Your Party have to sack off the transphobes and landlords or they’re doomed
Your Party have to sack off the transphobes and landlords or they’re doomed
Other countries do flagwaving because they're insecure about their failure, whereas we are Top Nation and don't need to go on about it because everyone already knows.
How many fragments are the far right in? Reform, Lowe's lot, Ben Habib, Continuity UKIP, and whatever will be left of the Tories after the Badenoch Interval? Is L.Fox still a thing?
This is why child actors are a key employment sector vulnerable to AI replacement.
Before Jay and Brett, the New York wunderkind was Madison Smartt Bell discontinuednotes.com/2023/01/30/b...
I have a postcard from Tama Janowitz. I wrote her a fan letter after reading the Penguin edition of the (very successful) "Slaves Of New York".
Using one photo already on your phone, what is the announcement tomorrow at 2?
Zack Polanski won! [Aside:] all the pieces of the plan are falling into place... heh heh... YES...
At my old university there was a thing about Economics students coming in to the Philosophy library looking for books about Popper and Kuhn. I think they're expected to have a basic grasp of that, just to chat about it.
Might be a course requirement. Like ethics classes on business degrees. They do it as a tickbox and forget everything after the test.
Princess Charlotte speaks two languages, but since her dad is Prince Of Wales she probably gets it from the road signs.
"Yes every idealistic young dreamer becomes old and corrupted... that was the theme I studied in my PhD on redemption narratives in 18th century romance, why do you ask?"
"No I am not an evil man, just a realistic one. Why do you think the English department teach Frankenstein and Dracula as the only 19th century novels? Do you think we'd waste our time trying to get you dullards to open Middlemarch?"
In the sequel, we explore the Philosophy department, where students are being turned into zombies and tied to rail tracks just to satisfy an insane thirst for dubious "thought experiments".
Reform have arguably had more coverage for a content-free press conference than the Govt has for a major policy development affecting millions of parents
IDEA FOR BRIT HORROR FILM: Bill Nighy is the Vice Chancellor of a mid-ranking City University whose jolly promotional brochures hide a sinister truth that he's using TikTok videos to entice kids into Social Science degrees that don't lead to jobs outside the dungeon under the faculty building.
The real shift is in talk about "remigration" being admissible on the Right. Rupert Lowe might not have been expelled but he would not be favoured in the Tory Party of Tebbit and Thatcher 40 years ago. Yet that's now creeping in with "National Conservative" congresses and so on.
look this is what Nate Silver is going to come back at you with I'm just giving out the briefing papers in advance
yeah but like what if low-information voters get the idea that "the oligarchy" are an alien civilisation like "the Borg" and then they vote Trump to boost spending on Spaceforce
And "Red Monarch" (1983) www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoLS...
“Jean Tirole, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has warned that weak oversight of stablecoins could one day leave governments footing multibillion-dollar bailouts if the tokens unravel during a financial crisis.” Exactly what I’ve been trying to warn people about. cryptonews.com/news/stablec...
I suggest this book might be a useful read right now for understanding how the top tier of authoritarian regimes work... suspiciously, its page on the Princeton UP site seems to be unavailable:
So Miller is going to fuckup early on and get brought down by the others?
The solution to the trolley problem is to give *everyone* a trolley.
FLAGS www.youtube.com/watch?v=302o...
me to hollywood screenwriters: please stop making childhood trauma the only possible explanation for adult character traits, it's simplistic, reductive and dull the leader of the opposition: literally my entire personality and career is defined by one thing that upset me when I was 16
Now I think about it, @markoah.bsky.social also did a US PhD back in the 90s, so might have had to go through the same process.
Is the flag at half mast?
The only British person I know of taking US SAT exams was applying for PhD courses in the US, and they were required to make overseas applicants commensurable with US ones - but that was back in the mid 90s. I think he had to go to a special test centre in London during the summer.
Ok, as far as I can make out, Honey Don't is getting a quick burial with virtually no screenings in the UK. Is that correct? Has it been written off as a complete loss already?
Also: Oasis concerts, which feature Union Jack guitars, or at least they did the last time I noticed them (1996)
A-ha...
Death, where is thy Sting?
