#BlastFromThePast 13 yrs ago this date, I completed the stage run of my own directed modern rendition of Henri Purcell's Dido&Aeneas - which was blasphemous with the legacy it carried. Of all things I have done in my life, this one is something I am most proud of (1/n)
the Belgian Prime Minister today at the “One Europe, one market” event: "there are twice as many people working on compliance compared to innovation in Europe."
The details about the Tate brothers in this @newyorker profile are as sick as anything you will ever read. They are rapists, pornographers, traffickers - and heroes to the "conservative" MAGA movement
https://t.co/Zv2l52b9Id
On way to one of the bigger items on my life's bucket list - Test Match at Lords. Seeing the players up, close and personal in the long room.
Its taken quite a while to happen considering I moved to UK first time in 2008.
@NotAfangirll_ Harassment is a legit crime and he should have faced the law at the first instance. Which would also have had implication for his professional career as a result. Our opinions are formed by our experience. And i dont want to diminish yours in anyway.
It was a bad joke. Reflects the man's mentality. But getting fired over it - sorry I disagree. I/close friends (m/f) have been on dating apps long enough to know the toxic entitlement, bidding wars, explotation both sides can and do bring. Ostracise the socials is the right thing
@kinocow After the early trauma, it actually became fun - we became like chill flatmates, even cooperative to leave the whole apartment to the other person on some weekends when one of the 2 had a "guest" staying a bit longer.
Wimbledon exists because a lawn roller broke.
In 1877, a small croquet club in southwest London had a money problem. The heavy roller that flattened its lawns, the kind a pony pulled, had broken, and the club could not afford to fix it. It had only picked up lawn tennis a couple of years earlier, as people were losing interest in croquet. So a few members hit on a plan. They would put on a tournament of the new game and charge people to enter.
Twenty-two men signed up. Each paid an entry fee of one guinea, just over a pound, while about 200 people paid a shilling, small change, to watch a final that rain pushed back three days. The whole event made around £10 in profit, and the club finally got its roller fixed.
The man who won it was not even a fan of the game. Spencer Gore, a 27-year-old cricketer, found lawn tennis boring and figured it would never count as a serious sport. He came back the next year, lost in the final, and never played again. He did leave one mark, though. Gore was the first player to charge the net and hit the ball before it bounced, a move that would shape grass-court tennis for more than a century.
That broken-roller fundraiser turned into the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and the only one of the four biggest tournaments still played on grass. The US Open gave up grass back in the 1970s, and the Australian Open followed in the 1980s. Wimbledon held on to the surface the whole sport started out on.
Gore won 12 guineas for his trouble, about £13, plus a silver cup worth twice that. Today the champion walks away with £3 million, and even a player who loses in the very first round takes home £66,000. The crowd has changed too. About 200 turned up for that first final, while the 2025 tournament drew a record 548,770 over two weeks. All of it started with a broken roller and a club that decided to sell tickets.
@mayukh_panja The critical factor - the user looking at this data should have sufficient time and also sufficient creativity and skills to write tweets that gather attention isnt it.
In my case all of the above might be missing 😃
Mads Mikkelsen did a movie The Hunt. All voices on social media who are going after Zverev would do well to watch that movie. I am not equating the movie characters and what has been alleged here. But between what that movie shows and what Pistorious did is the whole spectrum.
Recently learned about Sunghyun Yoo, a Korean tailor who moved from Seoul to Naples in 2017 to learn how to become a bespoke tailor. While many East Asians take apprenticeships in Europe, often in Italy, most of them return to their home countries after their studies. Yoo decided to stay in Naples, where he has established his own workshop, which he named Sartoria Del Signore.
If you know a little about tailoring, then you can spot many of the hallmarks here of Neapolitan style: The soft shoulder line, extended front dart, high gorge, straight lapels, and slightly sweeping quarters. It's said that Vincenzo Attolini invented this style in the early 1900s when he worked as the head cutter for Rubinacci (then called London House).
Back then, traditional British tailoring tended to be more structured. A jacket was typically built with a stiff layer of haircloth, a layer of body canvas, and a fuzzy layer of felt called domette to prevent the prickly haircloth from poking through. Faced with clients who wanted lighter, more comfortable jackets for Naples's warmer clime, Attolini ripped out much of this structure — removing the domette entirely and reserving just a bit of haircloth at certain parts of the chest. The shoulder line was also minimally padded. The result is something that's not only lighter and more comfortable in the heat but also looks more relaxed and casual than its British counterpart.
Today, Neapolitan tailoring houses struggle to find apprentices. For good reason, most young people don't want to become bespoke tailors, as it takes a long time to learn the skills, and the future of this market is uncertain. Even when young people enter the tailoring industry, they are more likely to become content creators, businesspeople, marketers, or something similar. They don't want to be the people who draft patterns, cut, and sew.
Thus, it's great to see immigrants keep this craft alive. To me, it's never about the person's ethnicity, but rather their skills and mindset. Anyone can learn how to become a bespoke tailor. In Naples, there's a specific way of doing things that yields a particular silhouette. It's great to see Yoo carry this tradition forward at a time when it's at risk of disappearing.
Earlier this year, I had dinner with two bespoke tailors — one from Hong Kong, the other from Seoul. The second was studied under Antonio Pascariello, a master tailor in Naples who recently passed away. I remember asking both tailors a question about how to fit a difficult figure, and the Korean tailor gave an answer that I thought revealed a very Italian way of thinking. In this way, Italian traditions live on, regardless of the person's ethnicity.
If you're interested, you can follow Yoo on Instagram (look up sartoriadelsignore). As usual, I have no affiliation with him — this is not a paid post, as I don't do paid posts. Just some thoughts about this dying art and the role that immigrants play, even when they're from different cultures and backgrounds.
Munich transport does really well in pricing of the bicycle day ticket. In one hour I can be in the Bavarian Alps (right upto Lenggries) and pay less than 4eur for taking my bike with for the whole day. Combine this with the sub 60 eur monthly D-Ticket and its the best life !!
I don't know why any of you haters are surprised I'm the one actually engaging here.
You're the ones who've obsessively pored over the 10,000 photos, the 30,000 text messages, and the 128,000 emails from my hacked iCloud and stolen devices.
If I am anything, I am prolific.
You know what you won't find? Any of the most heinous, hateful things you keep posting about me.
What you'll find from me here is the same thing you found there.
Total transparency. Finally on my terms. Not yours.