Dan Elphick

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

YouTube video by Pierre Boulez - Topic Messages de feu Demoiselle R. V. Troussova, Op. 17

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, BBC understands It comes after Thames Valley Police said they were assessing a complaint over the alleged sharing of confidential material by the former prince with Jeffrey Epstein.

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.

Here’s an example of a local newsroom actually informing the public about AI (the role of journalism) versus the blatant AI boosterism we’re seeing many other newsrooms engage in to the detriment of the entire profession

YouTube video by OOOOKIPPLEOOO KIPPLE Heathcliff

The definitive Wuthering Heights adaptation:

Cliff Richard is Heathcliff
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4pM...

So, the boss of REF2029 has just quit...

Graphic of Scully from the X Files, captioned 'Yeah, I use AI: Actual Imagination'. From the instagram account @sculder.and.mully

Threatening to cut funding to someone because they disagree is a *real* threat to academic freedom of the kind frequently seen under fascist and authoritarian regimes.

This is also confected bullshit. There is no obligation whatsoever for a society or institution to invite a speaker.

It’s the only option. This is one of the 3 no-cost, short-term things the sector could do to stabilise itself - I wrote them up last year, but there’s still time! tacity.co.uk/2025/03/26/t...

My outside bet has always been that REF 2029 never happens. At a time of massive financial instability (including redundancies) around HE it simply seems like an obscene waste of money.

Even beyond the quality argument, these people aren't even 'writers', they're just assholes hitting what they think is the FREE MONEY button. Which sometimes works, so they keep doing it. If they gave even one solitary shit about art or even storytelling they would know better. They just don't care.

The authors "estimate that by 2025, the Brexit process had reduced UK GDP per capita by 6 to 8 percent, investment by 12 to 18 percent, employment by 3 to 4 percent, and productivity by 3 to 4 percent. These effects grew gradually over time." www.nber.org/202602/diges...

What a total disaster... 🇪🇺🇬🇧

For Shostakovich 10? I'm heading that way also!

Steve Rosenberg on the tightrope of reporting from Russia on Ukraine war The BBC's Russia editor reflects on the difficulties of working as a British journalist in Moscow.

Double-headed eagles, white parrots and “defecating squirrels”: my experiences reporting from Russia. Our film ‘Our Man In Moscow’ for BBC Panorama is available on the iPlayer
and will be shown on BBC One at 8pm tonight (Mon Feb 2).
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I hate this. I hate that scholars and teachers are supposed to be digital fraud experts. I hate that this part of their job description is becoming larger and larger. I hate the widening distrust. I hate a culture that aggressively devalues the curiosity and humility required for ongoing learning.

On this basis we would stop paying for free school meals for children and free bus passes for pensioners.

I don’t use it/don’t benefit is literally the direct opposite reason why we have taxation to fund pubic goods.

Education is a public good. Fund it!

'No-one who speaks German could be an evil man!'

Marking update: I had to correct someone's German spelling in a titled work, leaving a single-word comment of 'Die'. I decided to rephrase the comment.

All 2.4m of Britain’s creative workers are at risk — and we know why A new report into the impact of AI on the creative sector makes for apocalyptic reading. The government must act now

'the UK creative industries — which contributed £125 billion to the economy in 2024 and supported 2.4 million jobs — are being destroyed by an AI sector that... contributed just £11 billion in the same year and supported only 85,000 jobs." www.thetimes.com/culture/film...

IMDB trivia page for Melania: 'Melania is a loose remake of Mutiny On The Buses (1972)'

YouTube video by Michigan State University | College of Music Shostakovich | Symphony No. 13 (Babi Yar) | 4.27.2019

For today, 27 January
www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Xg...

'No monument stands over Babi Yar
[...]
Nothing in me shall ever forget.
Let the 'Internationale' thunder forth
When we have buried, finally and forever,
The final antisemite on this earth'.

Front page of Royal Historical Society blog post with image of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, photograph by Rudolph Simon, 2013, Wilkimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Text reads: "On Holocaust Memorial Day we need more history, not just more memory' and abstract: In this post, Andy Pearce – Director of the Centre for Holocaust Education at UCL – considers the current levels of knowledge of the Holocaust among UK secondary school students. UCL studies, in 2016 and 2026, reveal a troubling and enduring divergence between popular understandings of the persecution and murder of Jews in Europe, in the 1930s and 1940s, and the findings of scholarly historical research. 27 January 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain. As Andy argues, prevalent and popular misperceptions risk being sustained if the Holocaust becomes a subject for remembrance and memory, rather than of history and historical scholarship. It is only though ‘more history’, shared widely and publicly, that we may seek to redress error, distortion and denial."

"On Holocaust Memorial Day we need more history, not just more memory" bit.ly/4t6wPx6

Dr Andy Pearce, Director of @uclholocaust.bsky.social, writes today on the RHS blog.

#Skystorians

The Conservative Party has defected to Reform.

“We’ve invented a magic computer. It uses all of the earth’s resources, we’ve spent trillions on it and it’s the sole growth area of the US economy.”

“What does it do?”

“We were hoping you could tell us.”

And yet universities are facing financial doom. What a great system.

In Trump's telling, the US are the equivalent of the Nazis