a crazy framing in the times here
this is a wider access foundation year for talented kids who didn't have the opportunities as their privately educated peers, and who have been let down by the systemic downgrading of music education for state schools...
www.thetimes.com/uk/education...
Book cover for Pauline Fairclough's book 'Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District', available from Oxford University Press.
Just in time for the easter break: announcing the (re)launch of the RMA Podcast!
The first episode is now available on the RMA site, featuring Prof. Pauline Fairclough talking about her recent book on Shostakovich's 'Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District' www.rma.ac.uk/podcast/paul...
The singular "they" has been around longer than English has had codified grammar, so really, anyone who fumes about it can go fuck themself
www.oed.com/discover/a-b...
Since 1994, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they receive in benefits every year.
Do not believe the lies you hear about immigrants.
They are good for society and the economy.
Urgh. Roehampton now as well.
We need a national campaign to put a stop to these subsidiaries, they’re hollowing out academia while we’re battling the onslaught from the funding crisis.
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| read lots of different books |
it's fucking good for you
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Photo of Weinberg
Gonna do a listening project of Mieczysław Weinberg’s string quartets. Partly because I’ve never listened to them in order and I want to get a better handle on them, and also so that hopefully some of the few people who read this and haven’t already heard them decide to check them out!
France and Italy have opened talks with Iran in the hope of securing safe Hormuz passage, the FT reports.
Bluesky feed Top post is a picture of Conservative Tweet "Winston Churchill is a hero. He's earned his place on our Five Pound Note. He must note be replaced with an Otter." The following post is by the account In Otter News, and is a picture of an otter looking contemplative, captioned "Steve thinks about doing shenanigans"
How this appeared on my feed 😂😂😂
This didn't happen. The perception that it did is largely based on fictional shows that were about rich people. Much more common was a household where one person (theoretically Dad in a het household) was the higher earner and paid the housing costs and the other paid utilities & food
The Men In The Turnip Field: an old Somerset story collected in Kevin Crossley-Holland's Folk Tales Of The British Isles
The best short ghost story ever.
👇 This. The #climate imperative is clear.
The question is the will to take on
the behemoth meat & dairy industry:
remove subsidies,
climate & #food education,
ban meat marketing,
boost non-meat food options, etc.
Could that ever happen before the climate crisis does it for us?
#vegan #vegetarian
can't help but notice whose losses are expressed in dollars and whose losses are expressed in lives
The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.
🧵 1/5
Felt like I was going insane watching people accept an AI model's explanation for why that same AI model committed a war crime.
Image of the landing page of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway; header reads 'The Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway is one of the leading academic centres of its kind in Europe, internationally recognised for its research, teaching, public engagement and creative work'.
My bio on the HRI page. Reads: 'Daniel Elphick (Lecturer in Musicology) Daniel Elphick is a musicologist interested in questions of music and politics, especially in East-European and Russian music. Dan studied at Keele University and the University of Manchester and joined Royal Holloway in 2017. Dan’s work on Holocaust topics includes music-making within Holocaust contexts, but focuses especially on music written in commemoration of the Holocaust. Since his PhD, Dan’s work has included a special focus on the Polish-Jewish-Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg, who left an extensive amount of music written in commemoration, including the opera The Passenger. Dan is currently working on a study of Holocaust commemoration within Soviet music, including Shostakovich, Weinberg, and more. Dan is the author of Music Behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries (2020) and co-editor (with Stephen Downes) of Constructing Polish Musical Identities Outside of Poland since 1880: Sounding ‘Polish’ (2026). Dan is a Fellow of the Centre for Russian Music at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a convenor of the Slavonic and East European Music study group of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES). His teaching at Royal Holloway includes the undergraduate module ‘Music & the Holocaust’. Research Interests - Musical representation of the Holocaust - Music-making in Holocaust contexts - Russian and East-European music - The politics of commemoration'
Pleased to share that I've been confirmed as a staff member of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway: www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and...
Looking forward to working with colleagues in this important area, including my research on the Holocaust in Soviet and East European music.
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
If you teach please show your students this. If you're a student, please read this.
The answers LLMs generate are not all alike. They are more likely to hallucinate on topics we don't already know a lot about. Even answers with "sources" shouldn't be trusted.
leahbroad.substack.com/p/chatgpts-a...
Just spotted that the openly racist candidate for Tommy Robinson's "Advance UK" was beaten by the Monster Raving Looney Party.
Scoop: Lebrecht gone from R3
Doctor to patient: I’m afraid it’s bad news - you’ve got Tom Jones syndrome.
Patient: Oh no! Is it common?
Doctor: Well, it’s not unusual.
It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that the UCL Faculties of Social & Historical Sciences and Arts & Humanities have decided to close the IAS.
We will close our doors forever on 31 July 2026.
Follow the link to leave thoughts, comments, memories 💗
www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
UK: Prince Andrew arrested.
South Korea: Former President Yoon sentenced for life.
Brazil: Former President Bolsonaro serving a 27-year sentence.
USA: President Trump demands $10 billion payout from taxpayers.
I bet he's sweating now
I'm not even particularly interested in the royals
Wishing György Kurtág a very happy hundredth birthday. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwXW...
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c7...
Coming home today, I found a Coldplay ticket nailed to the front door! "I'll have that!", I thought - you can never have too many nails.
