jspeter9191 has added a photo to the pool:
Today(27/06/26) morning at Tallawong rooftop, Sydney, Australia.
God will be with you.
Vinaykumargg has added a photo to the pool:
It’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in britches and bonnets, poking hole after hole in American lore – and it’s so audacious it will make your jaw drop. Brace yourself!
‘I hear America singing,” wrote Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass. He didn’t say that the song was “USA! USA!” backed by a klaxon and accompanied by a foam finger. For a country evangelical about its superiority, there is a dark and sizable underbelly they would prefer to ignore. A pretty big overbelly, too. Yet every society has its truth tellers – and they’re generally obnoxious types who can’t let things go.
Who better to educate America on its history, then, than Larry David? Loads of people. But none of them have a series on HBO, executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America reimagines key scenes from 250 years of US history, as if they were a series of rapidly escalating, socially awkward celebrations of epic pettiness. In other word, it’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in britches and bonnets. I’m excited.
Continue reading...From the Cosmati Pavement and Pyx Chamber to Ode to the Yimeng Mountains, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Who requested in his will that an art gallery be established in Linz?
2 Which mustelid was named “most fearless animal” by Guinness World Records?
3 What was the first concert tour to gross $2bn in ticket sales?
4 The Kirkwood gaps are regions within what?
5 The Ishihara test is used to diagnose which condition?
6 Which element is named from the Greek for lead?
7 Helvetia appears on which country’s stamps?
8 Which sports teams were rebranded from “minor” to “national” in 2020?
What links:
9 Agatha Christie; Sophia Engastromenou; Earl Spencer?
10 The Red Detachment of Women; The White-Haired Girl; Ode to the Yimeng Mountains?
11 Cosmati Pavement; Henry VII Chapel; Pyx Chamber; Shrine of Edward the Confessor?
12 Alexandria and Avignon; Balkans and Levant; Cairo; New York?
13 Lost (Confederate myth); Good Old (English republicanism); Great (13th-century Scottish succession)?
14 Coldplay; Devo; James; Talking Heads; U2?
15 Alces alces, Canada; Haliaeetus leucocephalus, US; Panthera onca, Mexico?
Disclosure casts doubt on broadcaster’s claim that failure to properly vet presenter lay with independent production partners
The BBC failed to investigate concerns about the presenter Ashley Cain that were raised with the broadcaster directly by an interviewee who was a victim of sexual violence.
Last week, the Guardian reported that Cain, a former footballer and reality TV star, had a history of extreme misogyny on social media.
Continue reading...The first time I saw the film, I convinced myself I didn’t like it. Now it’s one of my favourites
I was 14 years old the first time I saw two men kiss on screen. It was 2006, and my mum had rented Brokeback Mountain from our local Blockbuster. She said it was a “special” movie night for “just the two of us”.
For the next 134 minutes, I watched two sheep herders, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), fall in love in the beautiful Wyoming countryside, only for that love to be suffocated by rigid expectations of masculinity and self-contempt. The film culminates in Jack’s untimely death, and alludes to the possibility that he was the victim of a vicious homophobic hate crime.
Continue reading...In this week’s newsletter: The festival always comes back fresher after allowing Worthy Farm to recover from its yearly musical extravaganza. Star Wars and Charli xcx could learn a thing or two
In any other year this week’s Guide would be arriving into your inbox from Worthy Farm, home of Glastonbury festival. Not in 2026 though: for the first time since the Covid pandemic, which poleaxed two consecutive years of the festival, Glasto is a no-show. The reason? It has booked in one of its occasional fallow years, which allows the dairy farmland on which the festival sits a chance to recover from a half decade of camping, trampling and moshing. It also gives its organisers a rare window to recharge their batteries and plan for the festival’s future, and its detractors a year off from declaring its headliners “the worst ever”, again.
For long-term Glasto-goers, it’s always bittersweet when the fallow year rolls around – the last was in 2018 – but this year it does feel like a bullet dodged, given that the event would have landed bang in the middle of a truly dangerous heatwave (my face, and many others, would have turned a previously undiscovered shade of beetroot). And moreover, the fallow year often works a treat: when the festival returns the year after, it tends to be re-energised, with new stages, stronger lineups and well rested people running the show.
Continue reading...Two decades after chefs rewrote the rules at Noma, Copenhagen’s food scene still flies the flag for seasonality and innovation – progressive, sustainable and uniquely Danish
I didn’t realise I was a fussy eater until I left Denmark. During 12 years of living Danishly, with regular trips to the capital, I just … liked most things. Danes specialise in high-quality, organic produce, eaten as close to its natural state as possible. Denmark has very specific, diverse climatic conditions, making seasonal eating a science. Forget root vegetables in autumn and strawberries in summer – we’re talking micro seasons, week to week, with cabbage, kale, apples, potatoes, berries and rye a speciality. None are around for long, but when they are, they’re fabulous – and the seasonal Nordic diet has been proven to be as healthy as the renowned Mediterranean diet and better for the planet. No wonder Copenhageners look so smug.
But the city’s food scene hasn’t always been so good. Many who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s report being reared on canned food and frozen vegetables, with pork and potatoes, smørrebrød (open sandwiches) or junk food making up much of the offerings. (You’re never far from a pølservogn, or “hot dog wagon”, in Copenhagen – doling out bright red wieners baked in their own bready prophylactic.)
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