1st of October: The Dog Ate My Reading Lists

Now I could sit here and list the various holidays, visitors, hangovers, and gripping Total War campaigns that have led me to forget about you for three months. I could pretend this won’t happen again and promise to return to a weekly schedule of some sort. It’s a mark of the respect with which I treat my dear readers that I won’t, IMO. Nevertheless, I’ve been storing up some really good stuff for you all. I’ve stopped reading #takes and pointless columnists now, so the bar of what I share has been inching upwards.

Every other week I think “this should be the song of the week”, meaning I have about nine different ones I could share with you here, and of course, I can’t think of any. So just sit in silence and think about what a disappointment I am.

• Really quietly lovely article and photo essay from Aleppo as it starts to pick up the pieces after being retaken by the government.
• I’ve always been weirdly/morbidly fascinated by the logistics of war, and Afghanistan, with all the challenges getting in and out of it presents, has produced a whole genre of “this is how we moved eight thousand tons of gym equipment from Kandahar to Bagram and onwards” articles. This one tracks a single convoy out of the country and it’s good.
• Two Adity Chakrabortty articles this week, posted several weeks apart, on similar themes – this is what happens when I forget to post anything for ages. One on the SOAS cleaners’ successful campaign against outsourcing, and one on the conditions that produced the first ever McDonalds’ strike, as well as here, an interview with people on the picket line.
• Fascinating and long article on air-conditioning and how developing countries are trying to find better methods of cooling as the planet heats up and demand for energy increases. Lot of vicious circles in this one.
• This is some good research, on what parts of London are technically privately owned and what that implies for public access.
• I don’t think this was connected to the old creep’s death, and I think the rest of the blog is weird “manliness” stuff, but this article on Playboy’s ideal “bachelor pad” design is a really cool time capsule.
• Beyond all the titillating sex details (NSFW obv), this article on New York’s underground gay sex parties is a really interesting story about evolving public health and social norms.
• So its tricky, because this article is obviously about an international class of, basically, entitled knobs. It’s a profile of a company that offers a kind of fully-catered communal living situation all over the world so you can just rock up in Bali and not have to do all the difficult stuff, just go straight into a bubble. But the article is really interesting? So. Also, this one, on a similar company, but for office space, is interesting to me, because we recently viewed one of their offices and it had free beer on tap.
• You may never enjoy the Sims again after this article.
• It is cleaning day at the flat today so I am thinking a lot about this article on emotional labour and “””nagging””” in hetero relationships.
• Seriously depressing and bleak look at the dangerous labour practices of betting shops.
• Lovely bit of background and history on The Culture from the Iain M. Banks novels. If you needed those last six words of explanation it won’t be for you, admittedly.
• Maybe the London Underground wi-fi tracking project is a little creepy, but there’s some really cool facts being unearthed about how we move around stations and the city.
• Why London should be denser and full of six-story Parisian townhouses.
• Great tribute to London chicken shops that doesn’t come from a place of ironic Goldsmiths student fetishisation.
• Grace Dent is a bit of a knob, but I did like this article on where she, a food critic, actually likes to eat.
• I don’t know enough about linguistics to know how much of this article on how English developed its quirks is accurate, but it’s cool. Also, a cool article on weird demonyms.
• Only Fools and Horses is extremely good, and also, apparently despite being about a family of white south Londoners, resonated with lots of immigrant families. This was sweet, anyway.
• This is absurd and funny, on how Toploader got the writer through depressive episodes.
• As a Brazilian man, blessed with Joga Bonito and other such marketing campaigns, I can’t identify with this article on being shit at football, and how it can isolate you as a bloke. Still interesting though.
• Game of Thrones triple-whammy, now that the season’s over. A thoughtful piece on how the different “things” the TV series has been are increasingly coming into contradiction as it approaches its end (i.e., it was subversive fantasy but also straight fantasy, and those have different kinds of endings). Two really good, really thoughtful essays, much better than all the contemporary #takes, on sexual violence and violence by women in Game of Thrones.

And that’s your lot! Until next time, lads, take care x

2nd of July: At least I don’t pretend they’re weekly anymore

It’s been like a full month. State of it. I’ve periodically opened the document up, and either not had enough links, or, the other week, not had the right words/articles to respond to whatever tragedy had happened that weekend. Here we are now though, got both words, links and the time in which to share them with you all. Thanks for sticking with me – to the extent that you need to “stick” with something you either sporadically receive via email or sporadically click on when it shows up on your feeds. IDK.

