The Tobacco Merchant’s House in Glasgow’s Merchant City is 250-year old building, owned and maintained by the Scottish Civic Trust, who work from the building. They are currently running a Just Giving page to help raise £250,000 for its upkeep.

The building at 42 Miller Street is the last of the Georgian villas known as the Virginia Tobacco Merchants’ houses to remain standing in Merchant City of Glasgow.

This area of the city was once the playground of the Glasgow “Tobacco Lords”, a group of slavers whose names adorn many of the streets and buildings in the area.

In fact, back in 2020, there was a campaign to have them renamed.

Anyway, just because the original proprietors were problematic, doesn’t mean it’s not a nice building we should look after. Visit the Scottish Civic Trust Just Giving page and donate, if you can.

Sharon Zhang from Truthout on Trump’s latest: Trump Uses Same Language Cited by ICJ in Genocide Ruling Against Israel.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to destroy the entirety of Iran and its population of 93 million people.

Referring to the threat, Oona Hathaway, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School said,

This will be exhibit A in future war crimes trials if he carries out his threats

If that were to come to pass, Trump would join a long list of present and former heads of state charged with war crimes, including both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Vladimir Putin, for his contribution in the illegal abduction of children from Ukraine and deportation into Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of war crimes in the Gaza war including starvation. Both he and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have been said to use “starvation as a method of warfare.”

Trumps threats have been condemned by a number of public figures including Pope Leo XIV and the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.

I recently picked up a couple of Guy Delisle books, doing what you’re not supposed to and literally judging them by their covers.

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City and Muybridge are superb, the latter especially. Who knew the story of Eadweard Muybridge needed to be told?

Delisle’s illustrations are so good. Every panel feels like it has just enough pen strokes in it to give it the weight and movement that it needs, and no more.

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is a journal of Delisle’s time spent in the city while is wife worked for Médecins Sans Frontières, while Muybridge is a much more dramatic story of one of the early pioneers of moving pictures.

Muybridge himself deserves so many more stories to be written about him. Unfortunately, the recent documentary, Exposing Muybridge doesn’t seem to be available in the UK, so I’ll have to track it down elsewhere.

Chris Morris’ cult classic (all Morris’ work comes into that category I feel) Brass Eye first aired in 1997.

20 years later, Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes was a behind-the-scenes movie made by director Michael Cumming and screened only during a short run of of live dates in 2017, and again in 2022.

In January this year, the YouTube channel Oxide Ghosts was created and several videos have been published since.

I’m going to assume that these videos are part of those tours. Either way, it’s great to see hear Cumming’s thoughts on the show all these years later.

Here’s the latest one, Brass Eye Hidden Secrets | Ep 1.

The Angine de Poitrine zeitgeist will probably lead to an increase in the purchase of microtonal guitars and basses. But where to buy them?

I can’t remember even seeing an off-the-shelf microtonal bass until Eastwood Guitars came out with the Warren Ellis Microtonal MT Bass Guitar last week.

I also know very little about Warren Ellis so I can’t vouch for his microtonal credentials. The bass is very nice, though.

I have a birthday coming up if someone wants to buy me it.