Alix Mortimer

@alixmortimer.bsky.social

1528 Followers 1464 Following

I(i)mpact and engagement for my brilliant colleagues in politics, economics, social sciences @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social. Often I dream of islands. 🚢 ships 🏺archaeology 🏰 medieval history 🇭🇷 učim Hrvatski

Thor: is he though?
Varde's second deputy mayor, Sandie Eis Ravn, said the campaign was aimed at informing tourists at the request of local businesses. "If you are visiting somewhere and you know there is a wolf in the nearby forest, to make sure you have the right code of conduct when you meet this creature," she said.
Rene Artois in Allo Allo inspecting an empty wine glass
About three quarters of a chocolate loaf cake on a kitchen counter. It is a mid-chocolatey brown with a dimpled top and some chocolate chips visible inside
Mel Gibson explaining things to Jim Caviezel’s bloodied Christ on set
Beautiful cat with tortoiseshell and a white muzzle and front on a sun lounger next to a couple of notebooks and Carl R. Rogers’ On Becoming Person: a Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. The cat appears to be holding a highlighter.
Crystal Palace Park event listings on Livenation 26 June - The Offspring 3 July - Snow Patrol, Editors etc 4 July - Alanis Morissette, Skunk Anansie etc
Spain v Austria
Olenna Tyrell, about to drink poison
Mac and Gordon in Local Hero, drinking whiskey at the bar
David Suchet as Poirot with his Crème de menthe
That stupid survey. 81% woke, 19% chud 42% techbro, 58% neo-luddite 47% hopepilled, 53% doomer 88% Davos 12% Dubai Your closest match Zohran Mamdani
25 bars of brightly and softly coloured French soaps with their fragrances stamped on them arranged in a block on a dark oak table. It is a shaded indoor atmosphere and there is a general air of the heatwave beyond.
A second plane has hit the Twin Towers meme
Top AI result from a google search: ‘everything is text You are touching on the famous literary and philosophical concept (popularized by Jacques Derrida) that everything we experience-from a book to a skyscraper or a social interaction —is a "text" that can be interpreted. If you are looking to decode, create, or analyze the "texts" in your immediate surroundings, here are some actionable ways to do it right here in the London Borough of Bromley: • Deciphering Local Signs & Documents: Paste any photo or PDF of a confusing local sign, receipt, or council notice here. I can translate, summarize, or explain it for you.
• Visit a museum. Study each painting, sculpture, or exhibit without the need to figure anything out. • Catch up with family over a ridiculously long lunch. • Work on a puzzle while listening to music or chatting with a friend. • See to two movies at an actual movie theatre, back-to-back.
FIFA World Cup 2026 matches Group L England v Croatia 17 Jun 21:00
Election results by party Local Conservatives 35 36% Labour 8 17% Reform UK 6 21% Liberal Democrats 6 11% Chislehurst Matters 3% I Green Party 12% Better Bromley < 1% Independent < 1% Turnout: 50%
Following the 2022 election and subsequent by-elections and changes of allegiance up to July 2025, the composition of the council was: Conservative 34 Labour 12 Liberal Democrats 5 Independent 3 Chislehurst Matters 3 Reform 1 Total 58
Blackadder III: Vincent Hanna says “And good evening, Colin” to Colin the Dachshund
Map of a village called Wyre Piddle
Pair of adjacent timeline skeets @mindflakes.bsky.social The animals are building something vast and mysterious in the deepest part of the forest. Try not to worry about it. @goodtrailcams.bsky.social <image of a deer leaping along a forest track towards the camera, only because of something to do with the camera lens its forelegs are unnaturally distended towards you like in a hall of illusions>
Kier Starmer at lectern: That’s Real Britain
Map of the Holy Roman Empire and its many little bits.
Little notepad with Office for National Statistics logo at the bottom. I am very easily pleased.