I’ve periodically listened to something and decided it’ll be the song of the week and then, having not done a list, forgotten about it. Having gone through this three times, I now find myself without a song to put here. Soz.

Leaving the above in as a little window into the process but I’ve remembered the song – it’s the lovely one from the Motorcycle Diaries.

• Somewhat troublingly, I don’t have a direct response to Grenfell to share with you. It might be that I’ve experienced it all via Twitter rather than through anything I can share here. Anyway, I hope these articles tangentially touch on some of the issues around housing, ownership, and democracy that were made so horrifically blatant the other week. This, on a council “redeveloping” an estate, is bleak and grim, and importantly, is about a Labour council (because despite the boy (more on him later), it’s important to remember the bipartisan shittiness). I had hoped to be able to do something like this myself, but the Who owns England? lads got there first – with all the correct and legitimate calls to requisition vacant properties in Kensington, they mapped where those homes are, and who owns them, to the extent possible.
• I guess this article touches on another thing that came up in the wake of the horror – survivors and victims not feeling able to come forward for fear they’d be turned over to border police. This article discusses that “hostile environment” our PM has done so much to create.
• There’s not been a list since the election! This is what I said then:

“I’m sick of it, every day I have a little moment of “oh my god what if we beat them” and it’s going to be so grim when we wake up on the 9th.”

And here we are, having beaten them! A great article on Momentum’s incredible campaigning.

• On a similar note to the councils article, a really thoughtful critique of Labour in Wales and Welsh politics generally.
• This is long and rambles a little, on the response to Corbyn’s foreign policy speech after the Manchester attack (Christ, so many horrors since the last post), but I think a) it’s great – there are several lines that are either brilliant or made me gasp or both, and b) speaks to so much of what’s wrong with our media these days, that it’s worth reading in full.
• The New Socialist emerged in the run-up to the election, and launched in the aftermath, and have been pretty consistently great. I’ve got this article and the Wales one up there in this list but do recommend you have a butchers at their work because it’s all very smart stuff. This, I think, was their post-election editorial on where The Left goes from here, and it’s wise and good imo (I think, again, I read it last month and have forgot it)
• This piece is Extremely Online I guess? I no longer experience real life without it being mediated by Twitter, to the extent that my social calendar this month has been dominated by meeting people off twitter dot com. Anyway, it’s about the new lexicon of the left – slugs, melts, etc. It’s a great glossary, and it’s also really nice to see the Reel Politik lads getting some press – their podcast is worth checking out (which I will never say for any podcast because it is a terrible medium) – when everything felt bleak during the election, they were like a little tonic of hope, and now everything feels possible, they’re a really joyous thing to hear. Also they make abuse an art. On a similar note, this is almost beautiful? on the “big bag of cans” meme. I don’t even like cans! They get warm too fast and taste grim for that final third. But man, the big bag of cans – beautiful.
• OK we’re off current affairs now here we are. This is a really interesting article on Spotify playlists, and the marketing and branding work behind them – there’s loads of talk about the algorithms, but I’ve never seen something look at the actual corporate decisions so closely.
• I bounced off Knights of the Old Republic extremely hard about three planets in, but I still enjoyed this piece about playing it as a villain.
• This is gorgeous, on Spoons, by Megan Nolan, the nation’s Wetherspoons correspondent.
• Another extremely online piece – 101 good tweets, basically. There’s some discussion of them, but it’s mostly just good tweets, so enjoy (my own tweets are bizarrely not featured).
• I imagine this story, about reporters trying to attend an Apple product launch, has some intent of being about freedom of the press or whatever, but it’s mostly just a delight of passive-aggression and trolling.
• Good article on dating differently political people to you, that unfortunately does not conclude with “never kiss a tory”.
• Why is the Tube so hot? Science.
• IDK man pao de queijo is good, read this article and get hungry.
• I actually had this thought a week before reading the article, but it’s weird that chilli came from Latin America when now we think of chilli as integral to loads of other cuisines.

