Norman Balon, legendary landlord of Soho's Coach & Horses and self-styled rudest landlord in London, has left the stage at 99. A fixture of Soho life for six decades and forever woven into the mythos of Jeff Bernard via Keith Waterhouse and Peter O'Toole. A long life, well lived.
Sonny Rollins was great, and I'm really enjoying The Bridge right now, but man, I find his passing sad mostly because he was the last real connection to one of the most incredible stretches of human artistic invention that was post-war jazz.
I don't know anything about The Happy Mondays outside of being completely mesmerized every time I watch this video. Stumbled upon it again in my bookmarks, and I can't look away. I love it.
Class is in session. Take a trip behind the camera with director Romain Gavras on STORM, Gener8ion and Yung Lean's ferocious schoolyard fever dream.
Choreographed with razor precision by Damien Jalet, the viral music sensation is now streaming on MUBI globally.
With @romaingavras, @surkin, @yunglean2001, @damienjalet
Shot by @romy_gvbt
Editing by @joshmannox
do you understand what Google's AI just did to an artist..
His entire Google account got permanently banned. Not just Drive. Gmail.. YouTube.. Every single service..
His appeal was rejected. No human reviewed it. An algorithm decided his life's work was a violation.
He never shared the files publicly. It was a private backup of his own creations. The AI flagged it anyway - probably the filename or art style - and that was enough.
- Google banned a developer's 14-year-old Gmail account over a research dataset that contained no illegal content
- Google expanded its automated ban policy in October 2025 - violations now trigger immediate termination with zero warning period
- No lawsuit against Google for wrongful account termination has ever succeeded in US courts
Your Google account is not yours. You are renting access to your own digital life from a company whose AI can end it in seconds - with no appeal, no human, and no recourse.
The 1970s formations of The Ramones in NYC and the Sex Pistols in London led to an explosion of the punk, goth, and emo countercultures which eventually spread into Mexico.
By 2008, these decades of subcultural evolution hit a breaking point in Mexico City, sparking a massive street brawl between 'traditional' Punks and 'new' Emos over the soul of the aesthetic.
In a finale as surreal as the conflict itself, the war was only stopped when a group of Hare Krishnas marched into the middle of the riot, subduing the angry teenagers with chants, drums, and flowers proving that the only thing more powerful than a subculture feud is a well-timed tambourine.