an egg and cheese McMuffin is three pounds forty now? why not take my firstborn next, McDonald's? why not curse my entire bloodline?
jack of like six to seven trades (journalist, author, radio person, etc) marie.s.leconte@gmail.com
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an egg and cheese McMuffin is three pounds forty now? why not take my firstborn next, McDonald's? why not curse my entire bloodline?
Emily Thornberry tweeting a picture of someone's flag-adorned house was less condescending than this
Okay sure everyone loves Zohran but have you considered Sliwa's feral cat colony proposal
It's all just so disheartening!
also again: I los part of my livelihood by leaving Twitter and I'm still trying to recover financially from that, give me a break lol
as I said in the original post it's still just that bit too faffy, and a lot less easy to passively pick up new subs just by virtue of being there, which Substack is still annoyingly v good at
yeah honestly I despair, I try, I really do, but somehow it feels like it's never enough
am going to stay on Substack for now because 1) leaving Twitter made a v noticeable dent in my income and I can't afford another one 2) there's no other platform that's currently as easy to use 3) I do seem to pick up new followers merely by being there but UGH, fucking UGH, the modern internet, UGH
I have noticed the typo and decided to ignore it
seeing my GP surgery advertising that they can take on new patients while knowing they gave me and appointment for a not-not urgent issue in *two and a half weeks* and feeling like a scorned mafia wife, OH YOU'RE TALKING TO THESE WHORES AND YET YOU CAN'T REMEMBER YOUR WIFE'S BIRTHDAY?, and so on
It is insane to me that the richest man in the world is using his global megaphone to call for millions of British people to be rounded up and deported (including my family) and somehow this isn’t even news.
well on the one hand it's bad for democracy and social cohesion that Keir Starmer is trying to appeal to the racists by pretending to be one of them, but on the other hand it's not actually working and the racists still don't want to vote for him
Also what does that… mean? What does their status as parents have to do with anything?
fuck it we ball: Snape is Balkan now
nothing-a says in the books-a that-a the Malfoys cannot-a be Italian
ok this made me think and I'm ready to throw in my lot with the new adaptation on the condition that they make the Malfoys ehhh very Italian
It is astonishing how badly suited Keir Starmer is to the current moment. Just astonishing
They should tho
is it only asylum seekers our Labour Prime Minister would object to living next to or would the sentiment apply to black and brown people in general? if merely the former, would he like to explain how he knows people he sees, say, in the street, actually are asylum seekers and not citizens?
“I don’t want asylum seekers to live on my street” is genuinely a wild thing to say as a notionally progressive politician
My opinion on bluesky is that people are much less weird and pedantic than Twitter used to be, but my tolerance for that kind of thing is now really low after having had it so badly on Twitter and then starting from scratch here and having none of it.
Yeah I think that's the crux of it!
What privilege lol? I started out as a freelancer with no contacts in journalism or indeed in Britain! I just worked like everyone else! I don't know what to say to you
but also that's prob where the misunderstanding has come from? guess people can read your stuff as journalism or comedy and as we've just learnt both pay Very differently
!!!!!!! oh my god comedy is somehow so much more fucked than journalism? genuinely had no idea, assumed we were similar levels of fucked but oh man
(also it's really not just My Rates, I talk to lots of freelance journalists as transparency about rates help, I'm not being paid more than anyone else the vast majority of the time!) (but anyway you obviously shouldn't get shouted at for this, was just making a minorish point)
I think it depends on what you define as industry I guess - in terms of journalism outlets I genuinely think that most places these days wouldn't pay under 20ppw at the absolute lowest as a base rate, but there's a difference between specifically Fleet Street and "content" I guess?
I obv get that you're a small indie business and you pay what you can afford but I really wouldn't describe 13ppw as "pretty generous industry rate" tbh, even for online outlets I can't remember the last time I was offered something under 25ppw and even that felt v low, it's usually 30ppw at least
god that's incredibly disheartening
I think you're exaggerating a bit! I have a fancier camera but the one I was replacing today was the little point and shoot I carry around - last one I bought lasted me something like four or five years, and I just got this one for a hundred quid, it's fine
anyway my brave take is that Bluesky isn't really working because you just can't launch a text-based social media platform in the era of Big Video And Picture Slop and expect it to flourish, most people don't really want to type or read
(I agree that the endless chastising of Twitter users can occasionally get grating but lol at the somehow many people going "oh I only use it to post links to my work now", like "oh I'm actively trying to profit from the fascism site" is meaningfully better than "I'm on the fascism site for fun")
the first one was Embers by Sandor Marai!
URGH
love her
The “British person” in this instance was me; I do find it deeply amusing that, as well as being extremely racist about British Indians and their role in British food culture, this America has managed to name the curry that was most famously created in Britain
Whenever people talk about BSky stagnating you get lots of big accounts going “lol, who cares about a site’s revenue streams”, and I’m sorry but attracting people away from the site turning them into Nazis is more important than your desire to relive 00s forum culture
Genuinely cannot be understated how unwelcoming the lack of private accounts make this place
was talking to my camera guy and apparently all the rich Gulf kids are getting wildly into film photography because lots of them had just never really seen it before, he keeps getting these young people turning up to his shop in these massive chauffeured cars and asking for point and shoots, v funny
I don't get how people don't realize that a technology that replaces junior and entry level positions in a field destroys that field. There's no skipping steps. You have to be a junior before you can be a senior, and if you don't have senior people, you don't have a field.