Done! Cool. Hope you enjoyed. I’m conscious I’ve gained twitter followers during the numbers election who weren’t here when I made an effort with this list – I also send it out as a tinyletter – if you’d like to be subscribed to that sporadic mailout, link here. Otherwise, it’ll be periodically on your feeds. Have a lovely Sunday/week/month/inchoate period of time till the next instalment. x

21st of May: Sickening False Hope

I’m sick of it, every day I have a little moment of “oh my god what if we beat them” and it’s going to be so grim when we wake up on the 9^th. Anyway got some articles for you.

Song of the week because it just lives in my Youtube recommendations and the back of my mind;

• Excellent explanation of the ransomware thing and why we’re vulnerable and what it would take to protect ourselves from similar attacks.
• Interesting story about Mexican avocado barons forming a private police force to protect themselves from cartels.
• Sort of nerdy look at how the rumour that the US Navy had sent a carrier group to North Korea got out of control. Good to know that there’s this sort of ambiguity in signalling between nuclear powers.
• The weird thing about America having nuked itself is that there are Americans alive today still suffering the effects of the radiation. Great feature on them and their campaign for recognition.
• Article about the lads commuting into London once a week and keeping their families in nice places. Sort of bleak state of affairs where even the well off are leading these miserable lives. Briefly looked into doing this but turns out season tickets are about as expensive as rent. FT article so if you want a copy give us a shout.
• Great article on how zero hours contracts are integral to capitalism, a feature not a bug, and how they inhibit workplace organising. Focuses on the TEFL sector, but a lot seems applicable to the catering world too.
• Speaking of zero hours, a great piece on how Labour can appeal to people in them. This was from before the manifesto and I think a lot of these kind of concerns have been addressed but good to bear in mind.
• Garden Bridge was mercifully cancelled, but still took £37m of our money with it. Probably all disappeared into the pockets of some of Boris’ vile Tory mates.
• A look at the weasel Tim Farron’s voting record on the EU is interesting given the Lib Dems are apparently the great hope of the remainer.
• On that note, this is from a while back but remains instructive I think, on the self-serving narrative that’s been built around the referendum.
• Fascinating article on Google Books and how it got crippled.
• This is a rather lovely profile of a food cart operator in New York.
• A fair impression of what the #takes will be when we’re all irradiated skeletons – because #takes, like cockroaches, will live on.
• JK Rowling, part of the long list of “people who I thought were sound until I saw their tweets”, gets utterly hammered in this article and its great.
• I get anxious spending any money on clothes, so a little hard to relate but I thought Diss’ story about his relationship with anxiety and fashion here was lovely.
• This is a bit morbid and weird if you stop to think about it for a second but also shotguns are really good in games so it’s interesting? IDK.
• Torn here, because all of the conclusions about Steam’s malignant effects and terrible policies are correct, but also the sheer faff of having several games platforms is deeply unsettling. Like how you need Netflix and iPlayer and Amazon and Hulu and HBO in order to keep up with telly these days. No ta.
• This is rather cute about parents following their kids on social media (hi mum).
• Really liked this essay about Star Wars.
• This series of analyses of Casino Royale is very interesting but they aren’t coming out quick enough. Rude.
• And as a final treat, watch this kid utterly wreck Theresa May. Seen. Off.

And that’s it. Will try and get another list out before the election but no promises. Am off out door-knocking now to try and forestall the inevitable crushing loss. Byeeee x

23rd of April: It Never Ends

We’re now about four days into the general election and I’m already so tired. Here are some articles to distract yourself from the grinding tedium and misery of the news this week.

Still haven’t gotten right into the new Kendrick album (one song sounds like Flight of the Conchords tbh) but the second song is great. Is the video good? IDK I’ve not seen it. Here it is:

