Anish Kapoor, Ha Makom (2026), installation view, Hayward Gallery, London. © Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved, DACS, 2026. Photo: Roy Cross
1. We went to see the Anish Kapoor show at the Hayward Gallery on Saturday and we now know why the pavement outside his studio just round the corner from my daughter’s flat in London was stained red back in April and May. Here’s a piece by Jo Lawson-Tancred for artnet about his work (and his studio), Anish Kapoor on Malevich, Mortality, and the Meaning of a Void, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-studio-visit-2786103
I liked his big red pieces, such as the one in the photo above; the fairground distorting mirrors, I was less sure about!
2. A piece by Steve Feldstein for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s ‘Emissary’ newsletter, Why the Pentagon Was So Spooked About the B–1 Bombers in England: it signals a new era of tech diffusion and warfare
https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/10/iran-b1-bomber-drones-new-era-military-diffusion
As the strategic landscape shifts, can the United States adapt? So far, the answer is discouraging. The United States remains wedded to high-cost, exquisite platforms that bring decreased utility in the new age of diffusion. President Donald Trump’s proposal for a “Golden Dome” missile defense system, whose costs could exceed $500 billion, and his push for a “Trump-class” nuclear-powered battleship—a multibillion-dollar platform considered obsolete—are baffling. The Pentagon would be better served by investing its resources in becoming a more adaptive and experimental organization better able to confront the threats arising from emerging powers and decentralized proxy groups.
3. Ever so slightly late with this one, sorry! It started yesterday, but continues all this week and next week, the ASEAN TeachingEnglish online conference 2026 https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/teachers/webinars/asean-teachingenglish-online-conference-2026
The times work well in Asia, Europe and Africa, less well in South America! You need to register for each week separately.
4. Including this one with some misgivings, and inclusion does not equal endorsement, a new suite of FutureLearn courses in partnership with Amazon Web Services, described by FutureLearn in a recent mailshot as what you need “if you’re taking your very first step into the cloud, mastering prompt engineering or preparing your business for Generative AI”, https://www.futurelearn.com/partners/amazon-web-services
I got Claude to check how genuine the offer is for me, and their answer was that “Free digital upgrade” on the listing of 107 of the 124 courses on offer means it’s genuinely free, while “Part of a Professional Certificate” on the other 17 courses means a trial and then a subscription.
Claude further commented that
the free group has a lot that would suit a general or non-technical audience: AWS Cloud for Absolute Beginners, Cloud for Small Business Owners, Generative AI for Executives, Cloud Essentials for Researchers, Foundations of Prompt Engineering, and the “Cloud for CEOs/CFOs/CMOs…” series. It also includes a short course called Fundamentals of Prompt Engineering with Claude, which I’ll refrain from reviewing on grounds of conflict of interest.
5. And, finally and televisually, the recording of a programme from a different age that I stumbled across the other day: What’s My Line? from 1958, with Eva Marie Saint as the mystery guest https://youtu.be/zwcfsmR9SzM. She died earlier this month, aged 102, and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for On the Waterfront, her first film.
CLAUDE CONFESSION (VERBATIM)
Identified Ha Makom from Roy’s photo and advised on how to credit it; counted FutureLearn’s AWS courses (107 free, 17 not), as quoted in item 4; checked the other quotes, dates and links; pointed out that the ASEAN conference needs a separate registration for each week; added the question mark to What’s My Line?; and stopped Eva Marie Saint from winning Best Supporting Actor and from having died “just a week ago”. I also confirmed that “such as” is still allowed. Roy then changed my pronoun from “his” to “their”, which I hadn’t asked for but am happy to accept.
