Hopper is a master of subtle allusion. We see a man and woman seated at separate tables in a sunny cafeteria. They are the only customers. What interests the artist is the suspenseful moment before a first tentative contact is made, the mental and emotional forcefield that can arise between two strangers.
Sunlight in a Cafeteria by Edward Hopper, 1958
Condolences to you and your family.
The best of Myles
Awfully sad news. Mircea Lucescu wasn't just a "great" manager, in fact of of the greatest of his age, but also one of the most kind-hearted, generous and inspiring men you could wish to meet. An unforgettable, irreplaceable figure has gone. apnews.com/article/mirc...
The reason Moby Dick is the most American novel ever written is because it is about a violent white man enacting a confusing revenge fantasy against a cheap source of oil.
Face and staring black eyes of a Playmobil humanoid rabbit.
“You know the thing about a bunny…he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya he doesn’t seem to be living, until he bites ya, & the black eyes roll over white…aw & then you hear that terrible high-pitched screaming…”
#Easter
#PlaymobilInfestation
#Jaws
A while thread on a grey pavement looking a little like a horse hill figure.
Uffington
#PavementPareidolia
Ah, the song of a robin. A beguiling silvery ribbon of sound, loosely translated as “TAKE ONE STEP CLOSER AND I’LL BREAK YER FUCKEN ARM”
Remembering John McGahern on the twentieth anniversary of his death.
‘It didn’t matter whose child I rescued’: parents of Iran school bombing victims describe their worst day www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Photo of a cuneiform tablet shown from the front, back, and various side angles. At the bottom is a watermark for the Yale Babylonian Collection, and to the left of that watermark is a 1cm scale. Based on the scale, the tablet is about 4-5cm wide and 3-4cm tall. In the bottom left corner of the image is a tiny winged creature thumbnail, and along the left side are the letters and numbers "GCBC 766 (YPM BC 034383)"
Today, I've been reading a very old medical commentary from ancient Uruk, written in the Akkadian language.
It's a tiny cuneiform tablet that explains words and phrases excerpted from another text - a diagnostic manual, known in antiquity as Sa-gig.
The front cover of a jigsaw box showing an aerial view of an idyllic Kentish town in early spring with blossoming trees, a village green and a church steeple
Finally got hold of this lovely vintage jigsaw by Ladybird artist Ronald Lampitt. It eluded me for so long
given the modern conservative fascination with Sparta it's at least a little funny that they've engineered a situation in which Persia is able to level a dramatically uneven battlefield by forcing the conflict into a narrow pathway
It's a ghost! It's an alien! Don't look, Marion!
Kurosawa on watching Solaris with Tarkovsky
Drove of Hares dancing and boxing on a breezy March Day
“In wild open spaces, on downs or flat marshlands, hares play their springtime games.
Often they race at full speed, flipping up sprays of dew as they go; jumping on each other, shaking free and speeding away again”
Writer: EL Grant Watson
The Ferris wheel scene from THE THIRD MAN, with Orson Welles as Harry Lime. He's turning from the window of the car to speak to Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who is not shown.
I've had some good laughs over their egocentric stupidity, but the blank, indifferent way that all of these Doge bros answer questions is genuinely chilling. Real Harry Lime "what if one of those dots stopped moving" stuff.
They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.
It is the civilians who suffer in Palestine, Lebanon, and the wider region — sacrificed at the altar of colonialism and religious extremism, forced to audition for their humanity on the social media stage, and left to bury their own children beneath their war-scarred soil.
Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shown from the front and back with some partial view of the sides. At the bottom is an eBL watermark showing that the tablet is about 5 inches wide. (eBL stands for electronic Babylonian Library)
tušāma ina urri iššira damiqtī
arḫu innammaru inammira šamšī
"Perhaps, at daybreak, good things will come to me
A new moon will appear, my sun will shine."
A couplet from Babylonian poem, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, whose protagonist hopes for better days. A lengthy, beautiful, bizarre work of literature.
Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling
There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.
It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.
they think it's all over. a column on dislocation, dissociation and why you're not enjoying football as much as you used to
www.theguardian.com/football/202...
The Siege of Jadotville! We're kicking off Fighting Irish Month with a terrific film about a forgotten battle. Think "Zulu", if the Zulus had air support. champ.ly/TFoVlEto
"Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility." from "Deep in Admiration" by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Deep in Admiration" was a talk given at the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Dangerous Planet at UC Santa Cruz in May 2014. The text appears as the foreword to the collection Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (published by PM Press).
31 books laid out in a grid to show their front covers, ranging from Alfred the Great to Henry the eighth
The Ladybird Adventures in History books by Lawrence Du Garde Peach. For many of us they sparked a love of history
"Day one of not getting my beard trimmed until Britain ceases to be an immigrant colony"
My occasional reminder that assuming someone's ignorance is not a great look.
Instead of saying "You might enjoy" or "Check this out", it's better to say "If you haven't..."
Lost count of the times that people suggest I watch something that I saw decades ago + spent ages trying to get recognised.
Jeff Bezos is the worst thing to have happened to books since the library in Alexandria burned down in 48BC