• Smart analysis, going beyond perverse fascination with the size of the bomb, of that strike on ISIS in Afghanistan.
• Cannot believe I’m including #election content I’m livid. This is encouraging and optimistic on how Labour’s massively increased membership could help this election. I’m sceptical because I have been canvassing twice and hated it a lot, but there we are. Will see what marginal seats there are near me (I live at the border between Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry’s constituencies tbh). On the other hand, this is really good on the constant struggle between the knowledge that evil always wins, and the hope that this time it might not.
• Review of some books on housing in the US that are really interesting on eviction and the foreclosure crisis.
• I only did about a fortnight in the call centre (awful and I got sacked), so while this piece on the constant supervision sounds familiar, I think I was lucky not to have been so ground down by it.
• Really good long article on the chocolate factory that moved from the UK to Poland, the workforces at both ends, the history, the politics of the moves, all of it. Really interesting and nuanced.
• It’s nice to see vile oil companies getting found out even if it doesn’t go anywhere – this is a good dig into Shell Oil’s dealings with a bent Nigerian oil minister.
• I always figured the reason not to donate a kidney is you’d have to stay off the pints. This article on donating one to a stranger is interesting and quite moving, but doesn’t mention the pints factor.
• Having watched spellbound as a nerd online opened up a booster pack of pokemon cards on camera, I was v interested in this article on the phenomenon of “unboxing” videos.
• This could have been longer and more detailed, tbh, but it goes some of the way to explaining why cocktails are so expensive (some of the way).
• This was a good Golby I guess, especially as god wouldn’t it be nice not to be in England for a bit. Dreadful place.

Bye, lads. Hopefully I’ll talk to you before the election but if not, vote Labour x

9th of April: Who Even Knows

I guess this is nominally still a fortnightly round-up but whatever, here I am, got some articles for you.

Song of the week can be this great old Muse one IDK.

• This article on the plans for when the Queen dies had already done eight rounds of the internet when I added it to the list, and it’s now Old, but it came up at midnight last night and we were talking about it till 3 so it’s still pride of place. It is incredible start to finish.
• Will this make any sense to you if you’re not on Twitter, let alone my specific little corner of it? IDK really. If the name Jolyon means nothing to you, then I guess the epoch of the Jolyoncene won’t either. It’s very sharp though.
• Two pieces on the UK’s nasty grubby migration policy. One tracking the gradual tightening of conditions on bringing family over, and one from just after the big Trump protests pointing out how close May is to his politics.
• This, from a few months ago, on how the media taught Trump war was a great way to get them to praise him, seems v prescient now. Title: “you cretins are going to get thousands of people killed”.
• The PissPigGranddad (lol) saga is coming to an end and this is most of his story I guess. It’s an interesting read and as a bonus, the reporter quotes his crude tweets in print which is great.
• This is wild, and written about an absolute dickhead probably, on a Wall Street informant trying to turn on the FBI.
• On food and memory and tinned fish, this is really good – quite hard though, fair bit of violence so fair warning.
• Good guide to digital security.
• On the one hand, this really cute story of chickens helping a man cope after a lifetime of mental illness…
• On the other, this quite lovely piece on London’s fried chicken shops.
• Based on this upsettingly short article about Palermo recovering from the Mafia’s domination, I would really like to read more about that history.
• Guess it’s no surprise Irish pubs in the wider world are such bleak grim places when they’re literally getting exported wholesale. This is interesting though.
• It seems apt that this article on some of Muse’s best bits is ridiculous and slightly embarrassing because Muse are also (etc. etc.)]
• Very interesting on the sort of cultural standing of different beers and how they react to each other – conveniently, Bud Light has just returned to the UK after twenty years and is being heavily marketed so you can get on that if you wish. (#spon)
• This piece is weird and creepy (and may feature some pictures of bums I’m not sure I read it text-only). In the first half of the twentieth century the developing science of posture and body-building led to some really weird stuff.
• Why is this even here IDK, it’s an interesting review of a book about how football evolved after the Hillsborough.
• I told you all about Left Shift last time around so you should have seen this already but I really enjoyed this long essay about open world games. This is the first part.

It’s sunny out, go enjoy it. See you soon probably xx

12th of March: I don’t even like comics

They’re kind of silly. Still, my spell of take-abstinence continues. I’ve not read any bad opinions on Syria, I don’t know what ludicrous hijinks are going on within the Democrats, I don’t care whether Emma Watson is a feminist, I continue to not be interested in Owen Jones. It’s good.* I just read some embarrassingly juvenile tat on my commute and arrive at work with a spring in my step. All this does mean that the list is… bitesize. So let’s get to it.

