Distressing how much of using Microsoft Office these days involves googling "how to disable feature x" first

The thing I hate about the argument that "things were better in the old days" is... sure ok. What do you want me to do with that information. What policies do you favour that would change Things.

Tyron@tyron.bsky.social · 17h ago

an unfathomable amount of stuff has got better over the last 40 years - hell, even over the *last 15* - and anyone convinced it hasn't does not remember or know what things were like 15 or 40 years ago.

Of all the prominent socialists of the time (Gramsci, Kautsky, Jaures etc) it was extremely bad luck for the left that they wound up with the most personally unlikeable one to try and build a cult of personality around

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 2d ago

I think I might hate Lenin too much to finish my Russian revolution book, every single one of his interventions is so loathsome it actively puts me in a bad mood

The trickster archetype doesn't work in the modern era because its modern equivalent is the grifter and it would just be depressing

Rachel Cunliffe@rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 3d ago

He doesn't spend ANY time being a trickster! He does the horse trick and that's it! No "My name is No One". Not twisty tales. Plays it straight, and therefore misses a core part of who Odysseus is and why he's fascinated writers for thousands of years. (I liked the film a lot, by the way)

Right wing parties could face the nightmare squeeze where just enough Tories lend their votes to a "stop Reform" candidate while just enough Reform voters get the ick at the last minute, leading to extremely inefficient voting

Election Maps UK@electionmaps.uk · 5d ago

Westminster Voting Intention: LAB: 28% (+5) RFM: 23% (-4) CON: 20% (=) LDM: 10% (-1) GRN: 10% (-3) SNP: 3% (=) Via BMG Research, 28-30 Jul. Changes w/ 23-25 Jun.

Something I found very annoying in the social media of the Corbyn years was when criticism was met with with "👉👈 🥺 he just wants orphans not to starve"

paul khruangbin (Dan Lehner)@danlehner.bsky.social · last wk.

if there’s anything I would want to drill into the public consciousness it’s that there are almost always like a dozen ways to approach any given problem and some of them will be more effective than others and we have to stop acting like the questions around it are against fixing the issue

"My lord, the throne itself is within your grasp if you would but heed my strategem"

Mr. Escher A. Bug, MSc @ SPX 2026@escherbug.art · last wk.

She loved her surgery cone for the first couple days (it made her feel powerful and intimidating) so we got her a courted ruff to look sinister in.

Reviewing Hollywood movies when you don't like Hollywood

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · last wk.

(a review is never entirely interesting when the main message seems to be "I just think it should have been a different movie/book altogether" and though it is very elegantly written, I worry that Emily Wilson's take on the Odyssey falls at that hurdle)

This boils down to "It's the institutions, stupid" which is fine, but you hardly need to be Marxist to make that point. Liberals have been saying this for decades.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w ago

Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left

I have just discovered that Cosmo Jarvis was meant to be in The Odyssey but due to scheduling conflicts his role went to Logan Marshall-Green, showing the lengths Christopher Nolan will go to tell Tom Hardy he misses him

OK but the four-note leitmotif from the Odyssey where the bow is finally strung has been bouncing round my head and I think it might be one of the most satisfying uses of music on screen I have ever seen?

Chris Schweizer@schweizercomics.bsky.social · 2w ago

Folks have a lot of pet peeves with movies these days, but my biggest one is probably that an absurd number of score composers are afraid of melody. I should be walking out of a theater humming your lietmotifs, you cowards, not feeling vaguely unsettled by ambient atonal strings

The Odyssey is very good but I do find it funny how many episodes are basically Odysseus and crew turning up on an island and immediately going "run away" in the tone of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

If this is a way of signalling that government-by-anonymous-briefing is over then fair play, that's a very funny way of doing it

The most devastating line about Starmer was the one about driving the DLR, and it is the one that will last because it is a. memorable and b. had the grain of truth. No doubt Burnham will have his own faults but hard to see the DLR line sticking to him.

Surprised that Burnham's first act as PM is immediate submission to Rome and the repeal of the Book of Common Prayer

A victory of keep-the-show-on-theroad social democracy over just-be-horrible libertarianism

Stephen is getting dangerously close to live-tweeting the full text of A Journey

Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 3w ago

65 per cent of Britons are owner-occupiers. General elections are won in the Midlands. Most people have a middle class occupation. The United Kingdom's comparative advantage is in services. These aren't facts that Philip Gould invented in order to make Labour feel sad.

Andy Burnham is named Labour leader at a special conference, 2026

I know I'm supposed to be open-minded and not be reflexively anti-AI but I think my limit is greeting the idea that people would use AI to write a eulogy with anything other than an anguished howl of the soul

zatapatique@zatapatique.bsky.social · 3w ago

I had a heated conversation with friends a few weeks ago, where my bit was "think of the last wedding, funeral, anything you attended ... it's 50/50 any person who spoke did not write that, and in a couple of years it's going to be 100%" and everyone was screaming at me like I was making stuff up

Perhaps what annoys people most about Gary Stephenson is that even on the left it seems impossible now to get anyone to pay attention to you without the hook that you, a young person, made a lot of money very quickly and have some secrets to share

Thing is, we have a perfectly good example of how to reduce inequality through taxes, it is called "Sweden" and it involves putting up income taxes on everyone to eye-watering levels, and the fact that no one wants to bite the bullet and just do that tells you how serious the left actually is

It does feel like a lot of people are underestimating just how hard it is to beat the party leading in the polls in their safest possible seat

Take me down to the Paratext City, where the grass is green.* * It is interesting to note here that the author does not additionally mention the girls are pretty, especially given the convenience of the rhyme it would offer - ed.

Dr Sarah Brand@sarahgailbrand.bsky.social · 4w ago

Take me down to the Paraphrase City, where there are some women and a lawn.

The bit that really gets me is Farage saying that it is good when politicians make money. You're meant to say that about, I dunno, having run a moderately successful IT firm or something, not just being given 5 million quid.

Alas the proposed alternatives to patriotism given by leftists is usually either "I would simply rally the people on an issue-to-issue basis" or "I would simply create a new mass identity acceptable to me, a quite depressed person online" and surprisingly neither of these seem to gain much traction

W.E.D.em Boyz@leftistwonk.bsky.social · last mo.

Almost none of the ”we need to reclaim patriotism” people ever explain ~why~ we should do so. They begin with the assumption that patriotism is a good thing. What if it’s not?

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. He/him.

At least Starmer's failure has given the civil service an excellent recruiting slogan. "Do you want to make a difference to the world but don't like appearing in the public eye? Then don't try to be PM. Maybe try becoming a perm sec or something"

Controversial take: if there is another world war, it should NOT be titled World War Three. Linking WWI to WWII works because they have such great continuities, adding an unrelated third war to the trilogy would be confusing and even misleading.

I can't remember who it was pointed out that a working class job for these people has to mean a man hitting a bit of metal with another bit of metal

Twlldun@twlldun.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Going to say that if you use a chisel down t’pit, it’s going to take you *fucking ages* to get any coal out

If you asked an LLM what Nick Hytner was going to do next and it *didn't* say "Rory Kinnear plays John Maynard Keynes with a script by James Graham" it wouldn't be worth using www.theguardian.com/business/202...

From Bloomsbury to Whitehall: new play reimagines life of John Maynard Keynes

The Standard of Living by James Graham traces economist’s influence on British politics and culture

theguardian.com