Martin Concagh
@mconcagh.bsky.social
Brit living in Toronto. Politics, books, jazz, Doctor Who and many more
All the data points to the evergreen sign:
Jacob Loo Dawang@jacobdawang.com · yesterday🧵 NEW POST: Edmonton’s $15M infill property tax dividend Matching permits to assessment data shows that small-scale infill from just 2024-26 will grow the tax base by $1.8B, and revenues by $15M. That's equivalent to a 0.7% property tax rate increase! #yegcc www.jacobdawang.com/blog/2026/pr...
i saw someone essentially asking 'why are people more willing to donate to ngos and charities than directly to vulnerable people's gofundmes' and i have to be real here i suspect the answer is 'because they don't know you'
"“Crazy how monoculture no longer exists because I don’t think I’ve actually ever heard this song,” wrote one user on X." Crazy how there's a world outside the white supremacist owned, CSAM producing website! Makes you think!
Demise of the monoculture: why so many have never heard UK’s record-breaking No 1 single
Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In is longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, and yet it seems to have passed many people by
theguardian.com
Somewhere at Amazon HQ a producer is scratching a name off a list and frantically trying to find the number of Himesh Patel’s agent
Peter Labuza@labuzamovies.com · 2w agoDo people just not write dialogue anymore? This entire scene feels like did a first draft with a bunch of "[insert joke line here]".
I’d recommend everyone watch this - it’s rather cheering to watch our media discover that an incompetent crank runs our national equality regulator
Channel 4 News@channel4news.bsky.social · 3h agoEHRC chair challenged on how to enforce single-sex toilet rules www.channel4.com/news/ehrc-ch...
"Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, recently appointed to the role by the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, meets Secretary of State Rubio in Washington" is one of those lines that would sound perfectly plausible to anyone in 2015, but explaining the intervening period would give them an aneurysm.
I think people massive underrate how much air quality in most cities has improved just in the last twenty years. Whenever I go back to London now I’m always struck by the absence of smog that was a fact of life when I grew up there in the 2000s.
John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 8h agoAir quality. I grew up in the Los Angeles basin in the 70s and 80s and remember having to stay inside because the smog was so bad - Stage 2 smog alerts, they were called. Apparently they haven't had one of those since 1988. Haven't had a stage one smog alert since 2003.
honestly, the fact that we have made it through the atomic age *without* another use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is a miracle we don't fully appreciate
Rebecca R Helm@rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · yesterdayToday is the day the story There Will Come Soft Rain is set. An amazing and heartbreaking work of fiction for our modern age. Read it here:
people are pointing out that this is obviously antisemitic, and it is, but one notes that this is sort of the natural endpoint of building your entire political identity around cultural criticism.
Current Affairs@currentaffairs.bsky.social · 2d ago
oh hey we're doing degenerate Jewish art but leftishly.
Current Affairs@currentaffairs.bsky.social · 2d ago
iwbh i think Bluesky has less of this problem than other places
New York Magazine@nymag.com · yesterdayOn social media, a broad consensus is that you can’t admit to struggle — at least not while you’re struggling. Doing so represents a failure so profound it’s almost existential. How did it become mandatory to demonstrate perpetual growth and progress online?
It’s good to apologise. Ben made a mistake, has retracted his previous comments and has said sorry. In my book, that’s a good thing, and we should forgive people who make mistakes and apologise.
Ben Goldacre@bengoldacre.bsky.social · yesterdayApologies: I’m not online much, I haven't paid any attention to Rod Liddle for a long time, I didn't really know his extremes. I do now: I wouldn’t have posted if I'd known. I’ve seen death of difficult people up close (and its impact on others): that’s the only reason it was on my mind as an issue.
I recall we had a period of time where the response of Starmer and Cooper to concerns about these groups was ‘I like flags’
Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterdayLeaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.
Typically good take from Pete. Literary devices or tropes (“this murder mystery exists to explore the world I’ve created”/“this fantastical concept is an allegory”) are interesting. Genres are just a marketing tool, and not a very interesting one.
Pete Fraser@petefrasermusic.bsky.social · yesterday3: what is your favourite genre? I hate the concept of genre. I think it dulls the imagination and does nothing so much as close avenues of possibility.
So many people on the left insisted to me that Magyar was no different to Orbán. This, and his support for Pride, suggest otherwise. I think there's a general pattern of westerners not grasping that in central and eastern Europe tons of people earnestly and sincerely believe in neoliberalism.