• This review of a biography of Theresa May will do funny things to you. On the one hand, the sexism of the Tory party might make you feel some sympathy for her (vile). On the other, the revelation that a lot of the worst ideas and policies of the last five-odd years were conceived of by Theresa May before being usurped by some other slime will make her seem even more awful. Very nuanced, imo!
• A reminder that even the rumours and prospects of a crackdown on immigration are enough to cause material harm and suffering, with immigrants in the States almost going into hiding.
• Charming profile of Patrick Stewart.
• Two lists running with an article about classical knobs! I’m sorry! But this was interesting on why Greek statues aren’t always that impressively endowed.
• Some good lads have started a new website for games writing, and it’s exciting news. Currently got a couple of good pieces on it about games I haven’t played but like – one to watch!
• The article accompanying this incredible long-exposure photo gif thing of the Shard is kind of thin and empty? But my god I could watch the animation all day.

And that’s that, off you go. Get a subscription to Marvel Unlimited. Leave me be.

*obviously, as you can see from this summary, I remain deeply in tune with the ebb and flow of the takes, I just don’t read them anymore

26th of February: Marvel Unlimited Takes Its Toll

I think the genesis of this list thing was that I was on my own in Madrid, sitting in lots of bars reading – sometimes books, but lots and lots of articles, and I needed somewhere to put them all. That and I wanted to become a Blogger, and thought this would be a good little way in. Anyway, fast forward three years and the news is all bad, and I wouldn’t have the time to read all the content even if I wanted to. I recently took out a Marvel Unlimited subscription, and now instead of reading the latest lukewarm take in the Guardian, I just read thoroughly mediocre comics about characters I don’t recognise in the slightest. Its doing wonders for my health tbh. Not great for accumulating content for you all though. Soz. Let’s go through my paltry offerings.

Bonus high-quality bit of comic art:

I mean, ffs.

• Good, non-sensationalist analysis* of the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam.
• A call for bold, radical, utopian demands on immigration and borders, instead of technocratic pandering.
• This story about an initiative in Monterrey (in Mexico, in case, like me, you were convinced it was in the States) led by former gang members to create truces between gangs, is lovely.
• Bit spooky that TfL has been tracking all our phones on the underground, but all their findings are really quite interesting so fair play.
• Found this piece from an Irish emigré in London quite moving.
• Will Self just roams London, apparently. Must be nice being a writer. Got a lot of respect for the idea of just walking to Heathrow
• A peek behind the curtain at all the witchcraft that goes on with those terrifying-looking dresses on the red carpet.
• This is quite sad, fair warning. Eva Wiseman’s cat died, and she had to explain it to her toddler. Maybe give it a miss if you’re feeling fragile, idk!
• OK so this is rude! NSFW and that, but a proper classicist did an analysis of dick pics and masculinity using the myth of Priapus as the hook. Ancient Romans were so rude! (all the rude bits are like 2000-year old paintings and sculptures tbf)
• Found this interview with the actor who plays Mace Tyrell weirdly charming.
• It’s your boy, the biggest mark in the galaxy, getting excited for the Morrowind expansion again. Don’t even know I included this in the list tbh. Sick of it.

And that’s it. lol. Have a good fortnight, and I’ll be back with some more dregs soon! xx

*which I guess isn’t easy, as it’s a pretty sensational kind of event

12th February: You might read this one

Good to get feedback from the fans, keeps me levelled. “too miserable”, they say. “too many long grim articles about how we’re all going to die”, they wail. Sick of it. So this week is mostly just bubblegum and computer games. Because I’m nothing if not a people-pleaser.

Have you noticed I’ve binned the song of the week? I got bored of it. Also, no picture of a cat this week. I did accidentally let a kitten into my flat the other day when I had just made an unnecessary round trip to St Albans, but it feels dishonest to use Kev to get clicks. Let’s go.

