Anand

Judith Leyster self portrait

And look at this fabulously confident self portrait by Leyster

rare to find a discarded egg case for baby construction workers

the fear and anger last night about this was tangible on X, TikTok

(invisible here)

the city, sited on a flood plain and with poorly maintained drainage, unregulated sprawl, grinds to a halt; while cancer care budgets are also being cut — but funds to 'renovate' State House again continue to climb

There are two blocks of flights that leave East Africa for the Gulf. One leaves in the mid morning, usually ferrying holiday makers on their way from their safaris or on their way to Dubai, people returning home using the cheaper ticket. They walk through the airport confidently.

technically, Iran qualifies, given our 'special historical relationship' 🙄

hiring private jets to save money

I wonder if it will be run more like a business, rather than a loss-making but obviously political project first, like GBNews

2003 with notes of 1660

Can’t believe I’ve never seen this great Collatz conjecture visualisation before…

As Paul Erdős once put it: "Mathematics may not be ready for such problems”

Image by github.com/dkobak/colla...

What's the [laughs hysterically] dot pitch though, James?

Sunny Naqvi is a US citizen. "Afzul said the three [Pakistani] Green Card holders were taken elsewhere Thursday after landing back in Chicago."

Brown people are not safe from CBP regardless of their status.

Morning.

doesn't even start with America, but too many layers of violence, trauma —

Shia cultural history, victimhood as well (with odd parallels with Russian historical grievances)

I think we must learn from the past, but we can't build a better future on that bloodstained rubble alone, we'd simply go mad

Can AI Replace Social Science Researchers? No. No it can't. Come on, now.

Karpf: "If you think Claude Code is a better social scientist than you, then you’re probably right. But that means, at some point, you stopped trying to answer interesting/puzzling questions and started trying to win the publish-the-most-articles race." davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...

The belligerent, rabid, slavering Spectator claimed Miliband took a “petulant, pacifist and very political” view against any involvement in the conflict, before lumbering back into its sulphurous den.

they can wield so much power

(thinking of AIPAC, now mirrored by India with USINPAC)

but there is the oddness of each diaspora seeing itself as unique (partly the fog, limitations and trauma of displacement) when there are clearly common patterns, lessons, traps and warnings

I keep coming across these estranged dynamics — from Scottish Black Watch soldiers to British Chinese in Singapore; Tamil civil war financiers in the US to the mess of modern Somali clans led from Nairobi

but I don't know if anyone has tied the threads and dynamics together into a useful framework

yes — it's a really helpful article, thank you for sharing it

I've also just been reading @keanuheydari.bsky.social on the distorted diaspora dynamics

and keenly aware how the patterns and scars of external intervention in this region run very deep 😣

Americans ask, “Why does Iran hate us?” For them, the answer often begins in 1979.

But Iranians ask, “Why did America take our democracy?” — and the answer begins in 1953.

Each side selects its origin story. Each side feels wronged first.

America was the grown-up who appeared on the playground to put the class bully in his place

Something shifted that day, not only in the politics but in the psyche of the Iranian people. The belief American power might rescue us dissolved into something harder and more sober

[Carter's 1977 visit]

“Since the time of John the Baptist the kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to violence and violent men are taking it by force.” – Matthew 11:12 (REB)

Before we assume the prerogative of “speaking for the voiceless,” we should remember how perilous that endeavor can be, especially in a context where we *know* how vexed the question of agency is.

Cover of Stovall’s “White Freedom.”

Pay attention to the rhetorical goals of people who advocate for violence of any sort. “Freedom” and “liberty” as western vernaculars are not neutral containers for a transparently “just” moral politics, as historians such as the late Tyler Stovall have shown.

THE CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT HAD TO TELL THE POLICE HE'S FUNDING HE WORKED ON THE CITY COUNCIL OF LOS ANGELES

many resonances with other harmful diaspora —

but I'm thinking of India's RSS, whose modern stranglehold had a substantial boost from detached Gujaratis overseas, angrily rejects substantial Islamic history and communities, borrowed from the Nazis, and hallucinates an ancient space programme

when people are this powerful there is nowhere on earth we can escape their stupidest whims, nothing is safe

Expansive, insightful and astonishing essay here by @patrlynch1.bsky.social.

Capturing the fine art world’s failure to exalt animal subjects during a mass extinction, as well as the utilitarian role sci illustration has been pushed into.

I will be thinking about this #SciArt essay for some time.

you cant teach this. either you have it or you don't.

oh I was just saying to someone a few days ago how much I wanted a way to visualise this properly, ta!