Finished reading Songs of Mihyar the Damascene yesterday, so have returned to this. I really like how it mixes cultural, intellectual & political history with close reading of poems. Am learning a lot about Lebanon in the postwar period too. Curious resonances with Taiwan here & there.
Have only read the introduction so far, but this is really good - on Arab modernism as it developed in the heyday of mid 20th c Beirut. Am reading it because I've been making my way through Songs of Mihyar the Damascene by Adonis, one of the focal points of this study.
February 8, 2026 at 8:08 PM
Finished reading Songs of Mihyar the Damascene yesterday, so have returned to this. I really like how it mixes cultural, intellectual & political history with close reading of poems. Am learning a lot about Lebanon in the postwar period too. Curious resonances with Taiwan here & there.
Grete Stern, Sueño No. 1: Artículos eléctricos para el hogar (Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home). 1949. Gelatin silver print, 10 1⁄2 x 9" (26.6 x 22.9 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York
February 8, 2026 at 5:25 PM
Grete Stern, Sueño No. 1: Artículos eléctricos para el hogar (Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home). 1949. Gelatin silver print, 10 1⁄2 x 9" (26.6 x 22.9 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York
The spur for this is the Terminally Ill Adults (Assisted Dying) bill, by means of which a government too cowardly to own the policy has offered tacit support to a peer & an MP to do something that deserved care, resources & proper public consultation on the cheap, causing fear among disabled people.
"Wholesale reform" you say? Maybe it's time for something a little more radical, like abolition, but that would raise questions about the wider political system, so perhaps more tinkering would be for the best. observer.co.uk/news/politic...
The spur for this is the Terminally Ill Adults (Assisted Dying) bill, by means of which a government too cowardly to own the policy has offered tacit support to a peer & an MP to do something that deserved care, resources & proper public consultation on the cheap, causing fear among disabled people.
There’s a lot in this part of the release to shake you up, but the trafficking victim who apparently authored it crossing out ‘woman’ in Sylvia Plath’s poem and substituting ‘girl’… I won’t soon forget that.
February 8, 2026 at 1:05 PM
There’s a lot in this part of the release to shake you up, but the trafficking victim who apparently authored it crossing out ‘woman’ in Sylvia Plath’s poem and substituting ‘girl’… I won’t soon forget that.
If you’ve been confused by the term “financialization,” this is a pretty good -if incomplete- primer. I am confused by author’s organization calling itself “conservative” because doesn’t match its mission statement. It was conservatives & centrists (“neoliberals”) who helped fuel this after all. 1/2
#OtD 8 Feb 1921 Peter Kropotkin, famous proponent of anarchist-communism, died of pneumonia in Russia. He took part in revolutionary groups in four countries and was a major contributor to anarchist theory. Works by and about him available here: shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/...
Staying briefly with Street View theme: England celebrates Halloween. Assumptions of social peace seem deeply invested, can't think they do this in Croatia
February 8, 2026 at 11:11 AM
Big fan of Brynley's periodic flights into Street View & accompanying commentary 🤗
This point is legit but your bizarre recommendations are not the result of the algorithm failing to predict your tastes, they're the result of it attempting to shape and direct your tastes. Which makes it even less appealing to hand over more important decisions to the same tech companies.
Tech is unable to show you what TV and films you might like to watch on the front menu of a streaming service (even though you give away your tastes with every digital interaction) while they’re also insisting that the same tech will be able to make vital everyday decisions for you and your country.
February 6, 2026 at 11:52 AM
This point is legit but your bizarre recommendations are not the result of the algorithm failing to predict your tastes, they're the result of it attempting to shape and direct your tastes. Which makes it even less appealing to hand over more important decisions to the same tech companies.
So Labour Together, which ran a long campaign to smear left wingers as antisemites, hired a PR firm to find out who leaked info on its secret funding to a Sunday Times investigation, & the PR firm decided to discredit a *possibly* linked investigative journalist by saying he was funded by Soros.
February 6, 2026 at 8:43 AM
So Labour Together, which ran a long campaign to smear left wingers as antisemites, hired a PR firm to find out who leaked info on its secret funding to a Sunday Times investigation, & the PR firm decided to discredit a *possibly* linked investigative journalist by saying he was funded by Soros.
Have a kitty. This big handsome guy is Goldie. He’s available for adoption in Minnesota through Kitty Revolution. You can learn more about him here: new.shelterluv.com/embed/animal...
February 5, 2026 at 4:50 PM
This is the face of a cat who would eat any intruder. And maybe has.
Every time I arrive home from a 5 mile bike ride back from the office, a traumatised mess, my fiancée asks why I put myself through it, & I am not convinced by my own answers
February 5, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Every time I arrive home from a 5 mile bike ride back from the office, a traumatised mess, my fiancée asks why I put myself through it, & I am not convinced by my own answers
Curious how, as Peter "left wing voters have nowhere else to go" Mandelson finally falls for what looks like the last time (...), left wing voters have found somewhere else to go, & the leader of the Labour party finds himself so woefully ill-equipped to deal with it.
Keir Starmer attacks the racism of Reform and Matt Goodwin but then adds that "Britain has also been let down by a mindset on the left of politics that is too slow to defend core British values"
February 5, 2026 at 1:27 PM
Curious how, as Peter "left wing voters have nowhere else to go" Mandelson finally falls for what looks like the last time (...), left wing voters have found somewhere else to go, & the leader of the Labour party finds himself so woefully ill-equipped to deal with it.
You know what? I actually love AI. I just asked Google for the home address of the guy who designed the spellcheck function in MS Office & it *gave it to me*. Any mutuals who live in the PNW & fancy hanging out/ potentially providing me with an alibi, hmu
February 3, 2026 at 2:15 PM
You know what? I actually love AI. I just asked Google for the home address of the guy who designed the spellcheck function in MS Office & it *gave it to me*. Any mutuals who live in the PNW & fancy hanging out/ potentially providing me with an alibi, hmu
Worse, a big part of the anti-green development constituency they want to recruit - the anti-wind farms brigade - aren't actually anti-net zero but part of an inchoate new conservation movement
We detected incredibly high levels of cancer causing PFOA near this plant's discharge pipe in the 'protected' River Wyre. Our findings prompted a multi-agency investigation which has recommended people not to eat locally grown fruit & veg - now, they've found elevated PFAS in eggs near the site.
We detected incredibly high levels of cancer causing PFOA near this plant's discharge pipe in the 'protected' River Wyre. Our findings prompted a multi-agency investigation which has recommended people not to eat locally grown fruit & veg - now, they've found elevated PFAS in eggs near the site.
President Trump is threatening to sue Trevor Noah over a joke at last night's Grammy Awards, saying that Noah's crack claiming he visited Jeffrey Epstein's island was "false and defamatory."