• Good thing about sitting on articles for months at a time is you get to stash up articles which were about a thing that was freshly tragic at the time and then unleash them on your unsuspecting readers out of the blue. So I’ve got a couple of lovely articles about Carrie Fisher. This one is an excerpt from her memoir/diaries, about Harrison Ford, and it’s even more poignant now. This one was from the editor of her advice column in the Guardian, and it’s lovely. IDK, made you all sad again haven’t I?
• So while we’re feeling low, this is v. powerful by Megan Nolan on Marie Stopes having to cut back on support for Irish women travelling for abortions and her own experience.
• OK the party starts now! Literally! A tribute to the jagerbomb! When I worked at Spoons, there was a fella who came in everyday from work at the posh cocktail bar across the road and ordered a pint of guest cider and a jagerbomb and just drank them on his own. Sometimes I’d convince him to do the 2 for £6 deal even though it was a bit of a con. Little pointless vignette for you there.
• Reckon success has gone to his head a bit, the videos are getting indulgent, but the Chicken Connoisseur was such a great little thing to discover. Like this profile from back when he burst into the mainstream.
• On the other end of the posh scale, I really liked this day in the life of a grand old restaurant.
• The trick to avoiding the gym cons outlined here is just to be astonishingly hungover for most of January and only make it back in six weeks after Christmas when you’re fat and weak and can’t even lift your water bottle let alone a dumbbell. #lifehack
• Literally just an article about some soft porn mags, I think, but because they’re from 1970s Lebanon, it’s cool and interesting.
• I had no idea Obama kept the same barber while he was President but he even flew the guy out!
• When Slate started their week-long tribute series to Stevie Wonder it read like they were trying to jinx the man to death. He seems to have survived it, and this is great on just how incredible the run of albums around Innervisions
• A feminist analysis of the best film ever made.
• This is some great nerd stuff – instead of obituarying Carrie Fisher, they obituaried Leia Organa as a political figure.
• Two little analyses of data formats and literacy standards in the Star Wars universe because I am a vile nerd and clearly didn’t get bullied enough as a lad.
• Board games are pretty cool aren’t they? Me and the other three readers of this blog are trying to get a little monthly game going (text me, lads), and they’re surprisingly fun – not quite Company of Heroes…
• BOOM TRANSITION this is an old piece about the making of Company of Heroes but it’s good and I miss it.
• Great in-depth analysis of a level in Dishonored 2, a game that sounds great but just like its predecessor I am too terrible at stealth games to engage with.
• Mini Metro is a pretty cool little £1 phone game. It’s also apparently an excellent model of real-life transit systems. Cool!
• Absolutely livid, between this piece about how the developers overhauled it and the expansion bringing Morrowind into the game, I’m now desperate to acquire the Elder Scrolls MMO despite it being thoroughly mediocre by all accounts. Such a mug.
• The lads at Shortlist got scouted by Football Manager and incorporated into the game and this is just very funny.
• This is a weird article about a film that never existed and a bunch of people who are convinced it does.
• Strange thing about being from a place but not for long enough to really feel ownership of it is that this kind of content feels extremely familiar but also utterly alien. Anyway, it’s a fucking Tab (I know) article about Sutton, or “the ends” as I call them generally.
• Would absolutely read a long-form version of this analysis of how TV’s famous couples ended up. Honestly please click.
• This is high-level nerd but kinda quite sweet on Batman helping someone with mental illness? IDK I’m embarrassed reading that sentence back almost but.
• Brilliant profile of Buzz Aldrin.
• If you’re still fussed about every owning some bricks and windows and that, this Golby might depress you but it’s mostly quite funny.
• I liked this a lot on therapy.
• Cool feature about the fella what invented the Raspberry Pi, which sounds really cool and I want one now even though I know I’d get sick of it immediately and put it in a drawer.
• Look at this fat fucking pig my god.

Cool, that’s your lot. And now I’m off for a Spoons breakfast, with, I think 75% of this blog’s readership. Pointless. x

5th of February: There’s a cat on my bed

Right look, I know, it’s been ages. There was Christmas, and then there was New Year’s (Sundays both, I think), and then I was moving house, and then as I was on holiday.* I’m sorry. I’m still keen on this list, I still like the idea of getting to share some great #content with you all, I’ve just been a bit slack. Sunday morning is, and remains, a bastard of an appointment, so I’ll consider rejigging it as we get into the year. Meanwhile, I’ve left this long enough, and it’s ballooning. I’ve been told my list of bookmarks is now obscenely long, so I’m splitting it up and giving you all a bonus instalment next week. It looks like I might be able to put together a whole list of just fun stuff which might be nice. This week: misery and death.

