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It was good. Well sung and played. Production mostly worked, though a couple of choices that probably worked better on paper than on stage. But I will never be a Gounod superfan.

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First of the new season. (Roméo et Juliette by Gounod).

OP in front of the opera house in Brussels.

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OK, I remember how this went ten years ago on old Twitter. Time to put wax in my ears.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 28/09/2026

I find this odd - not that you're wrong. It is wildly *popular* in the EU. From spring 26, the percentage of people answering "I am for it" to "What it your opinion of the free movement of European citizens to live and work anywhere in the EU"

Results from the EU Barometer 2026. 86% of all EU citizens are in favour of free movement, ranging from 96% in Luxembourg to 77% in Austria

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It’s good that even at St Pancras, at the platform, Eurostar is preparing you for the fact that you’re going to be almost but not quite totally offline for a couple of hours.

A clip of a phone screen showing E (which does not stand for Excellent, ask your parents kids)

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Very solid. Also like the unnecessary heroic boob, as in the monument to the pigeon-solider, near my flat. Too busy admiring the pigeon to spot the wardrobe malfunction.

Statue of a bare-breasted woman looking at a pigeon. The inscription reads "Au Pigeon-Soldat - Aan de Oorlogsduif" (To the Pigeon Soldier).
A longer inscription around the edge reads "To the Belgian pigeons and pigeon-handlers who died for the fatherland".

020

Why David though? (My city flag: St Michael defeating the Devil, also entirely unrelated to anything that happened here)

Flag of the city of Brussels (Belgium). On a background divided into green (top) and red (bottom), a gold silhouette of the Archangel Michael trampling the devil)

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Interesting interview with not-yet-candidate François Hollande, and I did enjoy his very presidential grammar in this answer. (Trs in ALT) www.lesoir.be/773357/artic...

A ce stade, vous voulez être utile dans le débat, mais personne ne s'est emparé de vos propositions... Votre nom n'a pas été cité lors du débat entre les cinq candidats de cette primaire...

Ne participant pas moi-même à cette primaire, c'eut été assez paradoxal qu'ils reprennent mes propositions. Ou alors il n'aurait pas fallu qu'ils se présentent...

SOIR: At this stage, you want to be useful in the debate - your name wasn’t mentioned during the debate between the five candidates in this primary.

HOLLANDE: Not being a candidate in this primary, it would have been quite paradoxical if they had taken up my propositions. If they had, they wouldn’t have needed to put themselves forward as candidates.

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For those of us who grew up listening to Test Match Special on the radio, the gasometers at the Oval being turned into “iconic” apartments and penthouses is a symbol of the times.

Oval Cricket Ground in Kennington. The gasometer is being converted into penthouses and flats.

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This evening’s entertainment was Much Ado about Nothing at the Globe in London. Ten quid is easily the best price for two hours wit and fun inside the M25. Hell, you wouldn’t even be able to buy me two pints for that.

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Something that looks good on the surface but you shouldn’t examine too closely?

Lloyds bank advert claiming that Club Lloyds is “the gift horse of bank accounts”

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Home side 1-0 up with four minutes to go. Not a classic but nice to see this blast from the past putting in a shift.

Andy Carroll moments after clattering an opposition defender.

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Little groundhop to Dagenham & Redbridge v Hampton & Richmond Borough, probably the longest fixture name in the league today.

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Anyway I’m clearly properly rooted now as this flat lowland landscape (though of Nederland not Belgium) did give me a warm familiar feeling.

Mindert Hobbema, the avenue at Middelharnis (1689). An avenue of tall thin trees disappear towards a town under a blue/grey halfbewolkt sky.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 25/09/2026

The malfunctioning monitor on my Eurostar is giving an infernal tinge to its message.

Monitor showing someone walking through a dark train with hellish red light streaming through the windows.

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No one will tell you Plastic wasn't a one hit wonder. Some may say he was a no-hit wonder.

Wikipedia entry on Plastic Bertrand, specifically on his producer's claim that it was the producer on the soundtrack

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 24/09/2026

British passport? Why yes, here it is.

A packet of crumpets in my work bag, about to head home on the Eurostar.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 23/09/2026

Lunchtime in Kraków and on the third day it stopped raining.

Wawel Castle from the bottom of Grodzka Street

The OP in the Rynek with the clock tower and end of Sukkienice behind.

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Berlin! It's just like being Berlin! It's just like being Berlin. (Except the far right are only on 3%). via @europeelects.bsky.social

Belgium (Brussels), Ipsos poll:
PVDA PTB-LEFT: 23% (-3)
PS/Vooruit-S&D: 22% (+3)
MR/Anders-RE: 16% (+1)
Ecolo/Groen-G/EFA: 13% (+1)
LE/CD&V-RE|EPP: 10%
DéFI-*: 5% (-1)
N VA-ECR: 5%
VB-PfE: 3%
TFA-*: 1% (-1)
+/- vs. 01-09 June 2026
Fieldwork: 08-15 September 2026
Sample size: 600

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Definitely problems with acronyms and proper names "Sherry Arnstein here, for instance, translating a Polish speaker". Also OIDP became Oy Ip.

As early as 1969, Cherry Einstein described an 8-step participatory ladder.

010

I think this is the first time I've been at a conference with live AI text interpretation. Watching it translate something being spoken in English into Dutch, it's pretty accurate. Not 100% but maybe 95%.

Dutch text, machine translated from English live.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 20/09/2026

How the latest polls in Belgium would provisionally translate into seats (by Pascal Delwit, and he points out the election isn't till 2029, so read with caution).

A table of text, headline is that VB would be the largest party with 26 seats, PTB second jointly with N-VA on 22, then PS on 19, MR on 14, CD&V and Vooruit on 12 each, Engagés on 11, Ecolo and Groen on 4 each and Défi with 1.

131

Well I made it since June without taking a flight, thanks to a long summer break. But here we are again.

Departure gate at Brussels airport. Heading for Krakow.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 20/09/2026

A quick #HeritageDays visit to Les Goujons, a 1975-7 housing development by the Foyer Anderlechtois / Anderlechtse Haard, very well renovated in 2020-25. The entrance halls (Earth, Sun and Moon) have 1975 murals - as yet unrestored - by Edmond Dubrunfaut, details in photos, description in ALT.

Sun: Adam and Eve feel rain for the first time. The equal footing of the couple and the red scarf on Eve’s neck symbolise the struggle for gender equality.

Earth: a woman in childbirth and a parent giving a child support to jump.

Moon: Einstein along with Rosamund Franklin and others teach the Apollo astronauts. A Saturn V rocket is behind them.

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Anthony Zacharzewski @anthonyzach.be · 19/09/2026

Nice to go into the international break (and over a month without a home game) on a solid 3-0 against #svzw #rsca #anderlecht

110

There is a line in keep coming back to from Czeslaw Milosz’s “The Captive Mind” (written about art under communism) where he assumes the voice of a frustrated communist functionary, faced with the refusal of society to bend to his rational and logical model of the world.

Why won't the equation work out as it should, when every step is logical? Do we have to use non-Euclidian geometry on material as classic, as adapt-able, and as plastic as a human being? Won't the ordinary variety satisfy him? What the devil does a man need?

120

Great Replacement Theory for Zeeuws-Vlaanderen but it's Belgians.

Map of most common foreign citizenship by municipality in NL, all the communes of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen have Belgian as the most common foreign citizenship.

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Great reusable headline in The [European] Parliament magazine. Probably been on a macro somewhere since about 1995.

Warsaw eyes the EU as US commitment fades.

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