Today is a great day to watch Harlan County, USA. www.dailymotion.com/video/x9dnim0
If I were Starmer I would simply declare that a flag only has its symbolic status when attached to a flag pole, and that putting them on lamp posts is semiotically null and void. That would throw a spanner in the works, which is a metaphor and not a literal description.
He'll be at Camp David, negotiating the immediate outbreak of world peace.
Is there any particular reason why "fields of gold" would now be a popular search text?
100 years on, strategic bombing finally becomes what it was promised to be.
Absolutely ridiculous to be lectured by a bloody American about what is and isn't Britishness. Anyway, here's something about British food discontinuednotes.com/2025/08/13/a...
Looks like a malfunctioning bot
Uncommon Danger is good for the grand conspiracy side.
Wikipedia editors trying to fend off the onslaught of AI crap have crowdsourced some telltale signs of LLM-generated writing; it might be handy for editors and proofreaders generally. Thanks to @ellenrykers.com for pointing me to it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...
Moore playing without gadgets in For Your Eyes Only. The Doctor doing absolutely nothing to move the plot in Warriors Gate.
Where's your Wet Leg discourse
Also: articles about how BlueSky is an "echo chamber" are really cringe.
I don't really want the fascists here picking fights. I'm happy for them that they've got the more famous website as their safe space.
Seems to be the only place with a copy of 1 particular novel from 1978. That's a great premise for a horror or psychological thriller, but not a reason for me to spend 600 quid.
The London Library website was great fun up until I saw the membership fees.
Coffin Man, one of the weaker Marvel heroes.
"Invisible car" is *perfect* and completely in the spirit of peak Moore, unless you live in an alt-reality where Moonraker was a Tarkovsky movie.
"This morning I asked ChatGPT if that would be your opening. Computer said no."
Which is why a pivot to Greene/Ambler brings in billionaire industrialists as the baddies, which makes it more topical and relevant
I hope the first question is "Is sketch comedy dead? Has it ceased to be?" following an intro clip of Python.
But original Book Bond already has doubts about what he's doing, right from the final chapters of Casino Royale. The trouble was Fleming didn't have the talent to flesh out that aspect, which I think he realised.
Have the hired killer undergo an awakening and turn against the system he's part of
The final episode makes it seem like they had footage from an unfinished one with Thompson and the nameless lady played by Dale Winton's mum, and they just recycled what they could.
So I'm the only person who thinks Die Another Day was a brilliant megamix Greatest Hits of Bond film, and would have served as a fine ending to the series if they'd never made another one? Just me?
The 2012 Olympics were great, but it left the whole franchise (Britain) with nowhere to go.
Just go back to the pre-Bond harbingers: "A Gun For Sale" by Greene, and the Ambler novels (which Bond was a fan of, in-universe).
Unless they'd done it as a period film strictly by the book... and then found the next book was... problematic.
It's the same in my nut.
The James Bond franchise has the same relationship to "espionage thriller" as Doctor Who has to "science fiction". It uses elements of it, but it's its own unique kind of fantasy genre. Neither of them should ever lean too far in to one of the barrels of inspiration they are dipping in to.
"Casino Royale, but stick to the book" was a good idea and when it finally got its turn it was done well, including the updating (a period version would have worked as well). But then they had no more ideas beyond "the post-Moore years, but no fun or silliness, vaguely like a Le Carre adaptation".
Still can't believe them slags marched through neutral Belgium. Does my head in.
A colloquial Swedish word for giving a confident answer to something you know nothing about is killgissa, or “guy-guessing.” Conversely, the lesser-known word tjejveta (meaning “girl-knowing”) can describe elucidating (shelucidating?) on a topic you have expertise in.
For commuter Bluesky this wet Monday morn: New #FirstLastAnything episode appeared yesterday. It's not a podcast, it's a textcast - but you can stream the playlists featuring some of the music we talk about!
I suppose a problem in western culture is that we venerate Luther, Galileo and other notable "heretics", and pass over the point that entirely new structures of authority came downstream of them, which don't strictly accept everything they say.