I turn on my TV and a TV presenter is asking a Govt minister why they are talking about rolling out free childcare when the big issue is asylum hotels. This is objectively insane.
rewatching Desperate Housewives for the first time since it came out on TV and it's.....so fun? Bree having to pick a "serious" safe word as Rex talks her through what BDSM entails and her saying "Palestine"? flawless television
absolute peak of that was a few years ago when I was sleeping REALLY badly so got some sleeping pills then I ended up getting so anxious about the sleeping pills making my heart stop in my sleep (??) that'd I'd just lie there, wide awake, panicking the human brain! a flawless machine!
I, personally, have no further questions about Giuliani's statement I think it was crystal clear actually
love that being anxious makes you bad at sleeping and sleeping bad makes you feel anxious, whoever came up with that really nailed it
Ah! Will delete ty!
I'd rather not no
tough blunt rotation
!
also I'm sorry but it's just a less good version of my take, which is "ban tourism but keep immigration; if you think you'd like a place then fucking commit to it"
I got into it when that Gianmarco comedian guy did a take that was like "please let me hold your baby, I love holding babies and if a stranger is struggling in the street I'd love to hold their baby for five minutes to help" and honestly it should have just stayed there, good level of take
no!!! though I guess if you can do that then keep reading it's fine? if I force myself to finish a book I dislike I get so DISGUSTED by the act of reading that I just don't do it again for months afterwards lol, I'm such a spoilt baby
omg same, and I always try to read while standing and it just....never goes well
ah yay!! and lmao yes I'm always happy to come up with schemes to catch a fool (I am the fool)
(am actually only 30 books down so far this year, meaning I'm unlikely to beat my joint record from last year/the year before, v annoying)
yes! as addressed elsewhere in the piece I think you can also compare it to dating - entirely fine to meet someone and not believe there's anything wrong with them but to not have any desire to personally take it any further
published my Guide To Reading More Books nearly exactly a year ago so I guess it's time to post it again youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/learning-h... [free to read!]
rip to everyone whos become delusional after talking to chatgpt but im built different. like actually different. according to chatgpt im some kind of god. the one who decides
I assumed Honey, Don't would be fine no? had it down as more of a comedy, hope I'm not wrong!
Yes I had to close my eyes so many times!
well that was broadly enjoyable but easily could have been 30% to 40% less violent, plot wouldn't have suffered from it at all
oh good
Seeing people say that Taylor Lorenz is going to have an alt-right turn after the last couple days but I think that misses the dynamics here. It's not Left/Right, it's High Trust/Low Trust, and she's been Low Trust for a long time.
thanks!
yay thanks! I don't do *great* with violence on screen but get the sense that it's more of a dark comedy so hopefully none of it is taken too seriously...?
isn't it amazing! and yeah I think the country's in a weird spot - objectively doing better than a lot of the arab world, and there are definitely lots of positives there overall, but ultimately so many things are still disappointing, and seemingly not going to get fixed anytime soon
hello has anyone seen Caught Stealing yet? is it Violent violent or bearable violent? asking for your friendly neighbourhood wuss (because this is Bluesky: this is a question aimed at no one but people who have seen the movie Caught Stealing, released this week, at the cinema, in its entirety)
Jo Cox was murdered by a man with a house full of neo-Nazi agitprop and this was then retconned into a vague narrative about social media abuse
me
my father-in-law is a “I know a guy” Guy. sadly all the old Guys are aging out of the Guy Economy. Guys are fundamentally incompatible with Hustle Culture because it’s not about “winning” a deal, it’s about collecting favors and goodwill in a mutually-beneficial cycle. protect your local Guy Economy
I've nothing to add, just wanted to agree with you all on the Hunger Games movies being surprisingly neat, thank you
🙏
apologies in advance to whoever followed me at some point in the past six months but this is now a GO DAWGS account (again)
I just eat a lot of fresh fish okay!!!
anyway I have now sent her a selfie, posing with my rosemary crusted salmon, but boy, at what cost
real proof that I'm 33 going on 74 is that I was having drinks with a friend and she suggested dinner and I apologised but said I had a piece of fish that needed eating today, and she asked me for picture evidence as apparently that's also what I said the last couple of times we had drinks
yesssssss today's game not UK times friendly but Go Dawgs 🙏
Timeless Cool: Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis, behind the scenes of Phantom Thread (2017)
you know what though it's good for everyone to stretch, get their reps in. workshop some of their bits. start thinking about that playlist.
Just seen a Chinese chap walking down towards Brighton beach wearing a St George’s flag polo shirt with “proud to be English” written on it and a Kuomintang baseball cap. What a country we are to have such people in it.
just once i’d like to hear an established, successful artist look back at their work and say “of course, you couldn’t make that these days, because you can’t get funding for original work that’s not based on an established ip”
agreed actually! also don't understand why brunch is so *extortionate* in Paris?
merci!
one of the most concerning things about Reform's polling is that we'd be looking at dozens of other MPs of the calibre of James McMurdock, a piece of human pond scum who served a custodial sentence for assaulting his ex-girlfriend and is now laughing it up with the Nazis over in the other place
I *think* they had to agree to keep Wordle free forever when they bought it off that guy but I'm now quite worried about Spelling Bee and Connections :/
!
yeah that's basically where I stand!
A competent government comms strategy would make quite a big deal that this is actually the second Reform elected representative to be caught using the N-word this week.
arguably quite pathetic of me to still be annoyed by it but I really do think it was.....needlessly cold? for the NYTimes to yank several games behind the paywall with absolutely no warning, while presumably knowing that a *lot* of people merrily played them for free every single day
Ooooh!
Sorry but hahahahaha
Ty!
Obviously I don't drive
I actually have a voucher I need to spend so this is good intel
Thanks!
Ah I mean I'll literally have like, a spare 90 minutes in total I think lol so that feels ambitious sadly
Yesss
enjoying people trying to decide if Vance would be a better or worse president than Trump when "just a different flavour of bad, actually" is right there