Tom Wilkinson

In this issue’s Typology essay, @tmowilkinson.bsky.social takes us through the evolution of petrol stations, from ‘a series of giant shells’ in North Carolina to ‘a Chinoiserie nightmare in Beckenham’.

The UK, who were number 1 on this list not so long ago, now don't appear until the third post in the thread.

You don't need an embryonic gulag honey, we have a whole archipelago at home

The @nytimes.com picked Emergency Money as one of their best art books of 2024 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/a...

a fair point, although I guess neither of these options would achieve what they actually want from the building

Yes. It's pretty similar, in that it's a mediocre classicising stone screen on a steel frame

Adrian @blagojevism Macron authorizes the unfastening of Bernard-Henri Lévy's last shirt button

That's a fair assessment

Germany wants a word

NEW: Why do we always think crime is rising, even when it isn’t?

This week I looked at one of the big data mysteries. Britain is 2/3 less violent than the 1990s; thefts were higher pre-lockdown

Why, then, doesn’t it feel like it?

1/8

@thetimes.com

🔗 www.thetimes.com/article/b63d...

Sham urbanity dispatches Smithfield to the knacker’s yard The City of London’s closure of the old meat market displays an insulting disrespect for trade and civic pride

Smithfield is the last unconfected remnant of the City’s history as a real city, a visceral place of everyday, round-the-clock life. It is about to end. @edwinheathcote.bsky.social in FT. Question is: what do we do about it?
on.ft.com/4eOCZcM

Back in 2016 I was shocked about Black and Asian people voting for Brexit because they thought it would mean more job opportunities. They were proven right.

University of Essex to cut 200 jobs amid £29m shortfall The University of Essex says it faces a

Last few days of university redundancy news:
*Essex
*Leeds Trinity
*Leicester
*Loughborough
*Sheffield
*Sussex
*UEA
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Agreed - I particularly hate the formulation 'I don't recognise that'. But political jargon has a long history - there's an interesting book by Victor Klemperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii, on the topic (& I'm sure others could be written on less extreme situations)

Lived experience (what experience isn't?)
Passed away ('passed' is even worse)
To open one's bowels (lugubriously intoned by a nurse who wants to know if you're going to shit the bed)

Grow (as a transitive verb applied to anything inorganic - a business, market share, etc)
Journey
Presser
Staffer
Ouster (instead of ousting)
To hold space

Latest data shows that the number of homeless families continue to grow: Nearly 2% of households in London are now in temporary Accommodation. www.gov.uk/government/s...

I blame the Museum of London

I can't answer that one I'm afraid. But I guess it was imposed by Basel

Added later (at great expense, and it hasn't held up well - nor was there much point in it, our guide claimed, as birds tended only to fly into the ends of the building where it's half hidden by trees)

This is so wild. Edinburgh University owns half of the most expensive city in the UK outside of London, has a shocking amount of precariously employed teaching staff and is now one of the first to announce job cuts post NI announcement.

Visited the hydropower plant at Birsfelden, just upstream of Basel, last week, with my long-suffering students at KIT (it was very cold). Surely one of the most beautiful power plants in the world. Designed by Hans Hofmann and built 1950-54.

My new(ish) book, 'Emergency Money: Notgeld in the Image Economy of the German Inflation, 1914-1923' is about a very strange form of currency - & the relationship between visual culture & economics in a moment of extreme crisis. Discounted copies are available here: www.speedyhen.com/Product/Tom-...

Well it all seems very nice over here but perhaps it could do with a little more friction

Who wants a fight then?

Sounds like a very interesting book. I've always been skeptical of appeals to community myself, coming as I do from a small village...