Ephemeral 80s

While I have both tags and categories marked as ‘Ephemera’, my random collection of witterings about various bits of historic ephemera is no-where near as well structured or as well targeted as Ephemeral 80s.

Welcome to Ephemeral 80s

I’m going to be honest, while any site can be for anyone, you probably have to be of a certain age and to have spent time in certain select (but middling) British demographics for it to truly hit home.

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Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs

This capability comes for free…

Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs

ArXiv has an interesting paper on mechanising online deanonymization attacks on large datasets. Even if you’re not interested in LLMs it’s still worth understanding what they’re capable of and how they may be deployed against you in the future.

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‘To York, Dick Turpin’s Ride’

Poking around the Science Museum’s archives, I came across this rather fabulous ‘Dick Turpin’ themed LNER poster for train travel to York.

Poster, LNER, To York – Dick Turpin’s Ride by Doris Zinkeisen. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Science Museum Group. Click to embiggen.

Just look at how wonderful it is!

Tours of Old York #4: An Artist Visits…

And now for a slightly different tour of old York – York as seen by a visiting artist.

In 1952 the curator of York Art Gallery – Hans Hess – approached L. S. Lowry to paint a scene of York for the annual Evelyn Award. For this Lowry would be awarded the princely sum of £50 or – in 2025 money – around £1,250.

In the end, Lowery was to paint three images of York; two he offered to the art gallery to select from – ‘Clifford’s Tower, York‘ and ‘A View of York (from Tang Hall Bridge)‘ – and a third – ‘Wilson’s Terrace‘ – that he sold on to a private collector.

Of the two images offered to York Art Gallery, they selected ‘Clifford’s Tower, York‘ which, as of writing, can currently be seen in one of the upper galleries.

‘Clifford’s Tower, York’

‘Clifford’s Tower, York’, Laurence Stephen Lowry.
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