Royal Society exhibition revives 18th-century debate about shape of the Earth
“Some members of the French Academy of Sciences interpreted measurements taken in Paris by scientists including Jacques Cassini as supporting the idea that the Earth was elongated at the poles, resembling a lemon or a melon.
By contrast, Isaac Newton had proposed that the centrifugal force caused by the Earth’s rotation would result in the planet being flattened at its poles, thus having a similar shape to an orange.”
Royal Society exhibition revives 18th-century debate about shape of the Earth
“_Some members of the French Academy of Sciences interpreted measurements taken in Paris by scientists including Jacques Cassini as supporting the idea that the Earth was elongated at the poles, resembling a lemon or a melon.
By contrast, Isaac Newton had proposed that the centrifugal force caused by the Earth’s rotation would result in the planet being flattened at its poles, thus having a similar shape to an orange._”
“HOW MAINSTREAM MEDIA IGNORES UK MILITARY SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL: Britain does much more than simply sell weapons to Israel, but you wouldn’t know it from watching the BBC.”
“But there’s another side to the problem of the media: the stories that are not covered and the uncomfortable truths (for Israel and its supporters) that are not acknowledged.
This is particularly the case when it comes to the issue of how the UK military has contributed to Israel’s assault on Gaza.”
[..]
“The failure of the mainstream media to address the genocide in Gaza is all too clear when looking at the euphemistic language they use and the sources they highlight.
But we also have to look beneath the surface: to the stories that the media choose not to pursue because that would draw attention to the complicity of all those at the heart of the British establishment who have helped to facilitate the war crimes currently taking place in Gaza.”
Does a cave beneath Pembroke Castle hold key to fate of early Britons?
“One of the issues that scientists are seeking to resolve is the question of whether or not Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens in Britain, as they did in other parts of the world. For good measure, they also want to know if the two species lived alongside each other or whether they replaced each other in successive waves.”
#UK / Labour pledges to recognise Palestinian state as part of peace process
[…] "Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people," said Labour's election manifesto - the collection of policies it gott by would enact if it forms the next government.
[…] "We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state."
Only the imperial hegemony and its neo-liberal colonialist lackey states like #Britain are still yammering on about a “two-state solution”
#Israel has constructed 00s of illegal settlements across the West Bank which are populated by ~800k rabid #Zionist settlers!
Even if Netanyahu agreed (which he won’t - ever!) who’s gonna force those heavily-armed fanatical religious settlers out of their homes and back into Israel proper so that Palestinians can have their Israel-dominated mini-state?
One thing’s for sure - it isn’t gonna be Israel! So who: Britain? The US? NATO?
Fuck off #Starmer! This is just more of your lies; more lip-service paid to Palestinian freedom driven more by concern for your own legal position as a genocide enabler than anything else!
The Making and Unmaking of a Presidency: Envisioning Empire in British Bencoolen, 1685–1825
“The effort to transform Sumatra into a productive constituent of a larger imperial nexus depended on many of the same processes that were to shape modern capitalism. Not only did British officials in Bencoolen deploy coerced and enslaved labor, they did so with the intent of wresting control of the production, consumption, and circulation of valuable commodities such as pepper and sugar. Practices of slavery, transplantation, and agrarian change typically associated with British colonies in the Atlantic world fundamentally shaped Bencoolen.”
Bains, T. (2024) ‘The Making and Unmaking of a Presidency: Envisioning Empire in British Bencoolen, 1685–1825’, Journal of British Studies, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2023.142.
53% of UK Parents Don’t Buy Books for Their Children
“The survey found that 28% of parents cited affordability as a barrier to purchasing books for their children. For many families, budgeting for essential needs takes precedence over buying books, which might be seen as a non-essential expense.”
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
I #JustFinished The Road to Somewhere.
It tries to explain the rise of populisim perticluarly in #Britain
While I don't agree with everything in the book, it is pretty interesting.
It works hard to avoid blaming the affluent (and never saying rich like it's a four letter word).
But even while not saying the quite part out loud, it implies that both rich liberals and conservative are leaving the young and the poor behind. Which historically has not had the best results.
“Four factors are found to be significant predictors of the position of primary stress: endings, word complexity, the segmental structure of the final syllable, and syllable count. Moreover, this study confirms previous observations on the tendency for American English to have more final stress in French loanwords than British English.”
Dabouis, Q. and Fournier, P. (2024) ‘Stress in French loanwords in British and American English’, Journal of Linguistics, pp. 1–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226724000136.
"This paper studies the constitutive role of cartography apropos law, territory, and social order, in a specific historical context, by examining the crucial political role played by the British East India Company's cartographic practices and maps in aspiring and imagining the transplantation and establishment of English sovereignty in the Indian subcontinent."
"The ultimate goal, I suggest, was a translatio imperii; the establishment of an imperial monarchy in the west that could rival the Habsburg empire, and which in time, perhaps, might even come to imitate the universal glory of the Roman imperium. Not the American Atlantic seaboard, but rather the continent of Europe, with its arms, its learning, and its treasure, was the goal of Bacon’s early imperial vision."
#Image attribution: Yale Center for British Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anonymous_-_Sir_Francis_Bacon,_1st_Viscount_St_Alban_-_B1977.14.9772_-_Yale_Center_for_British_Art.jpg
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."
Green, J. and Pahontu, R.L. (2024) ‘Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000728.
🇬🇧 🇪🇺 "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."
Green, J. and Pahontu, R.L. (2024) ‘Mind the Gap: Why Wealthy Voters Support Brexit’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123423000728.