Can't believe I'm even writing the words 'if Reform get in'.

Incredible. There'll be nowhere free of Big Brother interference and right wing dogma and propaganda if Reform get in.

Reform to tell Welsh museums how to present history, manifesto says Election pledges say Reform would ask museums to present history chronologically.

I generally try to keep out of politics on here. God knows there is enough everywhere else, but this threat to the independence of Cymric museums needs to have a light shone on it 👇

The Voice of Hind Rajab - DMovies Five-year-old girl trapped inside car with six dead relatives begs for help over the telephone, in Kaouther Ben Hania's horrifyingly real register of the Gaza Genocide - on VoD on Monday, April 13th

"A real, raw, unflinching and unfiltered picture of Israel’s unspeakable atrocities"

Now on various VoD platforms:

dmovies.org/2025/09/03/t...

Excellent. It's certainly an extraordinary building, and sounds like a great experience, if tiring... Look forward to future reports!

LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing Breaking every rule of museum design, architect Peter Zumthor has created a $724mn blockbuster for Los Angeles

www.ft.com/content/3ac8... LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries — insanely expensive but utterly astonishing

Oooh lucky you!...I'll watch out for posts...😊

The Melsonby Hoards: rerouting the evidence for vehicles in Iron Age Britain « Archaeology# « Cambridge Core Blog Our article for Antiquity provides the first overview of the Melsonby Hoards, probably the largest deposit of Iron Age metalwork ever encountered in Britain. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the hoar...

The #Melsonby Hoards - nearly 950 Iron Age objects buried c. 40 BC–AD 40 - reveal Britain’s first evidence for four‑wheeled wagons, as well as other types of vehicle. 🚗👀 Read the #blog and #openaccess article!

🔗 https://cup.org/4bf3b1F

#melsonbyhoards #ironage #archaeology @antiquity.ac.uk

1837 color drawing, a plan of the interior of the Tomba delle Bighe (Tomb of the Chariots) showing the frescos, the sarcophagus (now in the British Museum 1838,0608.8) and its contents. It can easily be printed and cut out, everything folding into place to form a 3D version of the tomb. Other cut-outs include all four sides and top of the sarcophagus and the grave goods - mostly armor. Pen and ink and bodycolour inlaid into a second sheet of paper. Verso: faint graphite sketch of the interior of the tomb. British Museum, London (2016,5002.1)

Here's some paper cut-out fun for the whole family: an #Etruscan tomb, complete with 3D sarcophagus, frescoes, *and* grave goods!

This print in the #BritishMuseum was probably from Campanari's 1837 exhibition of Etruscan and Greek antiquities at Pall Mall, London. Print it out! 🏺 1/

Chapps (@chapps.bsky.social) Former tech drone, living in L.A. I now create digital reconstructions of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. No, really. 🏳️‍🌈 Flickr account (museum photos, mainly, free to use and high res): https:/...

👀 @chapps.bsky.social

Understatement of the year

Wake up, wake up, wake up UK.
This is not what we’re about.

Her office said the Office for Students (OfS), which regulates universities, had received reports of speakers and lecturers being harassed and blocked for holding gender-critical or religious views, of foreign interference suppressing academic freedoms, and of ideological belief requirements featuring in job advertisements.

The OfS will be able to use the new complaints scheme from September. From April, it will be able to fine universities the greater of £500,000 or 2 per cent of their income, which would amount to millions of pounds for large institutions, for breaches under the Freedom of Speech Act. Ultimately, universities could be deregistered for egregious cases.

Bridget Phillipson will introduce new laws to make it possible for Universities to be fined millions of pounds if they don't silence students who protest bigots invited onto their campuses. It's like the Tories never left office.

Garlic cloves and bread from a fresco originally from Herculaneum and now at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), Italy. Photo by Sophie Hay

Happy National Garlic 🧄 Day! Greeks & Romans loved garlic—but Mesopotamians loved it 1000s of years before them. The Greek ἄγλις (Latin alium) is an Akkadian loan word. At Pompeii, there was even a garlic seller (aliarii) workshop ( 📸 by @pompei79.bsky.social): pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpic...

Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

Omg it's like a Trump manifesto

The plot to enslave America. The plot to enslave humanity. They are announcing it because they think we can no longer stop them

The arched top of a Roman mosaic, with partial damage, showing the head of Oceanus with fish, dolphins and (possibly lobster claws?) in a demi-lune surrounded by three lines of patterns

Oceanus giving some splendid side eye in the fabulous Fordington High Street Mosaic, 2nd century CE, now on the wall of the Dorset Museum
#MosaicMonday

It was wonderful to see them in such fine detail and have the carving methods, meanings and contexts explained so well.

Me too - it was fascinating, with wonderful closeups of the tiny carved gems, memorably interpreted and given context by Martin Henig.
Was pleased to hear his talk, as at the other end of the scale I have his book on chunky #Roman sculpture from the North West Midlands 😄
#archaeology #Carlisle

Property from Goucher College Mummy Portrait of a Man, Roman Egypt, Flavian Period, circa late 1st century CE. Painted with encaustic (pigmented wax) on wood (probably sycamore), his head turned to his right, and wearing a white chiton (tunic) and white himation (cloak) falling from the nape of the neck, his solemn face with full lower lip, long aquiline nose, translucent hazel eyes, bushy eyebrows, and furrowed brow, his wavy gray hair brushed forward above the forehead. 12 3⁄4 by 6 in.; 32.5 by 15.4 cm Auction page: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/master-paintings-sculpture-part-i/mummy-portrait-of-a-man-roman-egypt-flavian-period

This realistically rendered Flavian era mummy portrait from Roman Egypt gives us a rare look at an older person from that era. It has been on loan for over 70 years to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, but was recently sold at auction. Will it disappear into a private collection? 🏺

📸 Sotheby’s

The Authoritarian Stack How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next

Hurry

Palantir put out the most cartoonishly evil statement possible. They’re so arrogant and self-confident they don’t seem to believe their fascistic plans can be opposed.

We must get rid of Palantir altogether.

twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

A sky full of stars

Just a quick iPhone photo but amazingly beautiful western sky earlier 🌜🌟
And it sure is chilly out there...

Caught up with Yoni Gelernter's essay on the logic of Zionism in @thedriftmag.com

DO NOT STOP TALKING ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES

The revelations about Tice's tax affairs just keep piling up.

Keep on doing it 👍

Brilliant talk thanks James! 👏👏