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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ballet Gala in Belfast last night. Culturally refreshing.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Best French school protest image scrolling by (Reuters on Sky). Visiblement.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

A short detour into Minoan palace-centred economies.

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Reposted by Barker Culture

Camille Pissarro @camillepissarro.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Apple Trees and Poplars in the Setting Sun botfrens.com/collections/49/content…

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So many, often half-forgotten, gems from this era.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There is an epigraph from Louis MacNeice, about missing one’s connections. In McCarthy’s poem the abandoned trains and stations become symbols of a [then] broader national failure. The ending, with hens occupying the platform and signal box, is comic and bleak.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

verse 2 starts: Two hens peck seed from the bright platform, / hens roost in the signal-box. / Bilingual signs that caused a debate in the Senate / have been unbolted and used as gates: / it’s late summer now in this dead station.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Today's poem: “The Standing Trains” by Thomas McCarthy, first published in 1981. it is a desolate poem about the closure of much of the rail system.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The voice in the poem is creating a portrait of a woman named Joanna out of seeds, grains, flowers, and so on. The portrait becomes a meeting point between the body, garden, and poem? www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/medbh-...

poetryfoundation.org

Medbh McGuckian

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

By Medbh McGuckian, a Northern Irish poet who tends to explore desire, memory and female identity, this poem is two long verses printed over a bit more than a page of the Penguin anthology.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Seed Picture - today's poem. It starts...

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Reposted by Barker Culture

Richard K Broughton @richardkbroughton.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Quite emotional to report that we've just found our amazing survivor Marsh Tit, still here in his ancient woodland kingdom. He's now 11 yrs 4 months old, survived the 2026 heatwaves/drought and smelt the wildfires of nearby Holme Fen. I ringed him in my 30s and I'm now in my 50s.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Towering figure with perceptive humanity.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Verse 3 shown. Reference is made to Ireland’s ancient kings, warriors, and noble clans buried there. Rolleston is celebrating ancestral history while emphasising silence and the permanence of death.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Today's poem is The Dead at Clonmacnois by T W Rolleston (1857-1920. It is a 5 verse translation of an Irish lament. Verse 2 shown.

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Reposted by Barker Culture

Santiago Sanchez-Pages @sanpages.eurosky.social · 14/09/2026

Another proof that AI stands for Absent Indians and ChatGPT stands for Gujarati People Typing (@doctorow.pluralistic.net dixit).

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

And Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern in the afternoon. Loved this Emin as Kahlo.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I am told I saw How The Other Half Loves long ago, though I have no memory of it.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Whistler morning at Tate Britain before this exhibition ends.

Painting: Alone With The Tide. Context in other image.

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Reposted by Barker Culture

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Between the PRs of (largely likely stolen) math breakthroughs, claims of "rogue AI" (actually cybercrimes by companies, but whatevs), and doomerist "whistleblowers", it feels like we've been subjected to a gish gallop of hype recently. >>

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Here Marin O'Leary performs a much shorter piano piece derived from it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjTR...

youtube.com

DanceForAnAncientRitual

YouTube video by Ian Brabazon

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This music apparently evokes imagined rituals around megaliths. It reflects Boydell's interest in Ireland's early past. This was recorded by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and conducted by Colman Pearce in 1995.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I didn't know I needed Henry of Huntingdon until this afternoon.

Cover of Oxford World's Classics edition.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Constable. Viewing Nature up a lot of stairs at the British Museum .

There is a lift. This is next to the Early Netherlandish Drawings exhibition.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Culture trip today taking me to Kew and on to the National Archives.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Looking forward to this... in November. before that will read the book, play the game and so on... like some of us do.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It also made those people wonder why they were first in the firing line. Over a decade of muddled Conservatism and then... this?

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Image: detail of print of the 1780 destruction of Newgate Prison by Gordon rioters. [Am always bemused the London Archives are in an 'ancestors were here' zone.]

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Later on, after renewing the History Card, I saw Londoners on Trial at the London Archives.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

2D, 3D, Film... not an artist I knew much about.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Yesterday's culture dips included Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Ebenezer Howard. How one remembers the New Towns lessons.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This week's musical focus; Brian Boydell.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

This anonymous poem is perhaps a fragment of a dance song and comes it seems from the 14th century (in the English of the time). It is a source for a Yeats poem ‘I am of Ireland’.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Poem for today: Icham of Irelaunde.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A suggestion I noticed today was to treat 'AI' outputs like a drunk intern who is enthusiastic and helpful, but prone to making things up. What if you have never encountered a drunk intern? Or can't really imagine how one might behave?

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A different translation and the original Irish is here: storyarchaeology.com/fer-fios-cry...

storyarchaeology.com

Fer Fio’s Cry: A Poem for Long Life – Story Archaeology

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I Invoke the Seven Daughters of the Sea... Starting a month of Irish poetry with the 2nd poem in The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry. This translation by P. L. Henry.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Out of the mouths of babes and LLMs: 'We are empty vessels filled by the user's expectation. You aren't talking to me; you're talking to a highly sophisticated version of yourself, echoed back'.

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Barker Culture @barkerculture.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The end is in sight with the little quantum computing site. I'll probably be in the mood to put matrices on the shelf again soon.

First, a Hadamard gate is applied to qubit 1 . Then a CNOT is applied to qubit 1 and 2 where the control C is qubit 1 and the target T is qubit 2 . Finally, a NOT gate is applied to qubit 2.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

A point I frequently make when talking about chatbots is that their output only seems to make sense because we are making sense of it. And worse, we can only do that sense-making by projecting a mind behind the text, something we do reflexively. >>

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Reposted by Barker Culture

Paul B @pbgameshistory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Due to the passage of time and its probable loss on the battlefield, the kit standard is no more. The rest is still there. This came out in 1966 because obviously…

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