Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps Highest Rated Underseen 👁️ The Letterboxd 2025 Year in Review: boxd.it/eie

depressing but this increasingly just the lesson for every single servant and every aspect of american life

If the UK government had a Culture Secretary, that person would be in a position to take a view about whether child porn on demand was a good thing, or a bad thing. thecritic.co.uk/brin...

Ofcom may take decisive action against X, like requiring it to apologise in eight months on a webpage so buried that nobody will read it.

Look, does our university fee system create an active market in higher education? No. But does it function to incentivise investment in your education and encourage aspiration? Well, also no. But at least it does fund the universities? Ha, you're not going to believe this.

A lot of the media really struggle to cover the 4chan edgelord meme stuff because it seems so unserious. And it is. But it's also serious.

The widely reported statement about restricting the feature to subscribers was a hallucinatory answer by the AI Grok - not a statement by the company itself

A core part of “why Labour is failing” is that the backbenchers given prime retirement seats - the people who ought to be the brains of the party - are not asking “what decisions should we be taking to defend ourselves and our allies and to increase resilience?” “How do we reform public services?”…

“Our government insists we can fill these massive staffing shortages by training more native healthcare workers. We can’t. For one thing, we need more doctors, nurses, and care workers now, not ten years from now.” www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-g...

If you can’t spin “the other parties are on the site that strips 5 year olds & murdered women” then what the fuck are you doing James

An administration that is somehow collectively much less intelligent than almost all its component parts.

People keep saying that Ofcom should investigate Twitter, but I think the more urgent need is for the CPS to do so. Running a network that creates and shares CSAM is the sort of thing that gets you upwards of a decade inside ordinarily.

It's I think just a sign that some ministers, and Mike Tapp is visibly one, are just too online. Why are you complaining about Twitter wanting clarity when you are doing a media round?

‘Asked if he condemned the attacks, Starmer said he wanted to establish the facts and speak to Trump first’ That’s not diplomacy, that’s spineless capitulation www.bbc.com/news/article...

real quisling energy from sir keir

"In June 2020, John Bolton, National Security advisor at the time, published in a book that Trump said that invading Venezuela would be "cool" because It is "really part of the United States." lmao so he's always been a neo-manifest destiny guy

Starmer is not fit to be PM, the wrong man for nearly any time, let alone these times.

1) sees headline about Turkish Opposition criticising European centre-left parties for kowtowing to Erdogan 2) please don't be Labour please don't be Labour please don't be 3) 'The Opposition have singled out the UK's Labour Party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer...'

Cinema verité is the most dishonest form of documentary filmmaking except for all the other ones

The Apartment is a perfect New Years Eve movie and a perfect romcom that reminds us all that all romcoms need one important element to work: an attempted suicide

This was the year that they needed to do something. The year that could have set the path for their first term, and instead they went from dismissing Kemi's push to extend ILR in February to implementing it in November whilst continuing to fail on tax and spend. Worthless, incompetent, immoral.

i don't think this so much about the NHS per se but about people with a vested interest in Magic Bullet Techno-Optimism, determined to push AI/Digital as a solution to all woes

Well I'm bored out of my mind and I watched a lot of films this year (though not as many as I wanted) and it's the end of the year so might as well do a thread of the good films I watched for the first time this year that other people should also watch.

The 'Manchester Model' in one story...public money subsidising private profit Renaker borrowed £700+ million from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) + its affiliates to build high end skyscapers... Now it's owner is fleeing with the profits to tax-free Monaco

So many institutions in ~~British public life~~ are currently in this objectively weird spot where they've quiet quit their actual responsibilities to focus on niche obsessions and yelling slurs, but still expect the people who came for their stated mission to keep tuning in and applauding

This latest shitshow is another reminder why Starmer needs to go - not in May but now. He is not willing or capable of playing the role of PM. He is vindicating the far-right and demoralising the left. He should be removed for being bad for the country not merely losing Labour elections

The UK is a state that now experiences far-right pogroms every summer, mainstream parties call for the revocation of citizenship over social media posts and non-white MPs are accused daily of having dual loyalty. Absolutely rancid state of affairs.

They should make Judge Dredds from the film Judge Dredd but just for people who play things on their phone out loud without headphones

last year on christmas eve was when i started getting really heartfelt messages about what my art meant to people so thank you for watching it. it feels nice not to feel so alone anymore. <3 i will try to make more movie in 2026.

Should probably reup this while it's seasonally appropriate.

Happy Christmas, all. I wish my (temporarily unpaywalled) final thoughts on the English NHS in 2025 could have been more positive, but reality is what it is. www.healthpolicyinsight.com/cowpers-cut-...

Worked hard to get this into Guardian Oz & big props to @fiercemum.bsky.social for setting it up & Melissa Davey for publishing it. She will doubtless get loads of hassle from transphobes for it, but it needs to be out there. Puberty Blocker bans harm trans kids, no-one should pretend they don’t.

Nothing worse than seeing a film you think is shit and getting ready to rate it 1 Star and then you look at the Letterboxd and the graph looks like this.

Who remembers the starmer operation pushing Sadiq under the bus over ulez

Sometimes an effective government will do something they think is necessary in the long run, and campaigners will be able to paint them on the wrong side of public opinion over it. The task isn’t “be on the right side of public opinion on every issue all the time”.

Anyone still remember the Trump Phone "T1" that was gold and made in america and $499 (with a $100 deposit) and was annouced on 16th June for a September 2025 release, that got quietly pushed back to "later this year"? Well it's still "later this year" and they're almost out of year.

Got tired of having those stories break out where the spokesperson says something stupid when asked a moderately tricky question because the direction from upstairs is unclear, contradictory and bad. So they've decided to solve the issue which was the questions.

Defeated Ted Knight (through the passage of time). Retook Lambeth (through mean reversion after 2002). Beat the BNP (because 2010 was a general election year). Masterminded the 2020 and 2024 elections (by going “just tell them what they want to hear and worry about implementation later”).

Defence Investment Plan due date: Autumn, before Xmas and now next year. And this isn’t an especially hopeful sounding para. www.ft.com/content/6e96... Defence spending plan delayed over Starmer concerns

I think it is possible that Russia might invade European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, primarily because the Russian state keeps saying it wants to invadw European countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland

One crucial thing I've observed (in middle class circles) is that everyone thinks that apprenticeships are a really good idea and more people should do them instead of degrees except for them/their children, who were perfectly suited for higher education

At some point, Gareth, you ought to consider that at no point during 2010 to 2024 did government ministers describe the far right marching through London as a good sign for free speech!

Its actually very hateful when your highbie friends refuse to take your very good advice for good posts even though it's about raising awareness (cc: @cisgirl.space )

Study of abstract ideas has a bias towards identifying common ground, and imagining syntheses that are impossible if the practicalities are given any attention whatsoever. Mutual appreciation for the First New Left is (alas) not the foundation for a stable political marriage.

Um, ok... This paper forthcoming at the JOP provides evidence that rent control in Germany actually made tenants MASSIVELY *less* NIMBY. This result was in the opposite direction of the authors' pre-registered expectations. And the effect sizes are, truly, massive.

It would be very instructive for someone to do a comedy bit where they tried to cover sport like politics writers. "It seems that - sorry this is really for the nerds folks - he may have torn something called an 'anterior cruciate ligament' which is a bit of pipe in the leg, to you and me hahaha"

Can we stop using the euphemism “women’s rights activist” for ardent transphobe?