While Trump monetises war, Iran women’s team deliver great act of sporting heroism | Barney Ronay In refusing to sing the national anthem these athletes have placed themselves in grave danger while Gianni Infantio sides with the American war machine

These Iranian women are www.theguardian.com/football/202..., recklessly brave

Football’s converging moral panics hold up a mirror to our fractured world | Jonathan Liew From grappling at corners to VAR, the endless list of complaints reflects a wider sense of dislocation from ‘the product’

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

Domestic distance was one of Hopper’s great subjects.
In Room in New York (1932), with Jo modeling, a marriage becomes two separate spheres—together in space, apart in thought.

A line drawing of a street scene with children skipping, a bike going by and birds in the sky

An observation test for your inner 8-year-old.
You’ll be doing well to spot 12 deliberate mistakes.

From Treasure magazine, 1963
Official answers coming soon

(Even if you don’t reply, could you please ‘like’ or share this one?)

This book explores how monsters articulate questions about the sacred in nineteenth-century Irish Gothic literature. The relationship between religion and Gothic literature has traditionally been approached through denominational readings, but this study proposes how Irish Gothic texts from Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer to Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ and Bram Stoker’s Dracula resist being inscribed into particular doctrinal frameworks. Abandoning allegorical interpretations, Theological Monsters proposes that real-life theologies do not translate into the fictional ones articulated across these texts. The focus is on revealing how the bodies of monsters make real and tangible otherwise abstract concepts associated with God and the afterlife, and on identifying monstrosity as a valuable way to uncover knowledge of the divine in nineteenth-century Irish Gothic literature. What follows is an original reassessment of three canonical writers – Maturin, Le Fanu and Stoker – highlighting their fictional theological exercises.

'Theological Monsters: Religion and Irish Gothic' by @madelinepotter.bsky.social is out now!

This book places monstrosity at the centre of the process of gathering knowledge of the divine and reassess the relationship between Gothic literature and Catholicism.

📚 www.uwp.co.uk/book/theolog...

I'm so sorry to have to disappoint you but I've been unable to gain any information for you.

Ancient Rome. KING POMPILIUS, the second king of Rome, is reclining dramatically on his chaise longue, fingers on temples, near to an amphora of WINE. His slave, SPIRO, is nearby. 1 POMPILIUS: Hey, Spiro... 3 POMPILIUS: Hey, *Spiro*… SPIRO: Yes, King Pompilius? 4 POMPILIUS: I was just thinking like… I hope you’re not planning on giving me any of that *wine*… 5 SPIRO: Would you like some wine, sir? POMPILIUS: NO! 6 POMPILIUS: Haven’t I told you Spiro, I’m *doing dry January*? SPIRO: Quite a few times, sir. 7 POMPILIUS: I mean it’s doing my head in but I feel sooo healthy for it y'know? SPIRO: Yes sir you’ve mentioned that too 8 SPIRO: Sir - may I ask… what is dry January? 9 POMPILIUS: It’s a thing where you don’t drink all January. SPIRO: and what is… January? POMPILIUS: It’s a new month I made up. 10 SPIRO: You made up a new month POMPILIUS: Yeah, two actually. 11 [Pompilus produces a scroll with the Roman two-faced god JANUS drawn on it] POMPILIUS: This one’s January, I named it after Janus who has two faces 12 POMPILIUS: so he can tell as many people as possible that he’s- SPIRO: …doing dry January, yes [ends]

The real reason we have January

Day 2 of Christmas Sandwich.

I tell you folks, this big Christmas dinner thing is only a cod

Tottenham v Liverpool match report (tl;dr version)
Goal.
Frank incensed.
Mirth.

We are now further away from the theatrical release of Raiders of the Lost Ark (June 12, 1981) than it was from the year it takes place in (1936). We have reached the Indiana Jones event horizon.

Wisdom, world’s oldest-known bird, returns to Midway Atoll!

Wisdom is an albatross.
She is 75.
She’s just come back to her breeding site, ready to go for the 25/26 season.
Respect.

earthsky.org/earth/oldest...

Ronaldo dines with Donald for glamour portion of grotesque Saudi-funded spectacle | Barney Ronay A pension-pot World Cup is looming for CR9 and with Donald Trump in the White House and Mohammed bin Salman at his back, it seems this is now a safe space

Ronaldo dines with Donald for glamour portion of grotesque Saudi-funded spectacle | Barney Ronay www.theguardian.com/football/202...

I want to very gently say something, and I hope nobody will be mad: If somebody on the internet says something that is NOT about politics and NOT about how terrible everything is, it’s a kindness not to reflexively make a comment (in jest or not) that brings it back to those things.

The front cover of the ladybird book sleeping beauty

I once found this very touching inscription in a book:

“This book belongs to Gillian Love, aged 7
8
10
12
60”

Trump style makes me think of its antecedents, which makes me think of Napoleon III, which makes me think of Flaubert, which makes me think of this from Julian Barnes in the new LRB

Cyclists pedalling through 't Groen Kwartier - an old military hospital in Antwerp converted into flats and houses, with lots of green spaces and top end restaurants. The sky is stormy; there's a bloody great rainbow.

't Groen Kwartier (2025) photograph by Anne Billson

Playmobil Gauls manhandling a standing stone trilithon for the end of British Summer Time.

It’s that night of the year when Obelix visits every stone circle to synchronise the clocks. Busy night! Fall back, people!
With apologies to @danherb10.bsky.social
#DontBlockMe
#ClocksGoBack
#TheTimesTheyAreAChangin

The populist right wants to remake the UK in the image of Dubai. We should all be careful what they wish for | Jonathan Liew Politicians and influencers eulogise the emirate as a place of cleanliness, convenience and low crime. The truth is far darker, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

column on why is the far right is obsessed with dubai

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Congrats Lev! No apology needed, ye totally deserved it.

4 Screenshots from the movie "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988): First, a wooden chair sits in dappled sunlight, holding a watercolor paint set and a sketchbook with green plant drawings. Second, a young girl with pigtails in a pink dress clutches an ear of corn, standing beside a white creature, with the subtitle "No, this corn is for my Mommy!" Third, another girl in a yellow dress sits on the large, furry Totoro's belly in a forest, looking worried, with the subtitle "She must be scared, please help me find her." Fourth, the Catbus, a large, grinning, cat-shaped bus with glowing windows, carries Totoro and the girl with pigtails as it travels above treetops at dusk.

Aug 21st - Mei gets lost while looking for corn for her hospitalized mother. Mei's older sister, Satsuki, asks Totoro for help. He summons the Catbus.

📽️📅 My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Just been to @museecluny.bsky.social and took this pic of the Emperor Julian dressed as a priest of Serapis for all my Julian stans @metalclassicist.bsky.social @robincdouglas.bsky.social

a black and white photo of a man in a hood saying no it 's pronounced i-gor ALT: a black and white photo of a man in a hood saying no it 's pronounced i-gor

Re the best Igor discussion....

Another scorcher today. Please remember to not stay hydrated. The machines need it more.

Thinking today of Benjamin Franklin, who wore an old suit (and no wig) before the king and court of France, to represent his nation—while it was fighting for its existence