Bonus cat:

 

• The Daily Beast has maybe always been a bit weird, but it’s gone full weird in recent times, between outlandish claims on the Middle East and now its spearheading of hysteria over Russia. Still, for this piece, a journalist who survived an IED attack in Iraq in 2006 went back to interview an ISIS bombmaker in prison. It’s nuanced and heavy and thoughtful.
• I think my main takeaway from the scandal over the IISS getting secret funding from Bahrain is that, had an interview gone the other way last year, I could have been on £16-9k a year of that sweet sweet blood money. This piece is very thoroughly reported, providing real heft to the deserved smacking the IISS has gotten over this.
• Reckon I had an article about the Mosul dam collapsing, probably in The New Yorker, in the list two or three years ago, and here we are again! It’s still terrifying in an almost unbelievable way. If Iraq has dumb Hollywood films I assume this is their equivalent of the San Andreas fault.
• And while we’re on the subject of flooding, don’t assume your warm little London cupboards and cells are safe** – the UK is woefully unprepared for major flooding.
• Speaking of woefully unprepared, nuclear weapons are not only apocalyptic, they’re also a bit shoddy? This story was published, I think, before the Royal Navy almost levelled Miami, which only adds to how scary it is.
• This is an interesting, humanising idea from Reuters, a sort of detailed, granular analysis of the journeys of the people on one of the worst shipwrecks in the Med in the past couple of years, with interviews and everything.
• It is good to be made aware of good and valid reasons for concern around the death of cash and the rise of contactless cards and phone payment etc. However, I still say – bin coins and if your shop doesn’t have contactless, sort it out.***
• This is a great profile of Diane Abbott, who gets so much stick for reasons I can’t quite? Put my finger on? Don’t know what it is about her that means there’s so much hostility to her in particular? Weird and mysterious IMO. Anyway, she’s brilliant and this is interesting.
• Like most people, I suspect, the whole Corbyn thing has sort of faded in my eyes and it’s a bit bittersweet, etc. Still interesting reading this excerpt from a book on the initial leadership challenge that looks at how the Guardian slanted its reporting and analysis around the boy JC.
• I think this piece on Camden becoming a parody of itself and then gentrifying and possibly dying out is interesting but ultimately, the answer to the headline must be kind of… no? Whenever I’d visit London in my teens, I’d make a point of visiting Camden market, and it seemed like the coolest place there was.**** Then I lived there for a bit and became immune to it, and then, when I got a job in the Spoons on the canalside, I realised I hated having to walk up that high street. So idc.
• Speaking of places I’ve lived I have weird feelings about! Madrid’s new mayor is doing genuinely fascinating and bold stuff with pedestrianisation and binning cars off in order to combat air pollution, unlike our new mayor whose main policy was “try not to walk too much lads” as we all choked on toxic exhaust fumes.
• Fair warning this one is a lot of gross body horror, and a bit US-centric probably, but if you want some gruesome facts about childbirth, go ahead!
• Think the heyday of cultural appropriation as a controversy has sort of passed us by, but this is a really sensitive, lovely account of an author’s struggle with her own kimono.
• I don’t know what conclusion to draw from this article about Silicon Valley in the context of the #deleteUber thing – guess it’s the eternal “there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism thing” but hey.
• Torn on this one about Google’s machine learning experiments. On the one hand, the technology and progress is terrifying and awesome. On the other hand, the fawning tone of the whole thing is a bit nauseating. It frequently reads like one those gross articles where a bloke is sent to perv on a young female actress. At least the objectification is being turned on some male nerds for once?
• Sobering look at people in the UK who are homeless despite being employed. Seventh largest economy in the world!
• Good corrective to some of the reporting around strikes and trade unionism that tends to erase the agency of union members (or “workers” as they are commonly known.
• This profile of Mexico’s post-murder-cleanup-specialist is grim and weird and poignant.
• A lot of chat on the ol’ social media comparing the rise of the alt right and the morality of punching Nazis (extremely good, btw) with German denazification. This story about some neo-Nazi serial killers sort of tarnishes that narrative a bit, I think. There’s been rumblings about the trial elsewhere, some going into more depth into the allegations of complicity from the authorities.
• This week in “that thing you thought was good is actually bad” news, some caution around the reopening of Fabric.

 

And that’s that. Fun stuff next week I promise!

*conveniently elided here; the week I just couldn’t be arsed, frankly. I made a pie instead, and it was great.

