It would be both so sad and so typical if what finally undid Trump was the Christian and evangelical conservatives who were fine with a feral leopard eating other people's faces suddenly taking issue when it somehow took a fancy to their own face as well...
Mine is the one that comes a few verses later and reads "Dzhm-dzhm, dzhm-dzhm, dzhm-dzhm, dzhm-dzhm, dzhm, dzhm"
I sense an opening for @privateeyenews.bsky.social here: "'I'm not having Oasis at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - it's wrong', says RZA"
Subheadline: "That Phil Collins, though - he's all right"
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/enterta...
Just finished and thoroughly recommended for any fans of Hildegard's music or life - wonderfully written and read.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
What *is* clear (and dispiriting) from the conversation is a) the damage Weimer's interventions are doing both to Germany's cultural institutions and to its cultural standing abroad, and b) the breach in trust that he is in the position to repair, but likely can't or won't.
An interesting discussion less of the "Kernfrage" itself (short answer "no", long answer "maybe") than of exactly what Weimer might be attempting (and failing) as BKM, i.e. conflating culture *policy* with culture *wars*, increasing state oversight while reducing financial/funding obligations etc /1
And turning on new audiences to old movies is laudable and all, but does it have to be done by smoothing out all the rough bits that mean they might, just *might* have to use their imaginations a little to fill in the blanks rather than outsourcing it to the product itself?
bsky.app/profile/sone...
Call me a purist, but I like the imperfections (technological or otherwise) that give classic movies their particular quality - I'm every slightly weirded out by BluRay versions where the motion is too smooth.
With the passing of Jürgen Habermas, the Historikerstreit is once again in the news. It's striking how it is characterized as concluding with the idea that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other atrocity. The comment from Ernst Nolte that kicked it off was not comparison but minimization.
Incidentally it's the same beef I have with "immersive" art experiences: the frame (literal or metaphorical) is there in part to make you imagine what's *outside* the composition as well as inside - what's *not* there - and outsourcing that imagination has a very uncomfortable ring to it for me.
This is the give-take relationship that art encourages and which I see as fundamentally threatened by AI: art takes you a certain portion of the distance but demands some work from you to finish the job, whereas content gives you everything and demands nothing intellectual from you in return.
The short answer to this is no - if either is too involved then for me it feels like trying to listen to two conversations at the same time. I either need something very simple (or more often nothing) to write to, but can listen to symphonic etc stuff if the work itself is menial and repetitive.
A real loss - for many, Kluge was the guiding mind that held the NGC together as anything resembling a filmmaking movement and won important victories in terms of funding and subsidy. He also worked under Adorno, apprenticed with Fritz Lang, and was an incredibly prolific writer well into his 80s.
Alexander Kluge, author and key film-maker in the New German Cinema movement, dies aged 94 www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma... via @theguardian.com @philipoltermann.bsky.social
Now there's a name I've been happy not to encounter in a long time.
Plus the "parallel emergency services" claim deliberately elides that Hatzola at least (I can't speak for Shomrim) serves all citizens regardless of creed, but who knows how many people will have had their minds made up by this...
*BMW* Classics - reeks of domination, if you ask me.
I can see the intention behind this, but otherwise I don't find the overall picture especially reassuring: nearly 75% of the vote going either to the far right, or to the centre right that's proving increasingly accommodating towards it 😕
Institutsgebäusw während des NS, abfotografiert aus: Monika Boll und Raphael Gross (Hg.), Die Frankfurter Schule und Frankfurt, 2010, S. 42. Über dem Portal hängt eine Hakenkreuzfahne.
Am Morgen des 13. März 1933 drang die Frankfurter Kriminalpolizei in die Viktoria-Allee 17 in der Senckenberganlage ein und fand wie erwartet sog. marxistische "Zersetzungsschriften". Sie schlossen das Institut für Sozialforschung. Die Goethe-Universität hisste die Hakenkreuzfahne. 🧵
Read Watterson
It's genuinely hard to tell if this is part of Weiner's grand plan coming to logical fruition, if he's making it up as he goes along, or if he knows he's going to be kicked out the door and is going full "scorched earth".
Further revelations in the German Booksellers' Prize affair:
* The 3 (left-leaning) bookshops excluded allegedly on BfV intel were told in February that the jury had deemed them unsuccessful;
* Whereas the jury actually thought very highly of them, and were considering *higher* prize money for 2
This is the dangerous upshot of the DOGE experiment: a whole way of narrow, rationalistic thinking that is obsessed with the "what", and as such barely focusses on or gives any thought as to the "why".
"[Weimer] has not only fulfilled people's worst expectations[, but] surpassed them [...] The pattern is always the same: act the authoritarian, inflict maximum damage, half-heartedly row back, leave scorched earth behind".
It may be just this photograph, but Ed Miliband seems to be giving off real Bernd das Brot vibes at the moment.
I'm sure that Telegraph columnists will welcome their new German overlords
"Axel Springer poised to buy Telegraph in £500mn deal" - www.ft.com/content/e5cb... via @FT
What would be the opposite of boycott (where you actively buy stuff from somewhere in solidarity) - "ttocyob"?
Either way, what seems to be happening in 🇩🇪 after the Minister for Culture intervened to remove three left-leaning bookshops from the shortlist for the industry's annual award ceremony.
A German court has ruled that it is legal to state that the man who runs the Müller (Rice) empire is a supporter of the far-right AfD. Müller repeatedly denied it, which says everything about how bad he knew that association could be for his business. I hope the boycotts intensify.
Das Gelände eines der größten ehem. Außenlager des #KZ #Buchenwald in #Leipzig gehört einem mutmaßlich Rechtsextremen. Seie Klientel nutzt das Gelände für diverse Veranstaltungen. Ein unhaltbarer Zustand.
www.thueringer-allgemeine.de/lokales/weim...