Persepolis is one of the the few (only?) pieces of dissident literature very famous outside Iran which chronicles the plight of Iranian women without resorting to gross caricatures to satisfy westerners. RIP
For some reason, whilst gearing myself up for the World Cup I began to think of the team Yugoslavia could have fielded this summer had they not broken up in 1992. So, without further ado, here is the unofficial Yugoslav team/squad for the 2026 World Cup
"Blair won 3 general elections so you need to listen to him" yeah well Harold Wilson won four so I guess it's time for a 98% marginal tax rate on unearned income and price controls on milk.
@jeremydenk Not chatGPT, but i recently googled London buildings that are 300ft tall (to compare w/Pharos lighthouse). Its AI summary said the Shard is “the only 300ft building in London, standing at 309.6m”. It also told me “Goethe’s Wandrers Nachtlied is a poem by Johann Peter Eckermann”
No programme notes at all now at King’s Place. Is it just me or, given people have already bought tix, notes or texts/translations might be more helpful for the meagre 2 pages than long artist biogs?
JACOB COLLIER: and violins, could I get a pizzicato d, then up to g, yeah that's nice. flutes keep those quavers going. And piano, could I have a trill on your lowest b flat
Me: (closing piano lid) no sorry Jacob
JC: a trill on the b flat please piano
Me: no Jacob I won't do it
You’re telling me there’s a farm down that road? Just past Boots?
And before anyone replies, a local dairy à la Elm Road in Walton isn’t a farm.
What day’s she gone shopping? Monday? Tuesday? What state’s that beef going to be in by Sunday?
This is all so fucking tedious.
Mrs. Jenkins, 1970, walks down the high street with a wicker basket.
- Beef topside from Mr. Pearson, for Sunday
- Streaky bacon, sliced thick on the slicer
- Lamb's liver for Tuesday tea
- Pork sausages, made on the premises that morning
- A whole chicken, giblets in a paper bag inside
- Suet for the steak and kidney pudding
- Butter wrapped in greaseproof paper
- A wedge of Lancashire from the wheel
- Two dozen eggs from the farm down the road
- Double cream for the trifle
- A pound of dripping in a stoneware pot, for the chips
- Four kippers for Saturday breakfast
- A loaf baked that morning, four ingredients
Total: about £6.
She fed a husband and three children for the week, with leftovers for Monday. Nobody was overweight. Nobody had high cholesterol. Nobody was on any pills.
Her granddaughter, 2026, opens the Tesco app on the sofa.
- Six chicken breasts, water-injected
- "Low-fat" turkey mince
- Yoghurts with 14 ingredients per pot
- Flora "buttery" spread, palm oil and rapeseed
- A bottle of skimmed milk
- Pre-grated "mature" cheddar with anti-caking agent
- Two ready meals branded "Healthy Living"
- "No added sugar" cordial, three artificial sweeteners
- "Soft white medium" loaf, eleven ingredients
- "Fruit and nut" bars, glucose syrup and rapeseed oil
- Squeezable mayonnaise
- Pre-washed salad treated with chlorine
- Olive oil, for the "Mediterranean" diet she read about
Total: about £127.
She feeds herself and her husband for three days and orders again on Wednesday. She is, in her early forties, on statins. Her husband is on metformin.
The grandmother traded a butcher for a megafarm.
A cheese counter for an anti-caking agent.
A dairyman for a logistics chain.
Dripping for rapeseed oil.
A four-ingredient loaf for an eleven-ingredient one.
A wicker basket for an app.
She paid twenty times the price for worse food, less of it, and threw her health in as part of the deal.
The supermarket called this progress.
Mrs. Jenkins would have called it being had.
I read it in Harpers. Its literally in the Baffler this month. It's in Parapraxis. It's on the cover of N+1 bro. It's in The Nation. It's literally in NYT mag. I saw it in The Paris Review bro. I think it was in Apartamento. I caught it in The Drift, or maybe it was The Point
Here are some behind the scenes photos from the choir's performance at St. George's Episcopal Church, Nashville, on Sunday. Their next stop on their tour is Detroit. Details and final tickets for their concert at Christ Church Cranbrook this evening (19:00 EDT) are below.