stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I captured this image of the iconic “Rokuban-Yagura Turret in Osaka Castle” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting Osaka, Japan. These historic wooden towers, situated on the moat wall, were used for defense, storage, and surveillance…

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the “Cherry Blossoms” at Osaka Castle with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting Osaka, Japan. This walkway runs along the moat wall and leads to the entrance to Osaka Castle. I love all the cherry blossom petals that look like light snow on the surrounding grounds…

Cannes film festival: A man is terrified to wake up in Seydoux’s body in this metempsychotic mystery film about gender identity

Arthur Harari’s film is adapted from a graphic novel he wrote with his brother Lucas called The Case of David Zimmerman. It is a doomy, murky and intriguing supernatural noir mystery, hardly visible within the dark toxic cloud of its own strangeness, populated by people bearing stricken expressions of misery and fear. There are some genuinely uncanny and disquieting moments. Maybe it is a parable for the crisis of gender identity – or just identity, and everyone’s occasional experience of the profound, unreconcilable unknowability of our own bodies. There is also something of the mood of Blow-Up, or Basil Dearden’s Brit pulp chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself, or indeed David Robert Mitchell’s modern classic It Follows. But this one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

Niels Schneider plays David Zimmerman, a photographer in his late 30s documenting the way in which his home town has changed over the past century – a project inherited from his photographer dad. (He has an old photo of them both seated on the pavement, apparently mimicking Chaplin and the Kid.) David is overworked, dishevelled and depressed, but is just about persuaded to go along to a raucous New Year’s Eve party where he is stunned to glimpse a woman staring at him, played by Léa Seydoux, whom he realises he photographed a few months’ previously.

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Forward was dropped after a previous attempt to undermine coach, but doing so now could spark mutiny

We can safely say how Arne Slot would like to respond to Mohamed Salah’s latest attempt to undermine him. The Champions League trip to Inter in December, when Salah was left at home as punishment for his incendiary interview at Leeds three days earlier, provides as clear an indication as any. But should a repeat offence result in a repeat sanction on Sunday? Liverpool and their besieged head coach could do without inflaming a potential mutiny at Anfield.

Salah decided to draw up battle lines before his departure, with Saturday’s social media post criticising Liverpool’s direction under Slot. His concerns are widely shared by the Liverpool fanbase and the Liverpool squad, it seems, given the support it received from Curtis Jones, Dominik Szoboszlai, Andy Robertson and several members of last summer’s underwhelming recruitment drive. Arrive at great expense, fail to deliver and fuel the sense that a toxic civil war is erupting behind the scenes: thanks for your efforts lads. It is impossible to say what prompted each individual like on Instagram but that is the impression the collective has given.

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AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De beurshandel op het Damrak liet maandag gaandeweg herstel zien, na de verliezen van vrijdag. Daarbij kreeg de markt steun van olieprijzen die weliswaar nog stegen, maar minder hard dan tijdens de ochtendhandel. Dat kwam door een Iraans mediabericht dat meldde dat Amerikaanse functionarissen zouden hebben ingestemd met het opschorten van sancties op Iraanse ruwe olie. Dit zou gelden zolang de onderhandelingen over het beëindigen van de oorlog doorgaan.

Eerder op de dag klommen de olieprijzen nog stevig door aanhoudende spanningen in het Midden-Oosten na een nieuwe waarschuwing van de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump aan Iran. In een bericht op Truth Social schreef hij zondag dat "de klok tikt" en dat er "niets meer over zal zijn" van Iran als het land niet snel in actie komt.

De AEX, de index van de dertig meest verhandelde fondsen op de beurs in Amsterdam, sloot 0,5 procent hoger op 1015,72 punten. De MidKap herstelde 0,2 procent tot 1037,97 punten.

Here are all the timings – along with all the additional information you need – for the fifth Grand Prix weekend of the 2026 season from the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal.

ajpscs posted a photo:

the SQUARE
STEAL THE NIGHT
© ajpscs

Europe's hunt for secure, high-capacity satellite communications infrastructure has produced a laser-equipped mountaintop ground station in northern Greece. Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades. PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. Astrolight CEO Laurynas Mačiulis told The Register that the company originally pursued laser communications after concluding it "would need to tap into the optical spectrum," as demand for satellite bandwidth continues to grow. He described optical connectivity as "one of the enabling technologies for further expansion into space." The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput. The engineering problem, however, is slightly more complicated than pointing a laser pointer at the sky and hoping for the best. "You have two moving objects that try to establish a laser link, which means trying to point a very, very narrow laser pointer at your object, which is potentially tens of thousands of kilometers away, moving at eight kilometers per second," Mačiulis said. ESA and its partners are pitching optical comms partly as an answer to an increasingly crowded radio spectrum, but the tech is also drawing attention from defense and dual-use operators interested in more resilient communications systems. "There is a need for networking in space, both for connectivity and tactical reasons, and dual-use defense applications," Mačiulis said, adding that future satellite constellations "will inevitably rely on optical links, because that gives information superiority and security and resistance to jamming electronic warfare." He added "there's also sovereignty aspects, which means that there will never be a single player – there cannot be just Starlink." ®

Genoeg Nederlanders die geen hol snappen van de Belastingdienst maar aan de andere kant zijn er dan weer veel Bulgaren die de Belastingdienst erg goed snappen, en dan vooral hoe je de Belastingdienst in het ootje neemt. De fiscus heeft weer een nieuwe georganiseerde massafraude ontdekt waarbij miljoenen euro's zijn opgestreken. Terug van eigenlijk nooit weggeweest. De fraude betreft aanvragen in de inkomensheffing waarbij opvallend veel 'onregelmatigheden' werden opgemerkt. Honderden Dimitars, Sletjanka's, Georgi's en Aleksandars meldden zich bij fysieke loketten met een DigiD-aanvraag, die bleken later allemaal gekoppeld aan de dubieuze belastingaanvragen. Klinkt ingewikkeld, is het niet (voor de Bulgaren). Het gaat om zeker 6,7 miljoen euro, maar de precieze omvang wordt nog onderzocht dus dan weet u wel hoe laat het is. Het zijn al met al een boel goedkoop gestucte badkamers/goedkoop gereden vrachten/goedkoop gestoken asperges. Het goede nieuws (voor de Bulgaren) is dan weer dat we van die 6,7 miljoen zo'n 4,4 miljoen waarschijnlijk NIET meer terugkrijgen. Graag gedaan hè, of zoals ze in Bulgarije zeggen: vlajna putka!

I am not what you would call a dedicated home cook. But every once in a while, I get a bee in my bonnet and make something from my small cache of recipes or from something I saw online that looked good. Some of my go-tos include:

Rigatoni With White Bolognese (PDF)
Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli
Pressure Cooker Mushroom Risotto
Caldo Verde (Portuguese Potato and Kale Soup With Sausage)
Smoked Haddock Chowder (April Bloomfield)
The World’s Best Pancakes
Smoky Corn Chowder

Some of these aren’t particularly easy to make, but the flavors created with the extra time are worth it.

What are some of your favorite recipes?

(I don’t have any good photos of any of the above recipes, so I included one of some avocado toast I made: mashed avocado with evoo, tomatoes + balsamic vinegar, fried egg (crispy w/ runny yolk), chili oil, toast, lots of salt on everything.)¹

1. Not sure where I learned this, but when making food, I salt everything separately. That way, each flavor gets accentuated on its own — even in soups or casseroles — instead of the whole thing just being vaguely salty. The main purpose of salt is not to make food salty, it’s to heighten the flavors already present. ↩

Tags: cooking · food