The Day Today
As the US-China rivalry intensifies, both states are mobilizing an array of tools - including tariffs, financial sanctions, export restrictions, and company blacklists - in a bid to strengthen their relative position within the global economy. These dynamics have generated profound challenges for Germany. Facing mounting pressure from both sides, its deep economic entanglements render it unable to align with either superpower or to effectively hedge between them. Moving beyond macro-level (aggregate trade data) and micro-level (case studies of] individual corporations) analyses, this paper offers the first systematic meso-economic mapping of large-cap and mid-cap German industrial firms' exposures to US and Chinese coercion. We show how the variegated internationalization of German firms produces sharply divergent corporate dependencies and risk profiles. Germany's automotive and mechanical-engineering firms are most deeply enmeshed within China, while its digital-telecom firms have the strongest ties to the US. German semiconductor, chemical and pharmaceutical firms sit between these divergent orientations. The heterogeneity across and within the major clusters of German business militates against the emergence of a coherent and comprehensive national strategy for Germany. By advancing a meso-level account of economic coercion, our paper challenges prevalent assumptions of cohesive state interests that predominate in geoeconomic analysis.
Kryten to Cat in Red Dwarf: “A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One, we don’t have any defensive shields, and two, we don’t have any defensive shields. Now technically speaking I know that’s only one flaw but it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.”
Excel dialogue box screenshot: Frozen rows won’t scroll
The U.S. Development Finance Corp., part of the federal government, was tasked with implementing the $20 billion plan, an "America First"-style insurance program, led by American insurers. This U.S.-centric idea ran counter to the market realities, according to industry executives. Maritime war risks policies are sold mostly out of Lloyd's of London, with foreign insurers covering foreign ships and cargo. "There's a whole ecosystem around war risks," said David Smith, head of marine with broker McGill and Partners. "It's very rare that U.S. insurers position themselves anywhere near that particular ecosystem."
A few ships made the crossing in recent days, some of them associated with Iranian oil. Most shipowners remain too wary to risk the passage. Another reality is that the insurance safety net doesn't address the core reason ships aren't sailing, according to shipowners and insurance brokers. "It's more about the safety of the crews rather than taking on insurance for damages," said Jerry Kalogiratos, Chief Executive of Capital Clean Energy Carriers, which runs more than 20 LNG carriers. Insurance for ships in the region is readily available, with offers being made but not taken up, according to brokers. "Lloyd's is open for business," said Marcus Baker, global head of marine and cargo at insurance broker Marsh.
The anxiety I and many others felt at that time, meant a whole generation has now become vaccine sceptic, from trendy clean-eating "crunchy mums" to whole ethnic groups. According to research carried out by the University of Bristol and King's College London in 2021, people from Bame groups (25 per cent) were twice as likely as white people (13 per cent) to report believing (wrongly) that the only reason a coronavirus vaccine was being developed is to make money for Big Pharma. Many of us were lulled into conspiracy theories online, which included misinformation about life-saving vaccines
<some text removed due to limit> <My highlight> The US may decline: a civil war could even break out, although this seems unlikely, given its large full-time, well-equipped police force, military, and intelligence agencies. Even if it were to happen, the Global Goliath might be shocked for a few years or even a decade, but it is difficult to imagine how it would trigger a global societal collapse. </my highlight> And the US staying as a stable, coherent society is also not an antidote to our global woes. Remember that it was during the 195os, 60s, and 7os, when elite competition was low and wealth equality higher, that the US built a nuclear stockpile that could destroy the world and had the largest acceleration in its environmental impact. Diminishing returns on extraction remains important and relevant. Yet there is now a new and more dangerous curse: global existential risk. The global system of extraction now creates threats and vulnerabilities which could destroy the whole world. EVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE The most likely fate of the Global Goliath is self-termination. The pressures that have been selected for over time - larger populations, more disease, greater military capacity, and economic exploitation (catego-rized earlier as babies, bombs, bacteria, and barbarism') - may have been evolutionarily advantageous for individual empires, but now underpin the catastrophic risk we face today. Bigger, more interconnected populations mean worse disease outbreaks; stronger militaries mean more damaging arms races; and barbarism is the economic backbone of the systems that produce carbon, weapons, and dangerous technology.
I wonder too what modern audiences will make of this pair of doomed lovers. Cathy is manipulative and Heathcliff is an abuser. Are we supposed to be hoping they get together? To pull
Let that land for a second. If Al is smarter than most PhDs, do you really think it can't do most office jobs?
A plastic(?) snowman on fire against a blissful sunny Adriatic backdrop.
