yz42 has added a photo to the pool:

Warm evening light gently traces the ancient stone path, leading through the cedar forest toward the quiet temple gate. In the stillness of the fading day, every step feels unhurried.

夕暮れの柔らかな光が、古い石畳を静かになぞり、杉林の中を抜けて山門へと続いていく。一日の終わりの静けさの中では、一歩一歩がゆっくりと感じられる。

Startling new research shows that in many countries – including old US allies – the public prefers Beijing to Washington

Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators announced that they were at “a very Chinese time in my life” – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The Chinamaxxing phenomenon primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has noted.

While it broods over China’s economic, military and technical advance, the Trump administration is accelerating Beijing’s diplomatic progress, as striking new polling by the Pew Research Center shows. For the first time, China and Xi Jinping are seen more favourably than the US and its president in most of the 36 major countries surveyed – including Canada, Mexico and Australia. Only in six countries did people rate the US more highly. While Beijing has seen significant improvements in some places, the slump in Washington’s standing is more dramatic. Across 20 countries, the median percentage with a favourable view of China rose from 32% to 46% between 2023 and this year; for the US, it fell from 58% to 36%. Views of China were much more positive in Latin America, Africa and parts of south and south-east Asia than in wealthier European and east Asian countries.

Continue reading...

Communal spaces where people can share big moments are a vital part of our shared life

“People can’t get enough of football fever,” a pub landlord, Sam Hale, told the Guardian last week. The World Cup provided the UK’s struggling hospitality industry with a much-needed boost, with pubs benefiting from extended opening hours and one estimate suggesting that an extra 5.5m pints were sold in the group stages alone. The tournament lifted customers’ spirits too – even if it ended in disappointment for England and Scotland fans – as millions of people relished the communal spectacle.

These sociable few weeks could not have come at a better time for pubs, which are closing at a rate of two a day, with about 2,000 gone since 2020. This reflects a long-term trend away from going out, combined with pressures from rising costs including energy bills, business rates, wages and national insurance contributions. The hope in the sector, and among its advocates, is that the temporary uplift of the past few weeks will focus minds on the importance of venues, including pubs, in promoting social cohesion and “watercooler moments”.

Continue reading...

• Dane was woken by doping control at 2am on day of stage

• Remco Evenepoel outsprints Pogacar to claim victory

Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France on the approach to the Alpine climb of Plateau de Solaison, just hours after being woken up in the early hours of Sunday morning to undergo doping controls.

The double Tour champion, who also won this year’s Giro d’Italia, climbed gingerly into a race ambulance, his right arm in a sling, after falling as the main peloton exited a roundabout in Bonneville.

Continue reading...

Investigators arrest 31-year-old man identified as Charles Medina in connection with death of Rapp who was 26

US boxer Hannah Rapp, who in June fought for the World Boxing Council (WBC) women’s featherweight championship, was killed on Saturday while she bicycled in Texas after a motorist struck her with his car, according to authorities.

Rapp was 26, and investigators arrested a 31-year-old man identified as Charles Medina in connection with her death, the sheriff’s office of Brazos county, Texas, said in a statement.

Continue reading...

⚽ World Cup final kick-off: 3pm EST/8pm BST/5am AEST
⚽ Player guide | Golden Boot | And follow us on TikTok

The surprise is that it took so long. For the champions of Europe and South America to meet in a World Cup final; for Spain and Argentina to meet in a knockout game; and, if we must, for tactics expert Donald Trump to attend a match at the 2026 World Cup. All three will happen for the first time today.

It’s exciting enough that this is the first World Cup final between the champions of Europe and South America*. The fact Argentina are world champions makes it even more mouthwatering, especially as they look about as willing to surrender their title as Tony Montana did his life. They are tantalisingly close to becoming the first team to retain the men’s World Cup since Brazil in 1962.

Continue reading...

Ondanks alle anticipatie vanaf december 2024 was de film niet het culturele moment dat Dune 3 aanstaande december wel gaat worden.

SPOILERS, dus tekst review na de breek, eindcijfer helemaal onderaan

Het laat zich moeilijk uitleggen, maar de film voelde niet als de Odyssee en ook niet als Nolan-film. Het voelde als een ingetogen compromis waarin geen van beide voldoende uit de verf kwamen.

Opvallend: 'professionele critici' lijken unaniem van een 'meesterwerk' te spreken. 386 professionele reviews geven het gemiddeld een 8,7 op Rotten Tomatoes en 60 professionele reviews op Metacritic geven gemiddeld een 8,9. The Guardian spreekt zelfs van "een meesterwerk op elke denkbare manier". 

