Barry Lyndon × 21 Savage "a lot"

What Starmer doesn't get is you don't get to take a day off when it comes to fighting back against the hard right - or weeks/months in his case. Today No 10 should be saying 'we don't revoke citizenship for being vile online'. Instead, silence. Waiting to see how the wind blows. It's cowardice

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

[Cleverly, vote-winningly] I think you’ll actually find that I’m incompetent.

Then: nothing has ever felt like a generational leap like Gears of War did to me. Now: Wii Sports [Wii Sports music] Incredible to think Bully came out this same year - it feels so much older to me.

Empire Magazine once put on a special screening of Jaws before which they had actors portraying characters from the film: Brody, Quint, Hooper, Mayor Vaughn and… Man Looking For Dog. He’d go up to people ordering a drink, “Excuse me, have you seen my dog?” What am I supposed to do with that?!

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

The special collector’s edition no less!

An enjoyable review that articulates a lot of what I’ve grown to hate about Avatar and - along with the movies themselves - has freed me from any desire to sit through any more of these abominable things.

Terrific stuff.

Still can’t believe we were robbed of seeing him wrestle as Greybeard Sting.

I'm starting to think like next year could be a make-or-break year for the government in terms of putting a lid on this "neo-racism". If they don't start pushing back *hard* we could be looking at another generation wasted clawing us back just to where we were

Great year - the first of these for which it’s been genuinely hard for me to pick a winner. Then: Hotline Miami made me git gud before any Souls games. And what a soundtrack! Now: I still dip into XCOM from time to time.

Not going to call out the person who posted it but this graph is something. I don’t even necessarily disagree with the premise, just… what are the data here supposed to be?

Bonkers.

Oh my God, McSweeney’s grand strategy is working.

This’ll go down well. Prime Minister, your party has just suffered an historic defeat in what can only be considered a repudiation of your direction of travel - any comment?

Honestly, what the fuck is going on here? You are the BBC, surely you can do better than "well, a Trump ally says, and we have no idea what our insurance is."

Control is a good game made significantly better by the introduction of modular difficulty sliders to make combat less tedious, so that’s the at the time vote. Baba Is You is one of the few games my wife can play without getting motion sick and is great besides, so that’s now.

Maybe not the best timing for something to come through the door with a giant Warner Bros. logo but thought this was cute.

It is not genuinely tricky territory for a left wing prime minister with a massive parliamentary majority to criticise open racism against his colleagues & his fellow citizens. There’s no difficult strategic calculation in allowing racism to flourish.

There is no way to have a "reasonable conversation," the mooted goal, if it doesn't start from the position that trans people are real. If impartial means refusing to admit that then I am resolutely partisan, and we all need to be, this is basic humanity.

No intellectual argument to make but as someone who loves Christmas: nothing harshes my Christmas buzz more than these bores.

The least of this but Ted’s having an enemies list is used to demonstrate how ludicrously bitter and self-important he is. Why would you invoke that comparison?

there is a certain condescension in the idea that “racism should be publicly unacceptable and come with consequences” is an attack on the “working class.”

Obviously ‘voiceover artist’ is a profession for a reason but it’s still odd to have an author read their own work and have the reader think “You clearly don’t understand what the author’s trying to imply with the text.”

Ah yes, the game that I definitely played a lot and didn’t run away from when I realised any object in it could be a secret spider, making it less a game and more a waking nightmare.

Ooh, I think Splatoon is a work of genius but Splatoon 2 is ‘merely’ more of that. If I‘m pretending to be objective I have to say Breath of the Wild. Odyssey is maybe the best a platformer has ever felt to play but it does frustratingly little with it. What a period for Nintendo creatively!

I think this is true if they start taking in the likes of, say, Truss or Hunt but they’re perfectly safe to take in swathes of people that have basically no public profile, particularly if Farage remains as figurehead.

Contributing to the work library for Christmas (these are second hand copies I picked up - my paperbacks remain crisp and uncracked thank you very much).

A tremendous year. At the time, Doom would have probably squeezed by Hitman. Now, some games have come closer to capturing a fraction of what made Doom so special - but nothing hits like Hitman (except, uh, more Hitman).

Really rather surprised that Badenoch is apparently opposed to the decision to remove Shamina Begum's citizenship, preventing her from returning to the UK.

EA are really getting desperate with the latest additions to Ultimate Team.

As we’re musing on our ‘fond‘ lockdown memories, I looked up the gap between seeing Onward (the last film I saw in cinemas pre-lockdown) and Empire Strikes Back (the first mid-lockdown). 14 March to 20 August. It felt longer but that’s probably the longest I’ve gone in my adult life.

I’ve fond memories of watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Jiro (he makes the sushi) explains he gives women smaller portion sizes. My wife, a face like thunder: “I wouldn’t fucking have that.”

This is a really good observation.

A man at Parkrun told me to jog on, to which I replied “That’s the point!” Think we all agree I deserve some kind of medal?

You know what? I really don't think it is. Great domestic political posturing, but Labour have no plans to go beyond the 'reset' agenda, certainly none the EU are likely to accept. This will be talk to little if any action.

OK but for real, what is up with Streeting’s tiny lapels? Is he *trying* to make his head look massive?

One of those lists that makes me think I need to watch the films I haven’t seen on it. Any friend of Crank and Portrait of a Lady On Fire is a friend of mine.

Wake up Nandy! Somebody poke her with a stick!

if you genuinely want to argue that the Equality Act, when introduced, intended to make unlawful an approach to trans inclusion that has existed *since the 1970s*, I absolutely cannot take you seriously

My sources say the death penalty, for winning the under-14 title for the British Woman’s Chess Association Girls Championship, being considered for Rachel Reeves. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this.

This is the ultimate victory of the 2010 to 2015 coalition government. People like Zack, claiming to be left wing, but refusing to accept that general taxation has to rise if we want to reverse austerity. Osborne should be very happy.

Honestly stuff like this is prompting me to go back and make sure I have physical blu-rays and DVDs for this stuff, much as I like to see the vomit guy.

There’s two reasons I’d buy a ticket to another godforsaken Avatar film: 1) A gun is put to my head. 2) This.

The FT comments section is a land of contrasts.