Jon Hughes

Telegraph sold for £575m as German buyer elbows out Daily Mail Axel Springer, owner of Bild and Die Welt, agrees all-cash deal for one of UK’s oldest newspapers

Looking forward to seeing Axel Springer enforce the journalistic standards of Bild Zeitung at the Telegraph, thereby considerably improving it ;)

Season 1 going well.

I see that Trump and Hegseth's illegal war is called 'Operation Epic Fury'. Of course it is. Have they posted an AI slop poster for it in the style of a Stallone film yet? The macho puerility is both laughable and terrifying.

Starmer faces greater quandary over ‘special relationship’ after Iran attack PM is in diplomatically precarious position of declining to endorse US strikes while also refusing to condemn them

If Starmer, the lawyer who once marched against the illegal war on Iraq, believes Trump's attack on Iran is also illegal, then he should have the courage and decency to say so. The 'special' relationship, if it ever existed, is already history.

The Great Olympic lie: untold story of Winter Games’ huge environmental impact Rivers drained dry to create artificial snow, a forest cut down for the bobsleigh track – IOC’s claims to prioritise sustainability at Milano Cortina exposed

If you’ve enjoyed watching any of the Olympics, especially any event taking place on ‘snow’ - read this. My view - if the natural conditions for winter sports no longer exist, then those sports should no longer exist.

I can’t unsee it now 🤦‍♂️

A newspaper supplement with a photo Claudia Winkleman - she’s wearing black and has her hands crossed in front of her.

A Käthe Kollwitz print (The Widow I, 1923). A female wearing black with her hands in front of her.

This photo of Claudia Winkleman, slightly incongruously, is making me think of Käthe Kollwitz‘s woodcuts of widows. I think it’s the odd hand positioning.

People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) Directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, and with a script by Billy Wilder, People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) (1930) is now widely recognised as a la…

Folks, you can get 30% off the (already reasonable) price of all BFI Film Classics volumes in the @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social February sale (including my 2025 book on PEOPLE ON SUNDAY) :)

Perhaps too much to hope this might be the beginning of the end of the unchecked power, wealth and privilege enjoyed by this dyfunctional family. But good news all the same.

A photo of a sodden, muddy path.

Ah, the great British countryside in winter… or what passes for it these days. I’m finding the unrelenting rain just a touch depressing.

Who is on helmet that led to Ukrainian athlete's disqualification from Winter Olympics? Vladyslav Heraskevych's helmet depicts fellow athletes who have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion of his country.

Shame on the IOC. Amongst those pictured is a *9-year old* judo player.

The war dead pictured on banned Ukrainian athlete's helmet

The heavy involvement of this petro-fascist in cycling + football speaks volumes about what's wrong with those sports at the elite level. Just look at the sponsors and owners, not to mention godawful sportswashing events like the recent AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia. I'd rather watch my local Parkrun.

A black and white illustration of Brecht wearing a leather jacket, smoking a cigar.

Bertolt Brecht, BOTD, 1898. Here: Jan Peter Tripp, ‘’Augsburg, im Winter 1927 - ein Historienbild’ Bertolt Brecht’.

He's had a 'lot of bad luck' though. 🙄What a headline.

‘Penis injection’ claims in Winter Olympics ski jumping investigated by Wada Wada is to investigate claims ski jumpers are injecting acid into their penises to game the suit-measuring system

Ah, the Olympics, everyone's favourite festival of innovative cheating. Is it true? Who knows, but athletes have definitely done a lot worse to gain an advantage.

My cat Suki sitting on my lap as I attempt to work at the computer. I’m holding a computer mouse in my right hand.

Cat and mouse.

Ihr Spitzname war 'Quappi', und so heißt sie in den meisten Bildtiteln, was ich immer ganz niedlich finde.

Andre Bazin cradiling a cat and gazing into its eyes while laughing!

A propos of a lecture I'm writing, here's film critic André Bazin taking the best possible break from thinking about realism and long takes. I think this might be the start of an occasional series (theme: cool people with cats).

They were probably thinking more of speedy superheroes than blackshirts. But still 🤦

And it wasn't exactly an 'invasion' - the GDR was already a puppet state. But the Soviet tanks prevented a possible revolution.

And of course they will still find a way to blame the pain on something other than the hot coals they themselve created. See also: Brexit.

Exhibit at the Novium meseum - ‘Hurrah for Shippam’s’

Colourful ad for Shippams meat and fish pastes

Clolourful ad for Shippams Bloater Paste

Colourful period ad for Shippams pastes. ‘We’ve got a party!’

The Shippams exhibition at the Novium museum, Chichester brightened up my day yesterday. I ate a lot of this stuff growing up! Who fancies a bloater paste sandwich?

Maybe not his best song, but certainly one of the most powerful. All the more so for being so immediate.

The Magnificent Seven (Antoine Fuqua, 2016) is an interesting one, as it adapts the 1960 classic, which was itself an adaptation of Kurosowa's Seven Samurai, which was intended as a Japanese take on the Western genre. A sort of palimpsest.

Heresy! I only have faith in the omnicat.

David Ludwig Bloch: Exiled Artist in Shanghai David Ludwig Bloch, a deaf printmaker from Bavaria, created vivid depictions of life as a refugee in the Shanghai Ghetto in the 1940s and focused his attention on the Holocaust in his later career.

More on the life and work of David Ludwig Bloch here, via the Leo Baeck Institute. www.lbi.org/collections/...

A woodcut depicting the symbolic remains of a family's history - items include a broken pram, scattered books and household items.

A woodcut depicting an image of an arm and hand, made up of multiple human hands, against a background of skeletal figures.

Works by German-born Jewish artist David Ludwig Bloch (1910-2002), who spent 4 weeks in Dachau following the pogrom night of 1938. He was able to leave, first to Shanghai, and from 1949 to the USA. Others were not so lucky. 'My Family History'; 'Crying Hands', late 20th c. #HolocaustMemorialDay

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

I definitely agree. See also the fetishization of noble ‘sacrifice’, the fears of racial mixing, and paranoid misogyny in the depiction of femininity. I’m also teaching BoaN next month.

The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself | NOEMA Without a framework of “Artificial Integrity,” AI search platforms risk collapsing the information commons that made the web possible.

“More than half of all Google searches in the U.S. and Europe in 2024 ended without a click,” AI summaries devouring authorship, cutting off traffic to original sites, proliferating paywalls, & turning AI into an monster that gorges itself, poisoning our info system www.noemamag.com/the-ai-power...