Wishing you a smooth operation and a speedy recovery

Same for Coventry, N Birmingham and Leamington Spa. Now I live in Bristol and the housing market here behaves as if it's on a different planet. National policy here just can't grapple with the issue, because it's not a national problem, it's a hugely acute local one

“Win every election” is not a viable strategy for preventing authoritarianism

If we must do a comparison of which American president did a better job securing the release of Israeli hostages, the answer is Joe Biden.

Strongly support this idea from @mrjlauder.bsky.social. "Is spending money on a particular service better than a cash transfer" is a good way of learning how to improve services and reduce inequalities

I've been blaming memes for this, and I think it fits. A lot of the angriest people out there aren't actually consuming news, they're consuming news-flavored content, and the content is a funhouse mirror version of reality that they're mistaking for being real.

So 2 things here: firstly, I think "great people compared to the Gallaghers" is not a high bar, but more I don't know that music fans necessarily want artists to be great people.

But also LB never hit big with their emotionally expressive stuff. They did make it, but most people didn't listen

The good news is that there is now a generation of musicians who were massively influenced by that period and are making all kinds of tributes to it in their music, and said music fucks hard. Spiritbox (who are awesome) were going to tour with Limp Bizkit before Covid blew it up a few years back

Indeed. Nu-metal rose to prominence by helping people having a terrible time process that, and then got coattailed by antisocial affluent dickheads who became synonymous with it.

Great video essay on the history of the genre here btw:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUtQ...

Which I found kind of astonishing given that they specifically namechecked two musicians who had been sexually assaulted while very young and were very unambiguously using their music to process that experience, JD in particular. But nu-metal is never going to shake off the Woodstock 99 stink

They have, but in critical circles they are still routinely caricatured as the face of the "worst music genre ever". I've seen someone with lofty critical aspirations describe CB (and Jonathan Davis) as making music to the effect of "mom forgot my lunchables AGAIN"

Qua @iandunt.bsky.social and How Westminster Works etc, I'm thinking about stuff like the sequencing and scheduling of debate as well as scrutiny of the output

At the risk of falling into the consistent trap of looking at something that goes well and trying to make it do everything and thus hobbling its actual effectiveness, is there any scope for select committees to be plugged into the drafting and revision process more?

"The only acceptable form of democracy is the one which, entirely coincidentally, has consistently rewarded me despite my many failures and vast and persistent national unpopularity"

If your criteria for anti-fascism pays no attention to someone's position on engaging in concrete opposition to Putin's imperialist and fascist invasion of Ukraine, I think that indicates a serious flaw in the criteria, personally

But hey if he wants to diminish the brand who am I to etc etc

Personally I thought the value of the Law was in highlighting times that a headline is chosen in order to push an already-debunked factual assertion with plausible deniability. Expanding it to "questions in headlines are always wrong" seems to lose that punch to me, because it's clearly untrue

Just to point out one specific thing about the general dumbness going on around this excellent piece - Betteridge's Law of Headlines, as I understand it, refers to a practice used around news pieces, not opinion pieces. It's a category error to invoke it here

American pancakes are bad, yes

It's a somewhat heretical opinion but I actually think the film is better than the comic, which isn't that far off being mindlessly bleak IMO

something quite brain-melting about the hard right's position apparently now being "we hate all Muslims and distrust Muslim states, aside from that one Muslim place that still has slavery because that sounds fun"

On the Gaza deal, crediting Trump - and the painful cost of his failure to act so much earlier. Latest column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Yup, the museum covers it pretty unsparingly

All my comics have happy endings!