µblog - archive for 2026-06 🏳️‍🌈

🔗 Geoffrey Wheatcroft: Labour’s Love Lost

It’s a besetting temptation to play laudator temporis acti, pining for the good old days, but sometimes the old days really were good. Look back fifty years. Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister and Labour leader in March 1976. […] The candidates to succeed him were Michael Foot, Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Anthony Crosland, and James Callaghan, who was elected and became prime minister. All apart from Foot had served in the war: Callaghan in the Royal Navy, Benn in the Royal Air Force, the others in the army; Healey and Crosland had seen action as junior officers; Jenkins had worked at the Bletchley Park code-breaking center. He, Foot, and Crosland wrote books of considerable value. Looking back, they seem a race of giants.

And today? […] The Guardian quotes one Labour MP saying, “We have to face up to the fact that every single one of them is fucking useless.” That’s perhaps a little blunt, but it does seem that although the country is full of clever, gifted, energetic people, not least young people, they don’t go into politics anymore. And that’s a problem for all of us.

#

🇯🇵 – 🇸🇪 1–1 Sverige vidare i typisk stil - går in i turneringen med skyhöga förväntningar som krossas, klarar sig ur gruppspelet med nöd och näppe, för att sen bli krossade igen i utslagningen.

Knappast en repris på detta dock

Japaner, japaner försvarande japaner, från sig vilt slåendes japaner och lika vilt angripande svenskar. Japaner som hoppar, japaner som kastar sig, japaner som gör allt för att bärga segern för Nippon.

– Sven Jerring, 1936

#

google/android ruining our evening by being buggy heaps of shit

#

🇨🇼 – 🇨🇮 0–2. You gotta love an underdog, but in the end it was not enough.

#

everyone playing along the not-so polite fiction that “hydration breaks” aren’t actually ad breaks

#

🔗 MJD: Deciphering basmala

As I mentioned before, “al-” means “the”, so you see it at the beginning of many Arabic words. It also survives in many English words that are descended from Arabic, such as alcohol, alcove, algebra, algorithms, and alchemy.

(Not, however, “alligator”, where the “al-” is the Spanish word for “the”.)

#

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 – 🇬🇭 0–0 kinda boring match tbh

#

🇦🇷 – 🇦🇹 2–0 kinda cool to see Messi make most goals ever in world cup tournaments

#

🇫🇷 – 🇮🇶 3–0 Mbappé inching up on Messi’s record by scoring 2 goals

#

🇳🇱 – 🇸🇪 5–1 Well well well, NL trounced Sweden with the same score that Sweden trounced Tunisia. There’s a clear pecking order in international football and we’re at the bottom.

#

🇫🇷 – 🇸🇳 2–0. Some really good goals by les Bleus.

#

🇸🇪 – 🇹🇳 5–1. Did not get up at 04:00 to watch this, which I was apparently alone in not doing at my workplace. Good start to the tournament, especially as the other teams in the group only got one point.

#

🇪🇸 – 🇨🇻 0–0. I started following the match on radio and finished on TV. It was entertaining to hear the commentator’s increasing incredulity that Spain wasn’t able to score. A bit like a certain other real-world conflict, sometimes a draw is a win. Definitely rooting for Cap Verde to advance!

#

🔗 THR: A Peter Thiel-Backed Tribunal Is Putting Journalists on Trial. I’m Its First Target

D’Souza believes that “many journalists are more powerful than billionaires,” explaining, “I can’t tell you how many billionaires and CEOs have called me in absolute tears about their lives being destroyed by one article.” He notes that most of them “have no media skill whatsoever” and have “never sought the spotlight,” so he contends that “there’s a massive power asymmetry.”

#

🔗 An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt

The reply took and the closure of the ticket took half an hour or so. The reasons behind it took five hundred years to pile up, and they involve a twice-mutilated vizier, a Qurʾān that vanished for four centuries, a Beirut newspaperman with a deadline, and an Egyptian physician who taught himself font engineering for fun (or that what I imagine about him). Walking through these, ended up to be the most enjoyable couple of weeks in that job, and I want to go through it here too.

#

🔗⚽ Foreign Policy: How Soccer Became ‘Un-American’

The cosmopolitan cultural class that follows the Premier League consciously positions itself at the opposite pole of the alignment that returned the current president to office. While other countries see class divides between football clubs, in the United States, soccer fandom has been politicized. Like their choice of car, store, or fast food restaurant, being a soccer fan is a litmus test of U.S. partisan identity.

#

🔗 XKCD: Nostalgia Content

#

🔗 McSweeney’s: The New Odyssey Movie Is Historically Inaccurate; Matt Damon Isn’t the Least Bit Greek

The powers that be (the Illuminati, the Boston Brahmin, whatever you want to call them) are trying to dilute America’s proud “hard r” culture until rhotacism is a thing of the past. If they have their way, we will all be “pahking the cah at Mahket Basket to buy lobstah.” It’s no coincidence that half of Hollywood’s writers went to “Hahvahd.”

#

🔗 Molly White: I’m launching Tech Influence Watch as AI follows crypto into politics

The [crypto and AI] PACs may look different from the outside, but they’re increasingly the same operation with aligned goals: deregulate the tech sector, slash consumer protections, and allow tech companies to capture even more enormous profits at the expense of everyday people.

#

🔗 LGM: The Wages of Sin

Russia’s overwhelming military superiority creates a power asymmetry, as it expects no existential reciprocity from Ukraine, which Russia initially dwarfed. Russia’s prediction of the war was shaped by its early geopolitical isolation: the G7 sanctioned it, and any international legitimacy it had was vanquished, leaving it with no consequences should it decide not to comply with LOAC [Laws of Armed Conflict]. This permitted Russian forces to engage in consistent breaches of the LOAC, treating defiance as an asset. This is particularly evident in Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, with attacks conducted in the winter of 2024-2025 as an attempt to brutalize the winter and weaken the Ukrainian spirit. The brutality of the Russians also persists in the attacks on shelters, such as the Mariupol Theater bombing, the unlawful deportation of children, and their cultural indoctrination. […] Conversely, Ukraine is in a unique position, as it is the militarily weaker state and relies on Western support to address the threat, compelling it to adhere to LOAC to the fullest extent. Ukraine cannot afford to acquire a bad reputation, as its lifeline depends on Western support.

#

🇸🇪 SVT: Stad i ljus superhypad bland unga – Tommy Körberg: ”Mysterium”

Ett annat tecken på mitt fortskridande åldrande - min samtalspartner under lördagen festivitas utgick från att jag som gammal KTH:are självklart sjöng Stad i ljus när dansgolvet stängde. Något sådant kan jag inte minnas, men det beror mindre på överdrivet alkoholintag än att jag sällan var kvar så sent.

Hursomhelst började det enligt sägnen (Wikipedia) i Lund 1988 men det har gått mig spårlöst förbi fram till nu.

#

🇸🇪🎭 Bön för idioter - Stadsteaterns Klarascen

En tragikomisk absurdistisk pjäs där fem skådespelare springer, hoppar och klättrar över varandra samtidigt som dom glider in och ut ur rollerna som figurer i en TV-serie eller dom som betraktar den. Scenen är djup, nästan kvadradisk, och ytan används till fullo. Samtiden är hemsk, eller är det bara en serie? Är böldpesten som härjar och massgravarna på Själland på riktigt, eller kommer dom i nästa säsong?

Kan rekommenderas.

#