(Belated) Jeudredi round-up 20/1/23

Tram lines

I’ve found it hard to stay off Twitter, for all it’s being run by a right wing megalomaniac. My friends are still there, and after 13 years I’m used to sharing my inanities with the world. Perhaps I should try Substack Chat… but in the meantime, the Verge has a long read on the first ninety days of Elon Musk at Twitter, told from the perspective of the team rather than the entitled man-child.

Perhaps it’s a time of year thing, but there have been a lot of behind-the-scenes long reads out there this week, and I enjoyed getting an insight into the life of a tennis umpire in the Guardian.

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You read this Substack, so you probably like talking about politics. So do I - the third piece on political parties will be out next week, delayed by day-job crises. However, lots of people don’t, because it can be quite unpleasant, as activities go. A paper from Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck and Manuel Neumann looks at German attitudes to talking about politics, and what that means for “public talking” models of democracy such as citizen assemblies.

Radio-Télévision Brussels

📺 Belgian 24 hour news station LN24 has a long (90 minute!) programme interviewing and discussing Belgian politics with political scientist Dave Sinardet from VUB and UCL St Louis. It makes a change from taking a couple of sentences for a clip and it’s the chance to get a deeper story both of Dave’s analysis and also his experience of being a prominent political commentator in a small country where he knows most of the politicians [🇧🇪-🇫🇷]

🎧 If you want to get ahead of the story on the next big crypto collapse, Tortoise’s new Real Money series looks at Tether, the “stable coin” that enables people to switch between real money and crypto. Every cent of Tether should be backed by a real asset … but stand by to be surprised.

Vijfhoek

In the Cinquantenaire / Jubelpark, just by the museums, there is a casting workshop. Nothing to do with the next big Belgian cinema star, but a place where statues can be cast from moulds in the museum’s possession. It’s one of only three in Europe and VRT’s Markante Plekken gave us a tour. [🇧🇪-🇳🇱]

Opening on Monday, a new exhibition of art nouveau posters at Halles St-Géry / Sint-Gorikshallen looks worth a visit. It’s one of my favourite “drop in” museums in Brussels - a small space for free exhibitions and very easy to swing by when shopping or wandering around St-Kat.

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