Fancy some summer listening? Five, 15-minute bursts of archive and chat between the actor Samuel West and myself, now available as a playlist on Spotify: The Beeb and the Bard Hear all about how #Shakespeare has sounded on radio over the last century 📻 #AudioDrama 💀🎧 open.spotify.com/playlist/4CQ...

Are the "Big Six" still the mainstay of Romanticism? Here's a crude word cloud of the programme of last week's - albeit entirely brilliant, hugely enjoyable - conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies. It does not quite work - though good to see "coffee" pretty prominent.

"The poetry sector was already enjoying an upwards trajectory before.. The Odyssey, helped in recent years by the popularity of Instapoets... repositioning the poetry sector from a more academic category into a lifestyle, gift and self-development genre.” www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey gives UK poetry sales an epic boost

Poetry sales surpassed £8m in the first 30 weeks of 2026 and are expected to reach a record high this year thanks to blockbuster adaptation of Homer’s 2,700-year-old poem

theguardian.com

Further, with food supply chains coming under increasing strain as the climate and biodiversity crises worsen, can we afford to grow crops that are subsequently shoved into jet engines?

Fruit to produce jet fuel: another greenwashing scam, directly from the fossil fuel industry, that will turn an area of Brazilian countryside the size of LA into a monoculture. 🧵

Jet Fuel Made From Tropical Fruit Gets $3 Billion Backing

A Brazilian company owned by Mubadala Capital plans to make sustainable aviation fuel out of macauba fruit, which grows on palm trees.

bloomberg.com

Since we've been talking about Wittgenstein, here's an accidental duck-rabbit I found

Evans-Pritchard once accused me of malpractice, and this is typically overstated, but he's worth reading. Forecasts of UK net electricity exports may be wrong, given higher capital costs/UK's suitability for solar. But the North Sea will be crucial for north-west Europe www.cer.eu/publications...

Power losses: What's holding back European electricity trade?

The EU is falling behind in its push to create a European power market. This analysis sets out a five-point plan for the EU and national governments to hasten integration.

cer.eu

Roland Smith@rolandmcs.bsky.social · 17h ago

Another upbeat energy article by Ambrose E-P in the Telegraph that also slaps the Tories over their green energy stance. archive.ph/Ypxmt

“As Aydin jumps a scooter over ramps set up in the middle of the road, children around him are drawing with chalk, blowing bubbles and kicking a football in a spot where cars are usually driving through.” Good job Leeds. More children should have the chance to play in their neighbourhood like this.

Leeds: The city closing down streets so children can play

In Leeds, streets are being temporarily closed to traffic so kids have more space to safely play - an initiative proving beneficial to both children and adults.

bbc.co.uk

So this comes out on the week when Paks Nuclear Power Station has to be turned off because there's no water left in the River Danube Great job everyone

Marc Owen Jones@marcowenjones.bsky.social · 16h ago

Here is a clear example of how corporate capitalist forces (and their media) try to undermine science & create their own counterfactuals (and enemies) - in this case using useful idiots. A clear example of false consciousness - where publics must be deceived to protect corporate capital accumulation

"In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty." -Ray Bradbury, "There Will Come Soft Rains" published in 1950 & set #OnThisDay (Aug. 4, 2026) #booksky #scifi 📚

Right you lot. I need some good poetic inverted syntax, wrongly corrected. Send me examples like these: The six hundred rode into the valley of death. The eye of heaven shines too hot sometimes. Thy father lies five full fathoms. Kubla Khan did decree a stately pleasure-dome in Xanadu. Thanks

from personal experience: yeah

The efficiency of the house is a 1950s advertising fever dream. Meanwhile, on actual August 4, 2026, my robot vacuum can’t complete a circuit of my tiny apartment without screaming for help at some point. What we foresee is not what we get

If this very short story is new to you, read it. Just read it.

Aaron Meyers@aaronmeyers.bsky.social · yesterday

"Today is August 4, 2026" There Will Come Soft Rains By: Ray Bradbury

But there is a catch! This virtuous cycle can only happen if we actually make a start on increasing electricity demand. Underlying SSE's model is the (quite reasonable) assumption that heat pump uptake starts to grow quite rapidly between now and the early 2030s. But this isn't happening yet...

If you, to take one random example, say that someone with a long history of neo-Nazi activity is welcome in your party because he did a training course, you are contributing to the problem of norm erosion.

This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms

Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d ago

news.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest

A lovely bracket/shelf/polypore Fungi in the woods at sunset just now, I climbed a tree to get a good look. It’s grown quite quickly for soothing that size. Here’s a quick video from up the tree youtu.be/UzfcUKUEPgY?...

To the edge with @thatandymart.bsky.social and @imcmillan.bsky.social

thatandymart.bsky.social@thatandymart.bsky.social · 2d ago

Of course the planet Neptune has half-day closing every Thursday. @imcmillan.bsky.social

Brilliant letter from Stuart Thompson to Jeremy Clarkson about his comments that benefit claimants should write weekly thank you letters to tax payers detailing how they spend their benefits each week.

I'm doing this! Dating advice includes 'wear a big hat', which is also an ever-green summer fashion tip!😎

Orange Tree Theatre@orangetreetheatre.bsky.social · 2d ago

🎙️ Join us for our next Saturday Seminar: Much Ado About Love. Explore how Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing reveal the nature of love, from poetry and friendship to war and romance, with a dash of 1590s dating advice! 📅 15 Aug, 11am 🎟️ https://ow.ly/FwmE50ZvQEp

I just had a look at the 2026 KS2 English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test (Yr 6). These tests normally undergo a great deal of scrutiny at the Standards and Testing Agency, but this question got through the test reviews, which is very unfortunate. @departmentforedu.bsky.social #grammar #SPAG

Could just have fewer papers you don't need 3 papers for Maths or 4 for English (Language and Literature). The GCSE exam period is brutal.

Have you had your say yet? What would make your community work better? Leave a quick voice note for the National Conversation, analysed by Nuffield College, University of Oxford to form a shared vision for how we live well together. www.national-conversation.ox.ac.uk/en/voicenote — closes 31 Aug.

English children already make their decision way too early, forced to narrow to 3 subjects at 16. What actually needs to change is the nature of the assessments at 16. My child had to sit 28 unseen exams for 10 GCSEs. Totally unnecessary; all sorts of projects and coursework could be built in.

With the exception of the very top of your cohort and the very bottom, both of whom need specialist attention of very different kinds, all the studies — all of them — say selection is bad bad bad for children.

In the last year just 12,000 social rent homes were built in England, a fifth of the affordable total. This is much less than in the 1990s, an average of 42,000 social rent homes were built each year (79 per cent of the total). buff.ly/mvyhrC0

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

Don’t make policy to appease reply guys because reply guys can never be appeased (and are also a small, extreme, self-selected and unrepresentative group)

Liam Thorp@liamthorp.bsky.social · 3d ago

Andy Burnham correctly points out in an interview that small boat crossings are massively down this year compared with last. The comments in the post are filled with people suggesting he is lying about this very clear, data-evidenced fact. It’s almost as though they don’t want it to he true…