Neil Finlayson

@JoyceCarolOates Yes and ‘Deserto Rosso’ too is quite wonderful. Antonioni’s existentialism and sense of alienation seems more relevant than ever.

finally saw the complete Antonioni trilogy, "L'Avventura," "La Notte," & "L'Eclisse." (1960. 1961, 1962) Highly atmospheric, mysterious & (seemingly) directionless, often beautiful to observe but probably, for viewers in 2026, too possessed of a European/existentialist languor to be emotionally engaging. in each self-consciously stylized film a female figure moving about in a landscape or cityscape as if mesmerized by what she sees would seem to be Antonioni's homage to the ineffable power of the visual no doubt shared by all filmmakers; Fellini does this also, & notably in the US Scorsese, but it is human faces that most mesmerize these directors while for Antonioni & Bertolucci it is cityscapes--walls, shadows, windows, rooftops, high-rise apartment buildings & the spaces between them, street lights, windblown leaves & clouds.

Obituary - Norman A Macdonald (1956-2026) trib.al/XnUhYv5

George Hirst has promise and presence but can he put the ball in the onion bag? I’m thinking George and @32watto would be an interesting World Cup option.

@AmericanGwyn They all wanted to play ‘Smoke on the Water’?

A number of my favorite novelists played guitar. I have some theories about why, but can’t quite articulate them. (Joyce & Cormac pictured below).

… inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those–all the others the departed God took away with him.”

This is how it ends: “The Infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as in Extension, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, …

Alexandre Koyré’s ‘From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe’ describes the revolutionary period of around 150 years in which conceptions of the cosmos were transformed.

We could argue that Trump 1 was a one-off, a freak occurrence. But electing him *twice*? Raises reasonable questions about what kind of electorate would do that.

Watching Trump teeter on the edge of blowing up the world economy because of a combination of hubris, strategic incoherence, mendacity and outright stupidity, might be the most extraordinarily depressing thing I have observed in my entire life, or read about in any other period.

@SkySportsPL “Score a goal”

Thomas Frank tears a page from his notepad for the Spurs players 📝👀

@martinmbauer On the physics front are you interested in SPAD sensors for quantum applications?

@martinmbauer Somebody (you?) could pick up the trail on the Riemann Hypothesis where Jerome Franel left off, Farey sequences, the rationals, eigenvalues of the Free Jacobi Matrix, Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A9r%… It’s not really physics but it’s hard enough!

„If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems. And that's a mistake.“ Frank Wilczek

More of Gorsuch torching Kavanaugh.

@caroline_binnie The closest we ever came to Simon and Garfunkel. on.soundcloud.com/fKLHyQX0rqtvp9…

@neilfinlayson Oh thanks, I will listen tomorrow.

A little known Scottish record from an unknown Scottish band @caroline_binnie hope you like it! on.soundcloud.com/gcTqCIcFDnhDcW…

Watching the movies and thinking real slow. Einstein described Bohr's 1913 work on quantum theory, hydrogen and the structure of atoms as "the highest form of musicality in the sphere of thought".

@ProfBrianCox @ChrisFTID Is it infinite (and eternal)? Cf. Alexandre Koyré

@ChrisFTID Because it’s old :-)

Brian why does the universe need to be so big? @ProfBrianCox

@northumbriana And bring back the Fairs Cup!

Brilliant idea. There may be some trifling civil engineering challenges to overcome, but I’m all in

@Grady_Booch Is that what happened yesterday?