Unusual corpus callosum "To be, to feel, to think, to imagine, to know." (The human circuit) Bylines @techreview @reactionlife @jewishchron @thetimes &c.
"I am a citizen of the world"
Joined July 2009
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Periodic reminder that one of Britain's great artists, David Inshaw, is still working even if more or less cancelled by the @Tate (for decades: his marvellous The Badminton Game was regularly voted the favourite painting of visitors so they moved it to a poky corridor over 40 years ago then decided not to even display it; his love of the landscape & culture of Angleterre profonde - even unto [clutch pearls] the occasional St George's Flag, of @RoyalAirForce jets, and ancient mysterious hills obviously got his ticket marked at an early age by the childish apparatchiks in charge of these things these days. But the fire burns on (his topic in recent years at @RedfernGallery &c.). Bless him!
"I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."
Eric Hoffer wrote this article about Israel almost 60 years go. It reads like it was written yesterday.
"The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese-and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.
Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.
Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.
No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.
The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.
I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us."
Wishing you a happy Full Moon in Taurus!
One of the few pieces of multi-artist distributed public artworks I rather like. This one (of many) is on the verge outside Birtley Manor in Bramley, Surrey, England, United Kingdom.
Saying hello to the good moon rising...
#astrology #taurus #fullmoon #publicart #amomentintime
Finally about to see @pynchband live in Bournemouth (almost BoMo but perhaps not quite yet).
Quite simply the best band of their generation - Z - I know.
youtube.com/watch?v=TcJQLCMS…
Epic tool:
LiDAR Lens lidarlens.sarsen.org/ is, I think, the best and most complete free LiDAR tool there is for England and Wales. Every square metre of both countries' 1 m LiDAR is there, live, in a lens you drag across the map. You can light it from any angle, exaggerate it, and switch between hillshade, multi-direction hillshade, slope, local relief, sky-view factor, aspect and red relief, until faint banks, ditches, barrows and lost field systems jump out. Click any spot and it tells you the ground's measurements and the recorded sites nearby, with links straight to the records. Old OS maps, aerial photos and modern maps sit underneath for comparison. It works on a phone in the field as well as on a desktop. It costs nothing, there is no login, no account, and no adverts. sarsen.org/2026/10/lidar-len…
Arriving now in Austen country where I can report it's more rain than Jane.
Pretty cool view of storm Austen spinning up today as it appoaches Cornwall. Snippet taken from the EUMETSAT feed here:
eumetsat.int/real-time-image…
Thus spake The Cohenim.
Listen and learn.
Start with "What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way".
Purchase.
Read.
Inwardly absorb.
Recant.
Learn epistemological humility (you can still wrestle with your God/s, but for G-d's sake get in the fuvking ring).
John Pollock retweeted
To my mind, the only point of comparison between the Rushdie and Rooney situations is that the man who stabbed Rushdie multiple times and almost succeeded in murdering him chanted "free Palestine" as he entered the courtroom for sentencing last year.
If you ever sought out the novels of Sally Rooney in bookshops – when that was still possible – you’d know they sit in the fiction stacks adjacent to the novels of another SR whose books have been withdrawn in dastardly political circumstances. Until last week, “Rooney” and “Rushdie” had little in common beyond being shelfmates; now they have more than just a physical proximity.
@tanjil_rashid_: This is censorship by other means newstatesman.com/comment/202…
This seems to me like a clear and present *threat* to @Gails_Bakery & its customers.
I'm amazed it's considered legal to publish let alone paste up.
Surely it is an arrestable offence to publicly display such malign threats, and surely Gail's can sue for malicious commercial damage?
John Pollock retweeted
This is absurdly cool!
Introducing tiny.london
A massive isometric pixel map of London, based on amazing NYC demo by @_coenen from 9 months ago
My agent created the dataset, finetuned qwen image LoRA adapter, did a multiday inference run and built an efficient tile viewer!
"a civilization has the same fragility as a life"
A point elucidated exactly half a century later, in 1969, in Civilisation by Kenneth Clark:
"People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater."
Part 1 - The Skin of Our Teeth:
youtube.com/watch?v=X75Lt7TK…
Absolutely stunning essay by @DouglasKMurray about the crisis in France. It includes this quote.
thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-f…
John Pollock retweeted
✈️ WATCH: Israeli Comedy Show Eretz Nehederet Turns Flydubai Terror Attack Into Hilarious “Fauda in the Skies” Parody Featuring Hero Israeli Plumber
Israel’s Eretz Nehederet has given the Flydubai hijacking ordeal the Fauda treatment. Its sketch, “Fauda in the Skies,” draws on the story of Yaniv Hayoun, the Israeli plumber who helped thwart the attack.
