It was unexpectedly enjoyable answering these questions about books. Like with records, as you get older people ask you about what you've been reading less and less because the choices are so infinite and idiosyncratic means asking about that is actually asking something really personal

Mark Brown@markoneinfour.bsky.social · 2d ago

Go on then, I fancy a go at this too. Give us a like and I'll tell you a book thing

As someone who has a collection of Fall albums I would like to support the idea of different formats having different songs. Bonus if the songs in common are in a different order, different mixes or not quite the same album in different countries. More of this please, not less

David Kuhne@davidkuhne.bsky.social · yesterday

Because of the lead time involved in releasing a vinyl LP, they end up getting released before the album is even finished lol It’d be like if Chris Nolan released an incomplete version of The Odyssey to theaters and the finished version wouldn’t be ready till streaming

Go on then, I fancy a go at this too. Give us a like and I'll tell you a book thing

Mo 🌸📚@moplayspoke.bsky.social · 2d ago

1 like = 1 book question 📚💙

Early 2000s: 'i wish there was something columnists could do when they get laid off after the inevitable scandal and stop getting asked on radio 4 that isn't writing a book which is dead hard' 2020s: 'hello I am podcast, I might finally have the answer you are looking for'

I will be exceedingly pleased when we have finally moved beyond the age of columnist as naughty man boy and the age of columnist as judgemental authoritarian dad. Goodbye to the age of tells it like it is (if you are a naughty man boy or judgemental authoritarian dad)

One day I would like to stay in a decaying seaside hotel for long enough to unpack my clothes into the drawers and write something looking out at the lights of distant container ships waiting to be piloted to into port.

I would like to tell you all that I saw some wild deer and a badger in the twilight at the weekend and it was fucking magical. I saw a hedgehog last month in the garden. My next wish is a pile of pinemartins wriggling like octopus tentacles

I've always found it weird that one of the great unspoken things about twitter being turned into a nazi bar was the emotional impact on people who watched an online place with relationships and rhythms and pleasures and frustrations they valued turn into a nazi bar. An experience of place ruined

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3d ago

The end of the world: how players mourn the death of their favourite online games

I adore @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social and it feels like an example of what every bit of television break up, deregulation and diversification was intending to achieve: genuinely independent niche channels. I wish there were more channels like this, especially at regional level.

Adam Sherwin@adamsherwin.bsky.social · 3d ago

Cult channel Talking Pictures TV has revived the ‘golden age’ of cinema. Will Freeview digital switch-off kill it? inews.co.uk/news/how-onl... @theipaper.com @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social

Exclusive: Some EU citizens in the UK have been contacted by the Home Office to say they were granted settlement status after Brexit "in error". If you know anyone this happened to contact me on lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

EU citizens in UK get letters telling them post-Brexit residency rights were given ‘in error’

After years of building lives in UK, potentially thousands of EU citizens could be told they have no right to remain

theguardian.com

Can't help but feel everyone is talking about the pandemic and lockdowns now in the UK because the last of the public figures most identified with that period are no longer in power. It's not a massive change but it is one and unprocessed emotion tends to choose symbolic moments to startaprocessing

I think all of those people full of blood for 'the collapse of the red wall' might have been victims of their own weird fantasies about the north and the people who live there because they wanted the UK to be the US and it really isn't

This was more of an issue in my pvc trouser days. Which my dad said would be 'good for keeping the rain off'

Anon Opin@anonopin.bsky.social · 5d ago

Nothing worse than trying to get dressed after going swimming. No matter how much you dry off, how much talc you use, trousers will always stick

Satyr created by Mary Lorraine, c.1967, in the art therapy studio at Netherne Hospital, where she was compelled to live. One of several surviving works her paintings often depict scenes of ballet, art making & society occasions & it seems, pre-hospitalisation, she may have been a professional dancer

Can I tell what's mint? Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are mint.

"I got no nerves left Monday morning and I think I'll cut my dick off the trouble it got me in Went home to my slum canyon On my way I looked up I saw turrets of Victorian wealth ... There's a silent rumble In the buildings of the night council" #fallfriday youtu.be/vqBrAFPG-DE?...

