Well, I got that all wrong! Of course I'm biased and ranked lists are daft, but fair to say I raised an eyebrow at the complete omission of e.g. Joseph Roth and Günther Grass while e.g. Virginia Woolf gets 5 titles in the list. There are in any case more interesting lists out there.

The bottom 20 released today, with Buddenbrooks in at 81. Which other German-language authors do I think will make the cut in this anglocentric list? I'll say Kafka (obvs), Remarque, Grass, Sebald, Roth (The Radetzky March), and maybe Bachmann, Christa Wolf, Jelinek, Kehlmann, Erpenbeck, Döblin.

Discovered today that if you prompt ChatGPT to write a 2000 word formal essay on a specific topic, it not only produces the essay but boasts, unprompted, that the work 'is suitable for submission at a university'. Wouldn't be suprised if it added 'Go on, you know you want to.' Zero shame.

Gwenno in concert last night - not only fantastic trilingual songs (Welsh, Cornish, English) but an impassioned defence of the beauty and inherent value of all language. Superb. ✊

Gwenno performing at the Boilerroom in Guildford. She is wearing a black outfit and playing keyboard.

Rhys Edwards performing on guitar with Gwenno.