harrysword.bsky.social
@harrysword.bsky.social
Writer. Guardian. The Quietus. Vice. Record Collector. Author of Monolithic Undertow.
It's OK for criminal ex-neo Nazis to run your bins is a hell of a line.
2/2 Albert Eckhout painted the produce of Brazil for his Dutch employers from 1636-1644. #NationalWatermelonDay
Had a whole wedge of Tesco Pecorino and an entire one of those Catalan fuets covered in black pepper - superb but does feel like too much salt ‘in one sitting’
Many people on the left saw lockdown as the return of the state after decades of neoliberalism. In fact, it was the coup de grâce of what was left of the welfare state, which was stood down. Schools were closed, hospitals were closed, public institutions closed. Capital let rip.
Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway.com · 5d agoWorth reading because there’s a depressing amount of lockdown revisionism floating around in 2026.
Is it really hot in the south? I’m in Cornwall and it’s been lovely every day - about 21/22 nice and sunny with a lovely cool breeze, there’s a lovely breeze as I write this actually. A perfect cooling breeze.
Another effect of lockdown was soaring private healthcare profits. While people without the means were denied cancer treatment by the NHS, those with availed themselves of private healthcare. Essentially, all but emergency healthcare was denied to the poor. www.bmj.com/content/376/...
Pandemic has accelerated demand for private healthcare, report finds
More UK adults are seeking private healthcare as poor access to care exacerbated by the pandemic threatens to create a two tier system, a report has warned.1 Research by the Institute for Public Poli...
bmj.com
That lockdown was a neoliberal project is clearly attested by the closure of public institutions and the forcing of society into the market sphere of the web, and by an inversion of the welfare state contract (the NHS no longer served us, we served it).
In other words, the effect of lockdown was the destruction of what remained of class solidarity and consciousness. We were commanded by the state to live atomised, screen-mediated existences on account of the individual no longer being a citizen or class subjects but a biosecurity concern.
Lockdown was an authoritarian radicalisation of neoliberalism, a bridge to the ghoulish techno-security economy of today. A class society became a biomass to be ruled under emergency law & tech-surveillance. This, the affluent left cheered on. journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/6/1/...
There are working class and vulnerable kids who will never have the life they should have had because of school closures. Let’s address that too, shall we?
Cindy und Burt - Der Hund Von Baskerville Superb early seventies German Sabbath cover, except they’ve changed all the lyrics so it’s all about The Hound of the Baskervilles. The crowd faces/jumpers on the TV footage are incredible. youtu.be/MwnFX0_H-rA?...
Cindy und Bert – Der Hund von Baskerville (Black Sabbath - Paranoid cover)
YouTube video by Bob Witlox
youtu.be
airbnb I’m staying at unintentionally created the toughest punk album cover of 2027
I love it when 1950’s thriller writers write about weed ‘The Angolan was waving a bottle of rhum and shouting at a cat. He had eyes of pin prick red - bright, hot marigjueana!’ etc
Imagine Cilla Black doing ‘Earth song’ by Michael Jackson.
‘Folk night: the frugal sound’ 😂 - ‘the frugal sound’ incredible. Like when Julian Cope made a Christian fanzine entitled ‘the humble meek’
Michael Daly@michaeldaly64.bsky.social · 5d ago1966, Swinging London. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band with Mike Bloomfield & Elvin Bishop in a club? Yes please!
Monty Don singing ‘no more heroes’ very stridently, in quite a posh voice. I woke up with it in my head. ‘Whatever happened to…those *heroes*’ etc
100% pure uncut Columbian BlueSky. Not “I’ve read Jäger’s argument and he’s incorrect here & here because x & y” but “fuck this brocialist with his white boy class politics.” Imagine the anti-intellectualism of libbing out over a vaguely Marxist theory adjacent book you haven’t read.
Perlo@perlothecat.bsky.social · 2w agoSo I haven't read this book yet but the hostility it has gotten from this one post is truly bizarre. Like Jager is presenting an argument that I may have some issues with but everyone in the comments and qts are basically "fuck this guy and his whole family to eternity"
And I thought Saumagen (lit. pig‘s stomach) was peak European rustic and unnecessarily disgusting food, but trust the French to beat us to it yet again. That said, it was Helmut Kohl‘s favourite dish, and he apparently made Thatcher eat it on a state visit, so there‘s always that.
Bleak beyond words. "AI labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale" www.news.com.au/technology/o...
AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books
If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.
news.com.au
Lord Ian Botham has opened a restaurant called ‘BEEFY’S BY *LORD BOTHAM*’ www.utilitabowl.com/beefys/
BEEFY'S by Lord Botham | Bar & Restaurant
BEEFY’s Bar & Restaurant takes inspiration from cricketing legend Lord Botham and overlooks the breath-taking Utilita Bowl cricket ground. Located at Hilton Southampton - Utilita Bowl, it's the perfec...
utilitabowl.com
Like @harrysword.bsky.social, I love the andouillette, even if the smell is reminiscent of being stuck behind a tractor hauling a muck spreader in autumn. He’s written a superb ode to this most particular sausage & why he was a fool to have one sent from France: open.substack.com/pub/harryswo...
The Andouillette Does Not Travel
Misadventures with a sausage.
open.substack.com
New Substack up. The Andouillette does not Travel. open.substack.com/pub/harryswo...
The Andouillette Does Not Travel
Misadventures with a sausage.
open.substack.com