Comedian Eran Zarachovitz impersonates Lior Raz as a plumber turned action hero, calling for wrenches to overpower the terrorist. Then, in the middle of the airborne rescue, he announces that he needs to get a part from his car.
The show promoted the spoof with a suitably reassuring caption: “The skies have never been safer.”
John Pollock retweeted
Great article - including about one of two 17-yr-old British fatalities in the Falklands - in @JewishChron here: thejc.com/opinion/the-jewish…
Repulsive & grotesque, of course - we expect no less.
But herewith a brief reminder, should it be needed, that many British Jews fought with courage, honour, & distinction - up to & including several VCs - in two World Wars. And every red poppy remembers them, too.
None of the people supposedly 'remembered' by this abhorrent hijacking - nor any of their egocentric but ignorant supporters - can or will ever be able to make any such claim.
First World War Recipients:
Lieutenant Frank Alexander de Pass (34th Prince Albert Victor's Own Poona Horse, Indian Army)
Action: Awarded posthumously for bravery near Festubert, France, on November 24, 1914, by entering an enemy trench to destroy a traverse and rescuing a wounded soldier under heavy fire. He was killed the next day by a sniper.
Distinction: The first Jewish recipient of the Victoria Cross and the first Indian Army officer to receive it.
Sergeant Issy Smith (1st Battalion, The Manchester Regiment)
Action: Awarded for extreme devotion to duty during the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915, where he repeatedly went out under heavy fire to rescue wounded comrades.
Distinction: The first Jewish "other rank" (non-commissioned) soldier to receive the VC in World War I.
Lieutenant Leonard V. Keysor (1st Australian Infantry Battalion)
Action: Awarded for conspicuous bravery during the Battle of Lone Pine at Gallipoli in August 1915, where he continuously caught and threw back enemy hand grenades.
Captain Richmond Gee (2nd Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers)
Action: Awarded for leading a counter-attack and clearing captured enemy trenches almost single-handedly during the Battle of the Somme in October 1916.
Private Jack White (born Jacob Weiss; 6th Battalion, The King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment)
Action: Awarded for gallantry during the Diyala River crossing in Mesopotamia in March 1917, where he swam out under heavy machine-gun fire to secure and tow a disabled pontoon carrying an officer and equipment to safety.
Second World War Recipient
Petty Officer Thomas William Gould (Royal Navy)
Action: Awarded alongside Lieutenant Peter Roberts in February 1942 while serving on the submarine HMS Thrasher off Crete, for spending 50 minutes inside the gun-casing defusing and removing two live, unexploded 150 lb bombs
(Needless to say, there are, of course, many, many, many more great Jewish veterans, in Britain and elsewhere.)
dailymail.com/news/article-1…
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
In 1992, an AA employee called Jason Pegler was walking home from work in Dover, England, when he walked past a public telephone box. As he did so, the phone started ringing.
His curiosity piqued, he decided to answer it. To his absolute astonishment, the call was for…him
On the other end of the line was his colleague, Sue Hamilton. She apologised for disturbing him and asked for help with the office fax machine, which she couldn’t get to work. Jason was dumbfounded.
‘Hold on Sue, how could you possibly know I was beside this particular phone box?’, asked Jason.
Confused, Sue didn’t understand the question.
‘What do you mean,’ she replied. ‘Isn’t this your home number?’
Jason explained that he was still on his way home, and that he’d simply heard a public phone ringing as he walked past and decided to pick it up. (And this is where it gets genuinely bonkers.)
When Sue checked the number she’d dialled, she finally worked out what had happened. She had mistaken his AA *staff* number for his home telephone number!
By what must be the maddest coincidence of their respective lives, that staff number was also the number of the public phone box in Dover that Jason was passing just at the moment she called.
Sue had dialled the wrong number, but reached the right person.
"days of joy and days of grief, with countless incidents, and so much else besides"
Translated into Cavafy's own loose 6-iamb rhythm:
The setting of the house, cafés, the neighbourhood
that I have seen and walked through, years and years on end:
I shaped you through my days of joy and days of grief,
with countless incidents, and so much else besides.
The whole of you, for me, has been transformed to feeling.