My favourite thing about Madame Web is that it is *such* a mess, just a barely-there Frankenstein's monster of a final cut, other than the significantly more artful and loving shots of Pepsi where my conspiracy theory will always be Pepsi brought in another team to touch them up.

You don't see them looking at Mario Bros and thinking "Blade Runner" these days, and that's a shame.

I was 8 or 9 and saw it at the pictures, have never been so disappointed in a movie before or since. Came away incensed that it had murdered the source material, which I now realise is quite an achievement when the source material is a terrible zero-effort cartoon that only existed to sell toys

Lovely piece this

"Fight" is one of the comics that will be included in the "Parenting " SMBC comic collection that is currently available on Kickstarter! KICKSTARTER ◆ www.kickstarter.com/projects/wei...

I think frankly can't rule out that although neither of the big two leaders stepped up, the civic society response of going 'no, this march was in fact bad and terrible' did actually have some effect.

They still tried to make it a thing it’s just too obvious a failure to hide so they gave up quickly

I think of your “forget so ‘bad it’s good‘, this is ‘so adequate it’s terrible‘” line a lot

1) George is right 2) a Conservative grandee observed to me recently that Wes' problem is he "seems too much of the polished politician" and I think that the way everyone sees everything he does as a ruse is part of that.

This happens in lower budget films too, there's less "wait you did WHAT??" - still some of that but less so because the tech mistakes are now just dull, the odd bits feel more hit-the-demanded-beat than "uhhhhh [bangs keyboards while sleep deprived]"

Similar thing with comics I would say - a bad comic is mostly now "this workmanlike object needed several more passes for me to start caring" rather than "how in gods name did this get out the door" and that makes them less entertaining in a way

We were talking about this in the pub earlier, and someone also made the point that young men in particular will often list off criteria for a partner that turn out to be wildly wrong in reality - but if that’s all you look for on an app, no wonder it doesn’t work

You get a lot less Absolutely Crazy. Zardoz was distributed by 20th Century Fox, no way would that happen today.

A theory I have is that bad films have got worse, in that with a few exceptions - 2023's The Flash is one IMV - there's a kind of floor standard professionalism you get in modern movies that mostly makes them a chore rather than an inadvertent delight.

Not in cinemas, but I remember watching Masters of the Universe on VHS at after school club and similarly it being my first 'wait, films can suck?' moment.

Having met your long term partner before the app is the Millenials' equivalent of Boomers buying a house at 23.

I'm friends with a fair number of people who I originally met via dating apps - but none of the relationships I started from them lasted very long. Meeting via interests and people in common is just a much more surefire way to meet people compatible long term, IMO

It’s also such a slow process, I finally met someone today with whom I’ve been “talking” since April only to realise we’re not a match. Weeks gone in a few minutes and now to restart (or refocus on others). It’s a second, uninteresting job.

As someone who met their wife of ten years on an app back in the halcyon days where they weren't effectively paywalled, I think I'd have given up much earlier on today's apps.

Also, dating apps (especially the ‘free’ ones) aren’t designed to link you up quickly with your life partner: like all apps, they are designed to keep you coming back to the app/the adverts…

I basically think the core problem with modern dating is that smartphones and apps, through no fault of their own, invert the dating process from “are you attracted to this person and do you like them?” to “do you like this person enough to meet and find out if you are attracted to them?”

"In previous decades, the world’s fertility rate went down because couples had fewer children. Now the main reason is that there are fewer couples": fascinating and, I think, persuasive by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com:

The whole ‘is Britain ungovernable’ discourse seems to detach itself from the fact that May had no majority - even pre election is tiny and Osborne post 15 election was forced into tax credit cut u turn. The real question is does a May landslide in ‘17 significantly change events

And this wasn't something hidden from the public, everyone could tell Johnson was winning because he might win & not because they expected him to be good at the job afterwards, "he's not good" wasn't a shock

👇 I'm going to take a wild guess that I am more positive about 'the contribution of the Conservative party to the United Kingdom's happiness and prosperity 1834 to present' than this user, but this feels exactly right to me. The 'ungovernable' chat is just polite talking around '2010 to 2024'.