Nonsense, he has several plans. 1. Support fracking up until the inevitable wave of NIMBYism 2. The same ideas on asylum and immigration that didn't work for the Tories, but *pulling an angry face* 3. Flags everywhere, some of them even the right way up 4. Something something end DEI woke something
#OTD in 1944, Montgomery was stripped off the - unofficial - command of the Allied ground forces. Eisenhower took over (political decision, rather than a military one). Also on this day, he is crossing the Seine River at Vernon, in his Humber staff car. #WW2 #HISTORY
Good morning! (Spitfire Mark Vc/trop. #WW2 #HISTORY)
fyi @harrydobermann.bsky.social @danielwaweru.bsky.social @waltydunlop.bsky.social @greavesian.bsky.social
I avoid being dependent on any platform for my online income, by not having any online income. #StayFree
Is it cheap and cynical clickbait to put a contentious title on something about a silly irrelevant topic? See for yourself! discontinuednotes.com/2025/08/31/t...
"The world is burning. Fascism is rising. Countries are falling. And we’re on the brink of incredible technological change, which will either be the end of everything or a new beginning. So, who needs artists?" I've written about what it takes to make art & live bravely. tinyurl.com/bdfjszbu
So did Gavin.
I am familiar with bread, and hadn't noticed it had changed. But who the hell is Alex Phillips?
White sliced bread isn't exactly hard to find in most shops. Just like it's not hard to find TV shows with White or cishet protagonists. There is a psychological phenomenon here at play though, and talking about "normal bread" is very telling. Mini-thread 🧵 of my thoughts trying to unpack it: 1/
What this sequence needs to complete it is something apologetic from British Leyland in 1980, "well at least it's got a Union Jack on it". That's actually the future that Farage wants.
Also, that Oasis were never going to be anywhere near as good as The Beatles. A general sense that all the great things promised to us were going to be flat and boring.
It came just at the moment when the penny was starting to drop that maybe Blair wasn't what the Tories had said he was going to be.
A week earlier she was getting dismissed in the Serious Papers for her new found cause of landmine clearance.
Happy 'greatest correction ever' day to all who celebrate
For ep 29 of my music textcast #FirstLastAnything, ace writer, quizzer and theatre reviewer Shanine Salmon (@braintree711.bsky.social) joined me to talk about Michael Jackson compilations, French pop giants Phoenix, nepotism, quizzing and AI-generated music. firstlastanything.co.uk/2025/08/31/f...
Imagine if Ben Elton had done New Faces.
Imagine if Three Of A Kind had been Lenny Henry, Jim Davidson, Victoria Wood.
Possibly influenced by having this group filling a support slot for them in 1987 at Elland Road (where this was played) www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-86...
Bees don't discriminate.
"You thief..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9Y...
yeah but "writer gets cheated of a credit" is a great story as well i mean it's part of the back story of The Phantom Of The Opera. Don't mess with quality
Barron Knights had a run of TOTP appearances so they could charge top rates.
I have a vague late 70s memory of him playing a seedy jobsworth character in some sketches, and my mum saying she didn't like him, but I didn't think he was such a big deal in those days. L&L were bigger than anyone now remembers, at their "new Morecambe & Wise" peak.
Can we pls distinguish "white working class" from "professional media proles, like Martin Daubney".
How much TV did Davidson do in those days? Don't remember him appearing too often.
Presumbly depends on how much TV they do, that'll be why Roy Castle is higher than others next to him.
Apparently the UK government are doing an emergency alert test on the 7th of September so just in case anyone knows any current domestic abuse victims who would need to have their safety phones switched off so as not to be outed, please pass it in.
Side One: Ivan Meets GI Joe/ The Leader/ Police On My Back/ Something About England/ Somebody Got Murdered/ Washington Bullets Side Two: The Call-Up/ Mensforth Hill/ Silicone On Sapphire/ Living In Fame/ The Magnificent Seven
He probably doesn't remember his own time in office, how can you expect the rest of us to manage it?
You mean "Sandinista"? There's about 1 side of an LP of good material there, plus another side of experiments (including "Mensforth Hill", which is *their* "Revolution 9"). But there's nowhere near a triple album. "Combat Rock" is better value for money, Strummer insisted it was a single LP.
Special AI hologram of Walter Cronkite already being prepped by Sam Altman's top team for the occasion.
"Topicality is always suspect" - George Smiley. That's why I don't trust the News.