The Joy of Six 1337

Susie Courtalt says the rise of toxic masculinity and the war on 'woke' threaten women’s rights around the world: "For whatever reason, and there may be many, a new archetype of leader has emerged in the world and is fuelling this trend. Pressure put on the Romanian authorities to free the Tate brothers and allow them to fly to the USA can only be explained by the new incumbents in the White House and Elon Musk’s continued support of them." 

"The most striking aspect of the new guidelines is the missing subject: class. The word 'class' does not appear once in the document. Nor does 'poverty'. Yet, few issues are more pertinent in evaluating offenders’ social background." Kenan Malik on the real two-tier justice system.

"This is a rollicking good read, written in an informal style, and enlivened by cartoons, which works as a scholarly and accessible account of the so-called reproducibility crisis in biomedical research." Dorothy Bishop reviews 'Unreliable: Bias, Fraud, and the Reproducibility Crisis in Biomedical Research' by Csaba Szabo.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams celebrates Robert Marsham’s 'Indications of Spring'. This 222-year record of flora and fauna events on one Norfolk estate still informs climate studies today.

Mark Carrigan warns academics that Bluesky will trap them, just as Twitter did in the past.

"It’s my guess that, even within ten years, the painting was an embarrassment to the Perrots - not because it was idolatrous, but because the Book of Tobit was relegated to the Apocrypha . ... The presence of Tobias’s dog, together with the exorcism of an evil spirit by burning a fish’s innards, added to idea that the Apocrypha was full of 'shameful lies, horrible blasphemies, vain vanities, plain contradictions, ridiculous fooleries'." Annette Rubery goes to see an Elizabethan wall painting in Stratford-upon-Avon.