When you look at the fascist project, starting from Fox News' debut, it's all about the primacy of emotions over reality. Sure, crime is down, but it doesn't FEEL that way! If I'm not oppressed as a white man, then why am I still unhappy? I want a news channel that's about fear and anger, not facts!

I often tell students that one of the major differences between modernity and pre-modernity is that pre-modernity regarded "innovation" as a very bad thing.

Pop quiz! Would abolishing stamp duty (a) “help millions buy a home”, or (b) push house prices up by the amount of the stamp duty saved? Place your bets! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“100%!” as our children used to say

stumbled across real lyrics to an actual new Taylor Swift song and boy, that's a bold strategy, Cotton. let's see if it pays off.

I'm not a fan of these new Taylor Swift lyrics.

but Fra Angelico was someone special, his work is something special. Something transcendent in a way that neither late Gothic nor Renaissance painting really was.

I'm only half way through, but this week's choral evensong on Radio 3 is a *belter*. A really fresh and dynamic sound to the music. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Please do!

I appreciate that calling KPop Demon Hunters the most important film of a year that also saw the release of The Accountant² is a bold claim

Indeed.

I’m actually being quite serious here. Fascism is about keeping people emotionally dysregulated, especially through the reinforcement of shame, and offering them relief through mass conformity. That’s why fascism is so opposed to empathy, authenticity and queerness

The reason why KPop Demon Hunters is the most important film of 2025 is that it understands fascism to be fundamentally an *emotional*, rather than an intellectual or political, phenomenon. In this essay I shall

Next time I’m watching some utter garbage and someone asks me why, I’m going to say to them: “The poet must not avert their eyes.”

Ok this slaps

Could someone please tell Starmer he can just say he thinks something is "wrong", he doesn't have to bring racist dogwhistles like "un-British" into it

Honestly the bar for being declared “too big to fail” is just to give enough money to Trump. Under the current regime, “2B2F” will be based on corruption, not on systemic risk. (Note: I’m not saying OpenAI is engaging in corruption, I’m just saying they might want to consider it as an option 🤡)

Discworld QOTD, from Jingo

Really hoped this would be, like, "Satan" and "Witches" or even "Popish conspiracies" but turns out to just be "reconciling the worldwide anglican communion" as you were

UK Government to its citizens: “Don’t come running to us if you get kidnapped in international waters”

2/2 demonstrating (yet again) why a feminist analysis is absolutely essential to understanding our times. It is a real problem that much mainstream research extremism or the far-right completely (and willfully, in my view, given the brilliant research already out there) ignores this.

1/2 “We are witnessing the restoration of patriarchy, nationalism, racism, and capitalist individualism. It's the nostalgic fury of right-wing movements that want to return to an idealized past ... and to reestablish hierarchical orders.” Butler expertly
english.elpais.com/culture/2025...

Wow. If Nobel Prizes can stop destructive rampages, maybe they *should* give one to Donald Trump