Invading Norway because he didn't get the peace prize would be so on brand.

Time for another round of “I can’t believe the Pope is Catholic”! Which American pundit—who converted to Catholicism as an adult, but in their bones remains an intellectually-embarrassed evangelical Protestant with a Yale BA—will gift us an outraged First Things or (dv) Atlantic essay this time?

Pope Leo XIV has blasted how wealthy people live in a “bubble of comfort and luxury” while the poor suffer. In his first teaching document Thursday, Leo confirms that he is in perfect lockstep with Pope Francis on matters of social injustice.

Great news! A grant to assist the performance of women composers

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

'Arm’s-length bodies such as the Office for Students (OfS) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are particularly “vulnerable to political interference”, a new report has warned.' 1/3

Common/Wealth’s Manifesto is also extremely good, and timely:

Wish I’d been able to see this - sounds excellent

Congrats!

Literaturnobelpreis geht an László Krasznahorkai aus Ungarn

www.nobelprize.org

Demand the Impossible - from Common/Wealth Theatre at the Corn Exchange Newport. Incredibly powerful and well-researched interactive experience showing the effect of police harassment on people's lives. Immense talent. I will just say go and see it if you get the chance

The International Marching Song of the Revolutionary Proletariat. One of those random discoveries in a bound volume from the @britishlibrary.bsky.social

They arrested Rosa Luxemburg!

Once a content thief, always a content thief www.theverge.com/news/674366/...

This is my basic theory for a lot of what is going on with the centre right atm

The ideas failed utterly and now there is a total crisis of intellectual confidence

😂

Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner Gallery's UK locations reported a nearly 90% decline in pre-tax profits. The news coincides with a rumored art market downturn marked by a global decline in public auction sales and a slew of US gallery closures.

THIS is the argument we all need to be making, forcefully and relentlessly. The value of our work is continually trashed in the public sphere, and yet is being appropriated by powerful interests at the same time. It's like the Enclosures Acts. Nick Clegg should know about that...

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Ok. But are there any downsides?

Matthew Syed, who recently wrote a long read about why he just joined the Conservatives, objected to his BBC introduction including this fact: "Yes, I just joined the Conservatives, but I still see myself, first and foremost, as an objective journalist, if I may say so."

Phew! Glad that's settled.

And making theft illegal would “kill” the thieving industry. Good. Make theft illegal again.

Spot on from @stephenkb.bsky.social. And the other aspect of this nasty turn is the eliding of British ‘culture’ with ‘white British’, which will shock anyone who has watched TV or football, or listened to music, or read a book, or indeed breathed since 1980.

I cannot understand what these people think the purpose of human life is?

It is *not* "pursue joy, deal justly, love well, try to understand as much and see as much of this beautiful world and of the deepness, richness and variety of human culture and experience as you can before you die"?