I beheld a pale rider, and his name was 'Arsenal title challenge fails at the last as Selhurst Park says buy to Oliver Glasner', and hell followed him.

Spurs are staying up, and because I am deeply, deeply superstitious about football, this is making me feel a lot better about Arsenal's title chances.

This is a terrific post from @naomialderman.bsky.social - with genuinely helpful advice

I've seen this in law. There is (I promise) a Yale Law Professor saying it is good that Yale Law School doesn't teach law because AI can do that now, when it can't do the sexy philosophy, economics and social science that Yale Law School teaches. /1

In my day job, I in fact do marketing strategy for scientific ML software, and the gulf between what investors want to hear, what clients want to hear, what end users want to hear, and what developers are actually willing to say is just getting wider and wider in every direction.

Whereas "We are a really cool excell add it that makes people working in the treasury function of a bank much more efficient, but you still need to watch it.". Is just objectively true, but apparently not interesting enough.

I was talking to someone in the AI industry* who is fuming about this dynamic. 'These guys are just begging for our industry to be regulated out of existence'. *Or as they would immediately correct me, the LLM industry.

Also just one of those all-too-common modern films where I leave it thinking of @gralefrit.bsky.social’s “clink of departing money”, where visibly no-one involved in the final cut has enough experience of ‘needing money’ and so you just end up with huge unresolved plot points, and not in a good way.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves's vibes ignore us to the fact that this a traditional Labour Government making the traditional mistakes and that traditionally leads to the Tories quickly replacing them. The opportunity is there if they just stop getting in their own way

Between this and “councils shouldn’t fly the Ukraine flag” the next election is IMV begging to be won by the Conservatives, but who instead want to kid themselves that “a fluke in Wandsworth” means that Kemi Badenoch is a good leader with a good strategy.

The government isn't forcing churches and community centres and town halls across the country to fly the Ukrainian flag. People are doing it themselves because we see a battle and we know which side we are on. There are lots of ways in which Reform is wildly out of touch with Britain.

Re industrialisation is possible in output terms, but what it means is building multiple square miles of mostly automated manufacturing that employs ~100 people. Not sure the uk planning system would allow this!

A change of prime minister would be a big opportunity for Nandy, a high-flier who for some reason hasn't had a government job for the last two years.

There's arguably a scenario where public transport is so much faster than private transport that it becomes more appealing, but the changes required aren't going to happen in a world where LTNs are treated like political kryptonite.

👇 This is the point that cannot be made enough. Ultimately the advent of the personal automobile you cannot run a decent bus service without subsidy (yes, this is true in London too). Need to have a solution to this or the 2025 Act is just a theoretical power for most local authorities.

I was expecting to be more aggrieved by the answer to this given the complete absence of any questions about you know, welfare, but eh, fair enough.

every day i thank god that he took neil postman from us before the latter was forced to watch all of this dissolve around him.

Honestly, when I was young I was prepared to believe a lot of things about the future, but I never expected it to be so stupid.

Fair play, a back heel goal in the cup final is Quite Good.

"they are only saying it because they have to they don't really mean it" GOOD. MY AIM IS THAT THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF EVERY PERSON ALIVE ARE AN UNCONTESTED FACT

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that “the cordon sanitaire against racism is rebuilt” means, e.g. “once again this stuff is said by the *Conservative leader*” let alone “a politician on the Labour right they dislike”.

He's right, he should say it, and you should want even politicians you dislike to say things you agree with.

What if we delayed taking the axe to salary sacrifice till the election year though?

If only there were several exogenous shocks to the world economy in 2025 that could credibly be used to change original plans, even if you didn't plan properly originally

Was not so much a “Ming Vase strategy” as a “mime that you are holding a vase” strategy.