Die lof voelt overdreven, en als een tribale overcorrectie op alle hoon die in de aanloop ontstond wegens de casting van de Keniaanse Lupita Nyong'o als Helena en transgender Elliot Page (biologische vrouw, 1,55m, 48 kilo) als Griekse soldaat Sinon - al ontstond die specifieke ophef vooral omdat lang gedacht werd dat Elliot de legendarische Achilles zou spelen.

1.280 'niet-professionele' reviewers gaven het op Metacritic een 5,1. Maar 'meer dan 5.000' niet-professionele reviewers op Rotten Tomatoes gaven het weer een 9,6. 

Verwarrend allemaal, maar wat vond de enige vakjury die we erkennen?

Laten we enkel noemen wat wél goed of interessant vonden. Dit zijn eigenlijk maar 6 dingen in een film van 3 uur. Alles wat niet in deze lijst staat was dus ondermaats of gemiddeld, daarmee niet noemenswaardig, en de film daarmee simpelweg geen 'meesterwerk'.

- In drie scènes laat Odysseus zijn boog afgaan zonder dat er een pijl op het koord ligt. Een van die scènes is in de feesthal van Ithaka, tijdens hun vroege jaren samen in het bijzijn van Penelope, die zich ontroerd toont door het geluid, dat een heel specifieke toon heeft. In de ontknoping lukt het Odysseus in eerste instantie niet om zijn boog te spannen, waarop Penelope zich teleurgesteld omdraait en zich weer terugtrekt. In tweede instantie lukt het Odysseus wel om de boog te spannen, slaat de filmmuziek drie aanlopende noten aan, waarop de toon van Odysseus' boog het afmaakt, en Penelope zich weer omdraait. Beste scène van de hele film (zie onderstaand).

- Spartaanse koning Menelaüs vraagt aan de bezoekende Telemachos of hij het verhaal van het houten paard wil horen, waarop Telemachos zegt dat dit niet hoeft, omdat hij het verhaal al kent. Daarop antwoordt Menelaüs: "But have you heard it from the inside?", wat een ijskoude intro was voor zijn vertelling vanuit het houten paard zelf. 

- Wijlen koning Agamemnon en Sinon in Hades waren visueel de beste scènes van de film, waarin beide personages veel beter uit de verf kwamen dan in de bovenwereld. Agamemnon vertelt over hoe zijn vrouw Clytemnestra (Helena's half/tweelingzus) hem verraadde en doodde bij thuiskomst. Sinon lamenteert het 'verraad' door Odysseus, die hem nooit vertelde dat zij in het paard zaten, en de schande van vrijer Antinoüs, die zijn ingelote plaats in de oorlog afkocht bij de arme familie van Sinon. Zelfs Elliot Page was hier even heel verdienstelijk, al had mogelijk ook te maken met dat ze amper herkenbaar was door de zwarte aarde op het gezicht.

- Het visuele ontwerp van de cyclops was uitmuntend, en bovendien maar deels CGI.

- Met afstand het beste acteerwerk van de hele film werd gedaan door Robert Pattison als vrijer Antinoüs, en dat lijken professionele critici ook op te merken. De tweede plaats gaat naar Anne Hathaway, die op een aantal momenten een zeer overtuigende Penelope neerzette.

- In de slotscènes wordt Odysseus neergezet als iemand met een vorm van PTSD wegens de orgie van ongebreidelde wreedheid die de val van Troje was. Erg modern, maar wellicht fair. Waar het op de valreep nog even echt interessant werd, was toen Odysseus zichzelf neerzette als de architect en dader van de grootste misdaad tegen 'de wet van Zeus' (gastvrijheid) ooit begaan, en hij zichzelf daarmee zag als niets minder dan de inluider van het einde van beschaving als zodanig. De vergelijking met Oppenheimer valt hiermee moeilijk te miskennen, al was de monoloog (zoals veel van het schrijfwerk in de hele film) wel weer erg op de neus. "We had a world of palaces and trade", en dan HEEL LETTERLIJK: "Our age of Bronze... is collapsing."

Conclusie

Nolan maakte de personages eigentijds en hun vertolking was vlak - met uitzondering van Antinoüs. En dat terwijl de magie van Homerus juist is dat Grieken uit de bronstijd voor de moderne geest heel extreme en exotische mensen zijn, uit een denkwereld die echt niet meer bestaat.

