Find myself politely holding my tongue as people get super excited over boards of canada, but I find them really bland

Perhaps I should see if I can now enter the local shop after hours

Have not only fixed my turntable but now it sounds better than before. People are saying this will add to my renown

Gothic text over a page - you can see the missal has beautiful marginal illustrations of Dorset birds

Birds of the Sherborne Missal - Elisabeth Bletsoe

Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine, by Wild Up 10 track album

the most beautiful music there is wildup.bandcamp.com/album/julius...

All of those wild up takes on eastman are perfect

It's a flattering image that politicians and certain hacks give themselves, that they're hierophantic manipulators of obscure truths. (Like mandelson in fact - many loved him, maybe still do) But in reality people aren't particularly stupid and can use the resources that are available to them

E.g. 1. The Palestine Action proscription was clearly not based on some prior secret knowledge ministers alone could see, and 2. Mandelson's associations were clearly not only knowable through some dark arts of the trade

Labour have occasionally used this line of Westminster being a place where certain things are known only through dark mysterious channels, but it's painfully obvious that this doesn't work in a social media age. Rule of thumb is that people know more than they'd like about supposedly secret things

One time my kid left a little handmade booklet under her bed and it was called "bad thoughts" (spelled incorrectly) and the only thing written inside was the word "FUC"

Cover is text over detail from still life with mask by hendrick andriessen

Under the Net - Iris Murdoch

Abstract cover design in 60s style, broken chain and red sun on paper-coloured background

A Different Drummer - William Melvin Kelley

Arianne Shahvisi | Gamer’s Dilemma In a strong field of contenders, the most morally troubling computer game ever made is probably RapeLay, released in...

‘The Trump administration’s levity doesn’t make the bombs any heavier. The real game is an old one, as American as stolen labour: when life gives you domestic scandals, foment a global crisis.’

@arianneshahvisi.bsky.social on the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...

Biffo’s disgusting fantasies

Drench
Smooth
Flick
Bump

Where Does a Dog Belong? In restaurants or grocery stores? Tensions between canine lovers and other New Yorkers are boiling over. By Rachel Sugar, a freelance writer who covers culture and food.

We were walking along Atlantic Avenue when he said this. Within seconds, we had stumbled upon a doggy day care and “automated self-wash ‘spaw’” called Doggittude. I asked him what else he might consider a harbinger of yuppification. “Certain venture-capital-owned cafés.” I thought of a story Karl Steel, a CUNY medievalist, told me about a 13th-century French nobleman who apparently delighted in terrorizing the countryside with what he claimed was his pet wolf, a classic case of a rich and powerful person behaving with impunity. “I will say, very satisfyingly, he was killed in a revolt of his social and political inferiors.” He paused. “Probably some of the dynamics in the neighborhood are around that.” Not everyone is afraid of being eaten, though that is one valid reason to dislike dogs.

Got interviewed for NY Magazine, here's the anecdote that made the cut
www.curbed.com/article/dogs...

An ugly box building with the phrase ‘the dog is coming’ on the side

The brewdog in Durham that they built years ago and never opened

Blind Roosevelt Graves and Brother - Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) YouTube video by soluna37

Good tune - youtu.be/VAfng2XlA-8?...

Blue pastoral scene suggests ice - nyrb blue box over it

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country - William H. Gass

The English department is where middle class domestic students are more insulated from this commoditisation and that's why it's seen as a 'luxury' option. Business studies is the darling precisely because it feeds international students into the UK's proletarianising mincer

That guardian piece well worth reading. One dark flipside of marketisation is that students aren't just consumers, they're commodities. The neocolonial dynamic of the modern British university is that, through a semi-official scam, global south students are hoovered up for debt.

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

'In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents – but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate.'

'Once students got their offers, they were passed on to the visa team, and finally delivered to universities as a fully wrapped, fee-paying package.'

Donald Byrd - Ethiopian Knights (Full Album) YouTube video by Gus Nickjohn

A good album - youtu.be/EbQzAftZBmY?...

The Pants! The Calming Pants! Finally! These Pants are key to my survival.

Already rt'd this, but I've just realised the big man's methodology was also 'I want pages there, and I want Marx on them'

Dreadful cover, lilac, a tuxedo becomes writing, too much text including a big 'foreword by Stewart lee' that comes off gauche

The Bloater - Rosemary Tonks

Old one - bsky.app/profile/jame...

I think it's time for a new book thread (1 year on from the old one)

wow the symbolism in this book goes crazy. and you're saying all these symbols make up little words?