**just clocked that this is the first list I’m putting together at my new kitchen table. We have daffodils it’s cool.

***have gotten to the point where I have to make an effort to remember my PIN when I’m rudely asked for it

****the underground stables bit exerted a particular fascination – the climax of one of my long-running Urban Dead stories took place there.

18th of December: One Week til Christmas

Need to rush out into central and do emergency Christmas shopping, lads, so let’s get cracking.

Song of the week is something off Childish Gambino’s new album, picked largely at random cos I don’t know what all the different songs are yet.*

• Always feel kind of funny doing these narrative critiques and media sniping bits when there’s real horrors going on in the world, but I think it’s fairly necessary to puncture the establishment stories when they’re constantly being used to justify more horror and death.** This first one takes a general look at the Syrian war, and the misinformation and deceit surrounding it. This second, is more particularly on Aleppo. God knows, at this point, what truth is actually coming out of there, but guess there’s some value in having deeply partisan sources on both sides at least.***
• Good analysis of Kalingrad as a place and society, not just a missile silo.
• Strong response to the football child abuse scandal.
• Think Kriss gets to something about “2016” here – it isn’t “the worst” in an anomalous way, it’s just that everything is always getting worse. I also don’t know how much you’ll enjoy this one, on the bizarre game theory thread, if you weren’t on Twitter as it unfolded and people obsessed over it. But it’s great.
• On a similar note, think this is a very good point on the “fake news” thing – it’s creating a narrative that does nothing but help the far right.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates writing a 10k+ word retrospective of the Obama years is a real “clear your morning, make a coffee and get comfortable” event. Luckily it came out just as work entered the beginning of the Christmas lull. It’s also well worth reading the responses – the two that were up when I read pointed out significant blind spots or errors in Coates’ narrative.
• We all got really happy at the possibility of paying €1k a year to retain EU citizenship (because we inhabit the worst timeline), so of course the slugs in Brussels had to pour cold water over that slim hope.
• This piece on beginning to recover from grief while staying in a Bangkok sex hotel with your mum is lovely but definitely could have gone on twice as long?
• Important attack on the stupidity of Labour chasing anti-immigration votes down into the gutter.****
• I liked this on battles for memoria historica in Spain.
• Absolutely lovely feature on One Hundred Years of Solitude and Garcia Marquez.
• Thought this was a kind of lovely, not uncritical, defence of Tolkien. It’s very very long but.*****
• In the wake of the cool stunt where the author proved it was cheaper to get a coach to Paris for the morning-after pill than it was to buy one here, she made the arguments explicit.
• I’m glad The Walking Dead is getting political flak because I just find it a bit dull and depressing (the worst thing always happens), so I’m quite glad to be able to dress that up in politics. This article is a bit odd – it seems to essentially just be based on one fella’s work. Still seems largely correct.
• Only three or four days left, depending how late you’re working this week, to sample the full range of high-street Christmas offerings. I liked this New Statesman round-up. Think I might treat myself this week to one of the top-flight ones even though they’re like £9.
• Always nice to see cities (here, Madrid) taking steps to curb car use. Especially considering Madrid is so small you can walk across the centre in less than an hour?
• Turns out all the free games on old Windows machines were thinly disguised ruses to get people used to the new input methods required on the new computers.
• This is compelling and beautiful, and it’s about Burnout Paradise. A+.
• Another one of them “men can only find true connection with each other when it’s mediated via a playstation” ones. Good tho.

alright, go away. Think I’m due to write another one on like the 29th? Which I might bin off, tbh. So I’ll probably see you in the New Year. Have a lovely Christmas xoxo

*think the critical consensus on this was one was very divided so I’ve had to form my own opinion, which I hate doing. It’s good imo.

**I’ve found it on Twitter, in particular. Confronted with such glib ghoulish idiocy from the “do something (mostly war)” crowd, I find it hard not to respond (“respond” I’m a locked account with about eight non-bot followers) in kind, which is probably deeply morally off.

***I mean I saw articles from The Daily Beast circulating far more widely than the “Cubans in Syria/Dismember Syria” outlet ever deserves.

****it’s going to happen though, because the worst thing always happens, and there’ll be a cross-party consensus that something must Be Done about immigration.

*****not that I even really need much defending to be done of Tolkien. Of course I’d probably be held in contempt by the author and all associated for my attachment to the films over anything else.