Mohave County Indivisible@mohaveindv.bsky.social · 2d agoBREAKING: The newly elected Prime Minister of Hungary announced that Netanyahu will be arrested if he enters Hungary.
The other thing about "boots theory" is that Vimes is talking about boots that phyiscally fall apart - as in the leather seams collapse completely, which was *Very common* until plastics and the spread of goodyear welts iirc...and doesn't happen much anymore!
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · yesterdayYeah, for days people have been citing “boots theory” at me and I want to shout DO YOU REALIZE THIS IS A RANDOM IDEA TOSSED OUT BY A FANTASY WRITER AND MAY NOT ACCURATELY DESCRIBE REALITY
This is, imo, absolutely the consequence of politicians, media figures and others being actively unwilling to condemn this behaviour
Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d agonews.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest
This is what happens when anti-racism norms erode, and elites bear a lot of the responsibility for norm erosion, as they have disproportionate power to set and enforce norms
Charles EP Murphy@cepmurphy.bsky.social · 2d agonews.sky.com/story/nhs-st... stereotypically this has been seen as Old People, but not only would the old people of now have often been born post-Windrush, lot of this will be younger people who've always lived in a diverse Britain. The guy with a pregnant wife likely millennial at oldest
if you find yourself saying something along the lines of "i'm a socialist, but i hate trans people, net zero, workers' rights, workers' control of the economy, public healthcare, cash transfers to the poor, and high levels of income tax on the middle class" then you are not a socialist happy to help
honestly Frasier remains an absolutely top tier show, and as I've noted before one big reason is because it makes absolutely zero attempt to be contemporary or realistic; it exists in its own Wodehouse-like social universe.
Brendel@brendelbored.bsky.social · 3d agoOne of those weird paradox of choice things where I used to be fine seeing Frasier as a kid because I got some of the jokes and there was a dog and it was what was on versus now where no matter what I watch I know there’s something better I should be watching
This is still one of my favourite photos, mainly because he told the government "you'll have to arrest me" and FDR went "fine" and literally told the press where and when he was going to arrest him
Reconstructionist@unavaleable.bsky.social · 4mo agoFDR literally had the president of Montgomery Ward arrested and the company seized for not negotiating with his workers
saying this not as a dig to Paul but as a general point, but it does worry me that we've ended up in a world where the two options are seemingly "leftist bubble" or "oh hey the nazis are here" - surely we should be able to have a politically heterogenous platform with tight rules on hate speech etc?
Paul Bernal@paulbernal.bsky.social · 2d agoThe new CEO of Bluesky wants to change Bluesky from being a leftist bubble. The thing is, there’s nothing wrong with being a leftist bubble: the idea that everything has to be all-encompassing and suitable for everyone is a trap. 🧵 1/4
The biggest technological revolution of our lifetime and it has nothing to do with AI, crypto, metaverse, robots or any of the other massively hyped "tech" the media always talks about instead
Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d agoAbsolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West
One sign of the rise of male supremacy and the decline in women’s status is the ubiquity of online porn lingo in casual speech.
Chris Hayes@chrislhayes.bsky.social · 2d agoIt was this one, and, yes, I do believe that was an All In first.
Good lord I wish some of you could read on this text based social media website.
The Verge@theverge.com · 2d agoBluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."
can’t believe our current all-ages literacy crisis is making me a little nostalgic for the pretentious “we publish experimental poetry chapbooks and have strong opinions on Melville and the 1800s fur trade” Literature Boys of my college years in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
tbh HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE *is* an incoherent, self-indulgent mess, but the thing about Miyazaki is that means it's still pretty safely one of the 10-15 best animated features ever made
USER WAS BLOCKED FOR THIS POST@blockedforthispost.bsky.social · 2d agoAnd maybe not Howl’s Moving Castle, either. Those who had actually heard of Studio Ghibli in their lives before Spirited Away won the Oscar found Howl’s an incoherent, self-indulgent mess. 😖
it's genuinely fascinating how like, people don't get that social *and* normal housing are both in short supply
Tbf this was Krushchev's thesis but none of the people arguing this really want to engage with the computerised command economy his worldview demanded
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 2d ago"Abolish capitalism so we can have a cornucopia of cheap, high-quality consumer goods" - I'm sorry, somehow you got lost on the way to Wal-Mart and arrived at the Marxist-Leninist meeting
