"You have to be racist in order to beat the racists and if you're too anti-racist then you're the real racist"

Could this ... be my first tattoo?

Eight Excuses I Have Told My Son to Use for His Failure to Hand in English Homework, Excuses I Have Learned are Acceptable During a Thirty-Year Career in Journalism, Books, and Film “Thanks for the homework task. I think there’s something in there, but at the moment it feels a bit vague and undercooked. What I suggest is that you go away...

It's the great Nick Hornby's birthday today, so no better time to trot out this classic list of his from his archives. And check out the sale on all his books in our store!

Barely a day goes by when I don't curse the name of the child that introduced my son to Paw Patrol. In a crowded field of terrible shows aimed at toddlers, it really stands out for it's unique horribleness.

To watch Paw Patrol is to see the death of art in action. There is nothing here. No person involved in the writing ever experienced a single moment of excitement from any of the action they plotted. No joke ever made a single person in the room or on the cast laugh.

And then I shall probably mourn them, and their victory will be complete.

It is that, except that it is not even as good as that. It is simply a paean to obedience in a universe where time is a flat circle of infinitely repeating incidents that mimic the shape of risk, wrongdoing, and reward. It's a world without consequences. Which is worse than hell.

Thank you Will. Thank you. I wish I believed you.

No person who has ever slighted me or crossed me or stopped me getting my way has ever inspired in me the hatred I feel for every single person involved in the making of Paw Patrol. It is doom. It is the end. It is nothingness. It haunts my dreams now. It has a slightly catchy theme tune.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate Paw Patrol. I cannot say enough how much I hate it. I wish I were some kind of ancient Assyrian witch demon that I could level a curse on every single person involved in its making a distribution, starting with the child who introduced my son to it.

Paw Patrol is the abyss if the abyss held no fascination. Paw Patrol is death if death held no allure. It is nothingness turned into an 11-minute long brain-sapping experience of complete and utter aesthetic nullity. I have never hated anything so much as I have hated Paw Patrol.

There is in Paw Patrol not even the distant infinitely distanced and dimished echo of human pleasure. It is nothing but a sapping hole. Absence. There is not even a dialectical relation to pleasure in it. It is a new form of pain that holds no relation to pleasure even as its antithesis.

If Paw Patrol were made by AI, it would be more human than it is. Somewhere at its root would be the ghost of stolen work that once created pleasure for those from whom it was stolen and those for whom it was created.

I cannot possibly express the lack of humanity implicated in Paw Patrol. I honestly believe no labour has ever been so alienated as the labour of the humans involved in making Paw Patrol. There is no subject here. There is no personhood. Just the production of sound and images and the theft of time.

It doesn't even have the decency to be ugly. It has no quality. It is no positive quality whatsoever, including negative ones. It does not even summon the possibility of goodness by showing its opposite. It is a void. It is absence of anything whatsoever.

No designer or animator involved ever looked at a single visual element of this show and felt proud of it. No one looked at anything and thought, that's cool. No actor enjoyed saying any of the lines given to them. There is palpably no trace of interest or pleasure or pride in any element of it.

To watch Paw Patrol is to see the death of art in action. There is nothing here. No person involved in the writing ever experienced a single moment of excitement from any of the action they plotted. No joke ever made a single person in the room or on the cast laugh.

Barely a day goes by when I don't curse the name of the child that introduced my son to Paw Patrol. In a crowded field of terrible shows aimed at toddlers, it really stands out for it's unique horribleness.

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit

Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here

Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse

Media and universities: AI is here to stay

For the second day, the BBC are running a story that presents itself as providing evidence of endemic abuse of the asylum system based on seemingly a single encounter with someone who is neither a lawyer nor a registered immigration adviser. Words fail. This is reprehensibly irresponsible.

Of course there's another area (other than migration) where dodgy advisers coach people on what to say to obtain a benefit: tax. But BBC doesn't run this kind of exposé on them and nor is there the unspoken inference that all taxpayers are dodgy and all those who provide tax advice are criminals

The Brexit delusion is dead – so now Keir Starmer doesn’t need to pretend any more | Rafael Behr To rebuild relations with Europe in a dangerous world, the prime minister needs to win big arguments, not hide behind outdated red lines, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr

This is right, but I'd go further: winning the domestic argument on the free movement of people is what's needed to unlock anything further than the reset. That means Starmer has to repudiate many of his own arguments on migration.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

oooh, thanks, I had no idea this existed....

matt goodwin just knocked on my door offering to wash my windows for ten grand a month

I’m sensing a pattern

“I’ve just touched down in Starmer’s Broken Britain after an eye-opening five days in Turkmenistan, where I saw no crime or homelessness from the window of the limousine my hosts graciously laid on for me…”

i hope the white house sends vance to campaign for Reform in britain

The Telegraph just gave a convicted criminal a two-page spread to explain why he's pumping £4 million into Reform UK. They tucked his criminal record away in the small print. So as a former financial crime specialist I’ll do their job for them👇

I don't know how to explain to the people who pop up when creatives complain about "AI" to say there are legit uses for it just how much they sound like someone saying "Well actually fire is used to make bread" when people are talking about an organized arson ring burning down their fucking houses

Not only is it Spring now, but it turns out I missed an excellent little EP of extra loveliness by La Luz. Yesss.
laluz.bandcamp.com/track/poppie...