Reform are promising Gorton and Denton capital in a Westminster-media attention economy. Rather than, like, the potholes being fixed or money for schools. "Lastly just look at what has happened to places that have already elected Reform UK MPs...Nobody ignores those places anymore"

A nom-dom who co-owns an organisation whose sole purpose is to drain wealth out of Manchester.

Student journalism is having a golden age, one of the few pockets of journalism that has greatly benefitted from the internet without suffering from many of its drawbacks. Particularly in the US, from the outside looking in.

Bluesky in general

Wild speculation, but I do think the rise of the pdf digital format reading list has contributed to the decline in undergraduate academic reading...

Not an original point, but continued to be amused by how the "western culture defenders" have never, like, read Rabelais-via-Bakhtin.

Doing hard time for taking your kids to the panto.

All of the election literature that has been stuffed in my door has been shocking, tbh.

I'm honestly fascinated by VAR and how criticism of the whole thing is that it privileges technical accuracy over loosely defined but commonly understood spirit of the game. It seems like it says something larger about politics more generally.

"It's ephebophilia, actually" is one of the few arguments that you can make that gets politically worse and funnier the more evidence and unpacking someone does for it.

It's always low down the list of problems with the Epstein stuff, but it does blow my mind that some of the richest and most people in the world plot their crimes on a standard email server.

YouTube has started trying to sell me gray hair shampoo. 🧓👴

Market Stalinism

Fascinated seeing the Stranger Things conspiracy theories about a "secret episode". Not sure entirely when fan theories became essentially conspiracy theories, but yeah someone should write about that! (It's me, I'm writing about it).

The larger topslice from centre is the scariest one. You have a healthy budget, numbers look ok, and then it's announced quietly via your department head and three weeks later you're in the red and need to find 30% more students in the summer.

Amazingly it was also in 2009 that Sarah Ferguson made a documentary where she spent time on a deprived estate counselling the residents on how to be more self-reliant and less dependent.

New article ⬇️⬇️⬇️ Driessen, S. (2026). Invisible string(s): Exploring conspiratorial participatory practices among Swifties. Popular Communication, 1–19. doi.org/10.1080/1540...

@amosmurphy.bsky.social Moment of the weekend definitely the women battering Chelsea to go 12 points clear in the league!!

Maybe he really didn't know what mushy peas were if he can't remember whether someone sent him £75k...

"MechaHitler! Tell them I'm not a pedophile!" "I LOVE YOU ELON" "Not now, MechaHitler!"

Both Labour and Green's entire pitch for Gorton has been that they're the only party to stop Reform. It's a bit odd really, because compared to lots of the country the area feels on the up. Labour controlled council has done a job (in a very new labour way) of creating a city that is growing.

Reform are running in Gorton on the pitch that Goodwin is a local lad done good, whose grandad was a working class fella with good labour values, and who will protect the NHS (and deport brown people, I guess). Excellent stuff, well done everyone.

I have been thinking a lot about both Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux and how a construction of pop-doc "weirdness" has been mainstreamed. I think there's something interesting there, from a pop culture perspective, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Trump is such a sociopath that you can tell he's been annoyed about the Epstein/sexual assault stuff because, not entirely unfairly, he knows everyone in his extended social circle does the same thing.

My stupid little essay about kayfabe has been translated into French for a very cool exhibition about art, kayfabe and pro wrestling in Paris.

I just had a flashback memory to early in the pandemic where my friend livestreamed himself playing Microsoft flight simulator, wore a little pilot's hat, and me and all my friends got beers and peanuts and pretended we were going on holiday. We all had passports and one of them packed a little bag.

Can’t believe they released the Epstein files to cover up for the Melania movie.

Reform have accepted so many defections they're on the brink of splitting into Reform: Hollywood and Reform: Wolpac

It's so funny that Google AI is just a poorly worded summary of like one person's view of something on Reddit from like five years ago, and the Reddit post it is stealing from is like the top search result immediately below it.

Oh. Oh no. Oh god no.

"We have finally created the 9-9-6 from the famous work 'The 9-9-6 is very bad.'"

Notable, of course, that very few proponents of AI even pretend that the tech is about freeing us from the drudgery of work any more.

At no point during the whole of human history have you been more exposed to the views of political and ideological opponents and rivals than you are in this very moment. You don't need to chase this.

Can I rush through the ethics to do an ethnography of these 9 people who have bought a ticket at my local cinema?

I suppose it's a small comfort to know that George Galloway ruled himself out, but fuck me February is gonna be a long old month in Levenshulme.

I'm in the Gorton constituency, I feel so important. Someone come vox pop me, I have many opinions about the local takeaway vegetarian options.

Marxist-Leninist cells are using emojis as weapons of propaganda.

Taking every single scrap of energy I have to not respond to a school wide email about an upcoming research talk called "locating men's underwear" with the reply "they're in my trousers, that's a short talk".

I have a fondness for all the people I follow, and am appalled by what is happening in America, but it's hard work opening this app for another day and watching another government snuff film from there over and over and over again.

Baudrillard didn't go far enough.

I was gonna make a joke about Microsoft wanting a cut of every book written on Word before remembering that Unity actually did attempt that particular stupid gambit so maybe we aren't so far away.

Hahahhahahahahaha The whole point of Hollywood wanting AI was to not pay fucking residuals makes this so great

Hello, Mr Blair, I'm from the wallet inspectors for peace, and we'd love to just check your wallet.

Not only is the US sleepwalking to a proxy or real war with Europe, but my university needs me to change my password which will require me to spend a whole week signing myself into every device I've ever used via 28 Microsoft authenticator interactions.

He thinks like a Sopranos character, but one of the really fucking dumb ones. Jackie maybe.

If I took a Panenka I would score it and not look like a right old dick head.

The USA had complete and ultra economic and cultural hegemony, a level of power and privilege most countries could only dream of, and they're throwing that away because they want their sex pest president to press the domestic racism button. It's just wild.

Editors of major academic publications, I'm not reviewing whole text books for "2 free e-books".

I regret to inform you that Manchester's big, multi-million pound art space is being turned into a kitsch "working men's club" as part of a curated installation experience.