Chris Clark

The meeting was a disaster for everyone except two people. Trump got his photo op and his ego boost.
Putin got his photo op, whitewashing of war crimes and no sanctions.
No one in Ukraine, Europe or the United States benefited in any way.

47% of people think immigration is primarily illegal. There were 4% irregular arrivals in March

New YouGov polling. A monumental failure of our political class to educate, a monumental failure of our media to report fairly, for a generation

‘Welcome to hell’: Inside the megaprison where the U.S. deported migrants Interviews with 16 former detainees of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center offer the most complete view yet of conditions inside the notorious prison.

The US government has sent innocent men to be beaten and raped in a foreign gulag

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

The Cost of Lies: Why We Identify With Deadly Misinformation From Covid to climate change, understanding the role unevidenced conspiracy theories fulfil for individual and social identity in a shifting world can better help explain our ‘post-truth’ age

"Addressing real psychological & sociological needs is something those false, misinformed beliefs are doing. We actually need to try to tackle the underlying social problems, like alienation, people are grappling with"

My in-depth essay with brilliant insights from LSE's Prof J McKenzie Alexander ⬇️

At St Mary’s Binsted, nr Arundel, Grade 2* listed marvel of 1860s restoration.

All Saints, Minstead. Carving on grave of esteemed serpent player Thomas Maynard d. 1817 aged 27. www.westgallerychurches.com
Similar carving in Boston USA. Members of Boston Symphony Orchestra played homage here 25 years ago, so the graveyard keepers told me.

Pluralism was the biggest innovation of the Renaissance Historian Ada Palmer discusses her book ‘Inventing the Renaissance’ and what we can learn from the time-period

Historian @adapalmer.bsky.social discusses her book ‘Inventing the Renaissance’ and what we can learn from the time-period.

As these political and personal purges continue, important agencies will become unable to perform their basic functions, and at some point will only be able to spread the purges into the larger society.
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/good...

The like of this now happens when you rely on God for a forecast and on people who think they are God for the response.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Immigrants: A Love Letter It has never been easy to be an immigrant to the United States – for most economic, linguistic, and cultural barriers make life here a struggle, even if they were escaping a worse life elsewhere. The ...

Wrote a thing: ...at the heart of it is another Trumpian Big Lie, that immigrants are a burden and menace. We need to fight the false story with a true one: this country needs its immigrants and they are a blessing and an enrichment of what this country is and in many ways its heart and soul.

The first American ‘scientific refugees’ arrive in France Aix-Marseille University is wooing researchers who feel targeted by the Trump administration.

The president of Aix-Marseilles University is welcoming US scientific refugees.He "likened the situation to that of European academics who fled persecution by Nazi Germany both before and during World War II"

www.politico.eu/article/meet...

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates.” –Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

One of the most chilling sentences I have ever read.

What America Can Learn From Iran’s Failure The regime’s predicament shows what happens when conspiracies, rather than reality, shape decision making.

This is a really important story: on the danger of believing your own conspiracy theories. Iran did. Is the US next?
www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands. #WeWontGetOverLosingMedicaid

According to Diego Masson, Pierre Boulez played it in his youth as house pianist at the Folies Bergère Club in Paris “playing the Warsaw Concerto, engulfed in kitsch and lit by pinkish light – and that was while he was writing his second sonata”.

“A fraught time ahead of us” quips @bbc Laura K after I slept thru most of her show. What other whiplash event have I just missed?

Definitely

We may be witnessing the most globally embarrassing thing ever to happen to the United States.

Honestly I still can’t stop laughing 😂😅🤣

Surprisingly few musical settings of Psalm 82. Time to update Vaughan Richardson?

MAGA operates inside a disordered discourse, explained in detail in the below presentation. A key trait? Dissent isn’t tolerated. Internal criticism is treated as betrayal. That’s central to understanding how MAGA undermines the VDA pillars.
bsky.app/profile/elio...

Country diary: My fear is that one year the swifts will not return | Kate Blincoe Caistor St Edmund, Norfolk: Watching the skies each spring comes with an increasing sense of unease. And it’s not just swifts we’re waiting for

Incredibly touched to be mentioned here with such empathy by Kate Blincoe - Country diary: My fear is that one year the swifts will not return | Birds | The Guardian Country diary: My fear is that one year the swifts will not return

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from Philip Brookes this morning “The McEwen Solway Symphony was recorded for Vocalion Records by the Aeolion Orchestra under Cuthbert Whitemore in 1924, and I understand that was before the Elgar, but I can't confirm that.”

Btw, 1924 puts it in contention for the first British symphony to be recorded but McEwen’s Solway Symphony may have pipped it - I have no details.

Christopher Lee Clark It was first recorded in March 1924 with Elgar and the LSO - and just missed the accolade of "first recording of a British symphony". Elgar recorded it a second time, using the electronic process, which is the one you mention. Info from Philip Brookes.

1974, rather than 1984, if recording came later?

YouTube video by Daniel Ramirez-Carbajal Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, Op.45

I was thinking ‘well, that’s suitably and beautifully slow’, then I remember how it was singing this with Tennstedt at crotchet=52 youtu.be/8Ul7Sgw2Kh0?...

Labour is handing this country on a silver platter to Reform. People do not vote Labour because they hate immigrants and want Reform-lite. They vote Labour because they want it to make a positive difference to their lives.