The Fall - Lie Dream of a Casino Soul

YouTube video by Let's Play a Record

youtu.be

Reckon Elon Musk has so much money he could just spend his life going door to door to every home in the world asking 'Do you like me? No do you like me?' and giving people ten quid to pretend to be his friend.

This has just unlocked a memory: We rented our video recorder in the early 80s and I stuck a straw into one of the AV sockets and blew into it. The video recorder went wild and recorded half of an episode of The Flumps, possibily in anger, before anyone could tame it. My mam was more animated.

Matthew Adams@ythos.bsky.social · last wk.

Mother Flump's 1000 yard stare.

I think one of the under discussed impacts of social media is opinion columnists escaping their print containment and elevating a whole phalanx of people basically just good at doing a turn for the regulars into public figures and thus giving them undue importance in the mix of public debate

I don't know quite what the term for it is, but I feel like by accident or design those figures most memorable as part of the pandemic era are being removed from public life. I think Burnham is the first 'Post pandemic' big political figure and it's part of his bounce, all policy aside

I think about this a lot. I'm in my late 40s and grew up in the west end of Newcastle and have lived in London since I was 20. Sometimes I find myself saying 'folks like us don't always live long' when I think of the lack of grandparents, the loss of my Mam early when I was 19 etc.

Best for Britain@bestforbritain.org · last wk.

🚨The north-south divide in life expectancy has worsened in the past decade. Londoners are now expected to live 3 years longer than people in the northeast. A real mark of shame for such a supposedly affluent country. https://www.thetimes.com/article/5fee5a11-f68d-4813-9273-67f95e416980

Doubt or cynicism is a natural response to politics at this point. But a PM would have to be a masochist to - one week in - launch reform that no one was demanding if he didn’t actually want it. If he wished to stall, he could’ve easily kept with Starmer’s plan of kicking the Casey recs until 2028.

Never really got why it's a problem if folks go to university. I do think it's a problem if all industries assume perfect employees will spring from the head of a titan fully formed. Under investment in further education (and lack of financial support for those studying) is what's screwing stuff

Emma Jacobs@emmavj.bsky.social · last wk.

Every commentator saying too many kids go to university has to tell their own kid to not do a degree

You’ve probably seen @peterwalker99.bsky.social’s story on the London flats where the temporary accommodation residents had their air con turned off in a heatwave; we had a look at what’s going on and who is responsible. www.londoncentric.media/p/air-condit...

"If you're poor, you can sweat": One building's air conditioning divide

The struggles of residents in a London tower block sum up the challenges of heatwave-era London.

londoncentric.media

Good thread here. I'd say that so little thought has been given to the social care workforce in the national debate because so few people can really picture what is demanded of that workforce, hence dreams a new national sevice will sort everything being a simple mental shortcut to 'do something'

Ian Birrell@ianbirrell.bsky.social · last wk.

A few random thoughts on social care having lived, investigated and campaigned on these issues for many years….

I think we probably need to stop and think about the shallowness (and balefulness) of our national culture if it can be memed for profit for some guy from Sri Lanka. Maybe we need more than Tommies, flegs and winged lions, lads.

Alistair Coleman@alistaircoleman.bsky.social · last wk.

Regret to report that the Sri Lanka-based Facebook nostalgia industry has started RESPECT season early this year. “Life in Britain” was previously building #numbers as “Xiaoyang Grebentsov” until last November, if you want some idea of how this bollocks works.

This is such a tune youtu.be/dG65eqfg6bc?...

Jay Reatard - "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"

YouTube video by Matador Records

youtu.be

Large language models are very environmentally destructive Paris in the the Spring machines

Silly policy idea: every young person from age 11 to age 18 gets to spend a week doing out doors-y stuff at a residential retreat/youth hostel/outward bound centre somewhere in the countryside. This includes young people who are working. Just a week, expenses paid, doing fun outdoors-y stuff.

From simple off-the-shelf elements arranged around a 4/4 synthetic kickdrum the 12" created a world where emancipation and transformation seemed possible: initially while the tune itself was infinitely extended, rising and falling, but then inside as a new world beyond the run out gained purchase

Centuries of Sound@centuriesofsound.bsky.social · last wk.

Describe your personal experience of encountering a favourite piece of music in transcendent, enlightening prose, translate it into a new medium, only adding to its complexity. Do not post the album, do not tell us what it is, it could be anything, it doesn't matter.