This is actually fucking embarrassing for London - my place of birth. The messaging is offensive .

I’ll never understand the mindset of people so desperate to subsume the authority of our own Parliament under a foreign authority. Normally that’s only something you do after losing a war. And yet some people want to do this voluntarily.

"I vote for parties that cut spending & encourage hardcore capitalism. Then I cry about the inevitable consequences." Fucking idiot.

El Fattah is a scumbag who expressed racist anti-white and antisemitic views, called for the murder of zionist, meaning Jewish, civilians and called for London to be burned down and the police attacked. If I were Home Secretary I would revoke his citizenship today and deport him. Shabana Mahmood and Keir Starmer would do that now if they were serious about protecting Britain. People with these disgusting views have no place in the UK. His apology is manifestly insincere and was only issued when his sick comments were exposed. El-Fattah’s so-called apology even tried to justify his racism, antisemitism and support for violence by reference to his age at the time and conflict in Egypt. There is no excuse for at all.

Being a British citizen doesn't make you British.

A common assumption is that throughout history, people have experienced the same basic range of emotions. A radical field of history now challenges this assumption, Gal Beckerman reports. theatln.tc/KD2QRX9Y People tend to imagine that other people “have the exact same set of emotions that we have,” Beckerman writes. “We perform this projection on any number of human experiences: losing a child, falling ill, being bored at work. We assume that emotions in the past are accessible because we assume that at their core, people in the past were just like us, with slight tweaks for their choice of hats and of personal hygiene.” Rob Boddice, a leader in the field of the history of emotions and senses, mistrusts this universalism, a philosophy that emerged during the Enlightenment, when European intellectuals began to assume that all people share a common nature. Many critics now understand that they were attempting to exert power and order over a world that had recently become bigger and stranger. “By the time we get to our current globalized culture, in which a Korean thriller can win Best Picture at the Oscars and Latin pop stars dominate the U.S. charts, the notion that our emotional registers are all essentially alike feels self-evident,” Beckerman continues. “Boddice starts with the opposite premise, that we are not the same,” Beckerman writes. “Rather than being a constant—extending across space and time—human nature for Boddice is a variable and unstable category, one with infinite possible shades.” Although his approach might seem “squishy and postmodern,” Beckerman writes, Boddice’s research layers his own thinking on top of the most recent advances in neuroscience. At the link, read more about the field of study that is pushing historians to reconsider their assumptions about the people of the past. 🎨: Nicolás Ortega

A common assumption is that throughout history, people have experienced the same basic range of emotions. A radical field of history now challenges this assumption, Gal Beckerman reports. theatln.tc/KD2QRX9Y People tend to imagine that other people “have the exact same set of emotions that we have,” Beckerman writes. “We perform this projection on any number of human experiences: losing a child, falling ill, being bored at work. We assume that emotions in the past are accessible because we assume that at their core, people in the past were just like us, with slight tweaks for their choice of hats and of personal hygiene.” Rob Boddice, a leader in the field of the history of emotions and senses, mistrusts this universalism, a philosophy that emerged during the Enlightenment, when European intellectuals began to assume that all people share a common nature. Many critics now understand that they were attempting to exert power and order over a world that had recently become bigger and stranger. “By the time we get to our current globalized culture, in which a Korean thriller can win Best Picture at the Oscars and Latin pop stars dominate the U.S. charts, the notion that our emotional registers are all essentially alike feels self-evident,” Beckerman continues. “Boddice starts with the opposite premise, that we are not the same,” Beckerman writes. “Rather than being a constant—extending across space and time—human nature for Boddice is a variable and unstable category, one with infinite possible shades.” Although his approach might seem “squishy and postmodern,” Beckerman writes, Boddice’s research layers his own thinking on top of the most recent advances in neuroscience. At the link, read more about the field of study that is pushing historians to reconsider their assumptions about the people of the past. 🎨: Nicolás Ortega

New Year's Eve. 3pm.

If you want to hear, not me, but the normally mild-mannered @ProfAFinlayson, suggest that Britain might now be entering a pre-revolutionary phase, get your ears around this massive Christmas pressie of a Culture, Power, Politics Emergency Podcast. culturepowerpolitics.org/202…