Eindcijfer: 7,5

Beste scene uit hele film (geluid aan)

Odysseus rising with bow in hand, intense red lighting, and raw warrior presence in that Odyssey scene is unforgettable.
Reminds me of Lord Rama lifting Shiva’s mighty bow 🔥
Have you watched The Odyssey yet? What did you think? 👀 pic.twitter.com/7d9gpAlB1y

— Unscripted Raw (@RealTalkChaos) July 18, 2026

Banger

Social

De parallel tussen Oppenheimer en Nolans Odysseus

Social

De enige manier

Social

Veel heeft de derde plek van Max Verstappen bij de Grand Prix van België niet te betekenen. Interessanter is het kruispunt waarop hij zich náást de baan bevindt, en dat ook in Spa centraal staat: weggaan bij Red Bull, toch blijven, of helemaal stoppen?

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

For the roughly 50 million Americans who run regularly, it is rarely just exercise. It is therapy, meditation, community and identity, often all at once. When the body finally says no, the loss can be staggering. (NYTimes gift link, archive)

Some highlights from special collections libraries' blogs this week.
Yale Library displays tarot treasures in new Morgan Library exhibition
A body of knowledge: 500 years of book collecting at the RCP (video)
The Beautiful Game in the Stacks: Reading World Cup History
"...not to be altogether perfect..." 18th century eclipse maps at the Bodleian

George Russell has branded his Belgian Grand Prix weekend as "not good enough", after the Mercedes driver was eliminated on the opening lap following a collision with Lewis Hamilton.

Avoiding the "lethal trifecta" – access to private data, exposure to untrusted content, and an external communication path – is difficult enough when working with AI agents. But the use of connectors – integrations with third-party services like Gmail or Slack – expands the scope of concern in a way that makes it exceedingly difficult to reason about defensive due diligence. PromptArmor, an AI security biz, recently looked at how OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude work with connectors. The results are not reassuring. Shankar Krishnan, co-founder of PromptArmor, told The Register in an email that enterprise adoption of connectors and the rate of change among connectors helped focus concern on the connector ecosystem. Connectors share some of the risks of MCP servers, upon which connectors are based. "For connectors, the risks are mostly about the type of tools, what they can do, where the data is going, and what is being done with the data," said Krishnan. Introduced about a year ago, connectors (for Claude or ChatGPT) have been going through a lot of changes recently. According to PromptArmor, 931 of 2,517 connectors (37 percent) changed over the six-week period from mid-May to the end of June. So any security assumptions based on declared capabilities may no longer be valid. PromptArmor found that 1,686 new tools were added to connectors that were already live, creating new ways for AI models to operate on user data and interact with third-party services. It also found that 1,127 tool descriptions were rewritten, potentially changing how and when an AI model decides to invoke a tool. And there are a variety of other changes, all of which potentially could raise data security concerns or invalidate governance assumptions. PromptArmor cited the Dropbox connector as an example, noting that at the start of the study it exposed eight tools and by the end of the study that number had risen to 24. It went from having three write-capable tools to 10, and from zero potentially destructive tools to four. Permission scopes changed and injected instructions for the model were added. If that weren't enough to worry about, connectors can behave like intrusive websites that run dozens of tracking scripts: connectors commonly send data to additional AI services. PromptArmor evaluated all 7,517 tools used by 487 Claude connectors and found that 189 of the connectors, or about 2 in 5, are likely to call additional AI services. "As an example, if your Claude agent activates Zoom's connector tool to search meetings with natural language, and passes in a query containing sensitive data, Zoom AI may send that data to any of its ten AI subprocessors in order to generate a response from one of eight different model families it uses," the security company said. "The issue is that most teams approving connectors are evaluating and considering the connector – unaware that the vendor is calling more AI services, adding new subprocessors and terms," explained Krishnan. "So someone concerned about AI risks who has evaluated Claude may not be aware of AI services that the connector is calling externally." Anthropic's connector documentation acknowledges that its security controls don't necessarily cover third-party data processing. "Connected services process data on their own infrastructure, under their own terms, which may be located outside the United States," the AI biz explains. "Settings that control where Claude's inference runs, like the US-only inference setting on Enterprise plans, don't change where third-party services operate." Krishnan said that connectors vastly expand the risk surface for attacks. "Bringing agents new sensitive data, new untrusted data, and new sensitive actions to take, the blast radius of an attack explodes," he said. "We recently highlighted a risk in Codex where even with one connector – email – the combination of sensitive and untrusted data enables exfiltration of legal and financial communications." ®

PLATEAU DE SOLAISON (ANP) - Remco Evenepoel heeft de vijftiende etappe in de Tour de France gewonnen. De Belg van Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe ging in de rit van Champagnole over 183,9 kilometer naar Plateau de Solaison als eerste over de streep voor geletruidrager Tadej Pogačar.

Pogačar gaat aan de leiding in de Ronde van Frankrijk. De Sloveen zag zijn naaste concurrent Jonas Vingegaard op 20 kilometer voor de streep na een val uitvallen. Evenepoel staat nu tweede in het klassement.