Screenshot of instagram showing beautiful Adriatic scene with a calm sea, blue sky, little wooded island in the middle distance etc and in the foreground is a burning wooden snowman surrounded by children with jaunty music playing. The caption says Dječe maškare (children’s masquerade) followed by the scary clown emoji.
Albania’s black double-headed eagle on red background
St Mark’s Cathedral, the one with the tiled shields on the roof, at night with a beautiful 30ft high Christmas tree lit with garlands of lights and candy canes
Cold grey frozen lake in Crystal Palace Park with blue pedaloes in background and a lot of white gulls in the mid ground standing on the surface, I swear they look puzzled
Bromley, London 8 degrees Zagreb -8 degrees
Screenshot of weather app showing “5 degrees. Wintry mix.”
Bowl with turkey, roast potatoes, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, carrots, ball of stuffing and one pig in blanket
Close up of a gold bauble with Croatia in red glitter and the Croatian red and white checkers. Literally someone did this with glue.
Two fir tree small branches in a blue glass bottle on a dark oak dining table, hung with white, gold and blue baubles
The Rightmove Roundup Alix's 2025 To celebrate 25 years of helping the nation make their move, we looked into Britain's 2025 home-hunting habits. But first, let's look at your year in homes... You spent 7 hours with us
The Two Ronnies news
The Two Ronnies, news/puns sketch
Tiny little yellow vans with smiley faces with the bugle logo of the Croatian postal service on the side
The investigation originated from a legal complaint submitted by Ezio Gavazzeni, a Milan-based writer who gathered evidence on the allegations, as well as a report sent to the prosecutors by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic.
https://bsky.app/profile/crownedwithlaurels.bsky.social/post/3m5dwaymct226
When the friend proposed that Watson debate the genes/IQ/race hypothesis with a leading scientist in that field, for a documentary, Watson wouldn't hear of it: "No, he's not good enough" to be in the same camera frame as me, Watson replied, the friend recalled. "He saw himself as smarter than anyone who ever actually studied this" - which Watson had not. Friends traced Watson's smartest-guy-in-the-room attitude, and his disdain for experts, to 1953. When he joined Crick at England's Cavendish laboratory, Watson knew virtually nothing about molecular structures or "the
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Al Overview FD+7 : The phrase "full of books and maps and easy chairs and sofas to sit by those one likes" is not a direct quote from Edith Wharton, but rather a paraphrase or interpretation of the kind of room and atmosphere she advocated for in her writing on interior design. It captures the essence of her ideas on creating a home that is personal, comfortable, and conducive to good conversation and connection, as detailed in her 1897 book, The Decoration of Houses, coauthored with Ogden Codman Jr.. Wharton criticized the overly ornate, cluttered, and impersonal Victorian interiors of her time. Instead, she championed spaces that were functional, simple, and reflected the personality and intellectual interests of their inhabitants. The idealized room described in your query embodies this philosophy:
Al Overview aD. : The phrase "full of books and maps and easy chairs and sofas to sit by those one likes" is a description of a comfortable and inviting room or house. This exact phrasing appears in the novel The House of Mirth by American author Edith Wharton, published in 1905. The full quote describes a vision of an ideal home: "A house full of books and maps and easy chairs and sofas to sit by those one likes-interspersed with a few good pictures, and a good cook" This vision is expressed by the character Lawrence Selden, offering a simple, comfortable ideal of domesticity in contrast to the extravagant and often empty social climbing of the Gilded Age society depicted in the novel.
Two posts @beijingpalmer.bluesky.social: after careful study, I believe only people born between 1975 and 1995 should be allowed to use the internet however even they will only be allowed to use it in the Internet Room
Five thin curly parsnips on a marble surface. The wind howls outside (not visible in picture but implied.)
In a section of the speech likely to annoy Farage, this included the prediction that a Reform government would dismantle the NHS, enable racism and misogyny, and roll back gun laws so British schools would have to teach children what to do in a mass shooting. The latter element comes from comments Farage made in 2014, when he was the UKip leader and called for a ban on handguns to be relaxed. A Reform source denied it was party policy, calling the Lib Dems "an irrelevant laughing stock"