An illustration of Sean Connery's character from Zardoz done in the style of a Judy Blume novel cover. The title is "Are You There God? It's Us, An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog" In the upper left corner is "A Hugo Voter Pack" done in the style of a book publisher imprint. There is a catch phrase up top "Irreverent, incoherent opinions about SFF."

Now we get to work on our Hugo Voter packet submission for @thehugoawards.bsky.social ...

(Cover by our friend, the incredible and talented @dntlz.bsky.social)

Little known fact: if nobody will pay £850,000 for your house, it's not worth £850,000.

Jonathan Keir
Harker Starmer
🤝
Not having enough questions about
their good friend, the Prince of Darkness

What fucking idiot asked such a fatuous question, and how much of a fucking idiot is Mahmood for giving such a fatuous answer.

"People have asked me why I don’t just drop the price again, but I refuse to give my home away cheaply just because of the ridiculous economic climate we’re in"

flipping through a proof of yet another book from a somewhat well known liberal voice diagnosing “where the left went wrong” and i’m struck, again, by the fact that a large part (if not most) of the liberal commentariat simply does not believe that the political right has agency.

#OtD 21 Apr 1980 striking miners in Sabuk, South Korea, seized weapons and dynamite and took control of the town while demanding a 40% pay increase. They won after 3 days, but the dictatorship later reneged on its promise not to victimise participants stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9340...

You can actually see the moment Ed Miliband thinks, what's the point burning through whatever political credibility I've got left energetically defending a man who's going to be gone in a matter of weeks.

‘It’s a big loss’: what happens when a beautiful village loses its bus route? Mousehole in Cornwall once had a butcher, post office and general store. Now it doesn’t even have an ATM – and one of its crucial bus services has been cut. Can residents save this vital resource?

This illustrates two things . First, that the ‘85 Transport Act remains one of Thatcher’s most pernicious legacies, particularly when combined with austerity. The ‘85 Act allowed LAs to fund socially necessary services but they can’t do that without money www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

#OtD 16 Apr 1970 a white foreman at a Chrysler plant in Detroit threatened to murder a Black worker. When the worker complained, he was sacked. 1000 workers, Black & white, went on strike in protest until management backed down. More in our pod: workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e61-...

#OtD 20 Apr 1915 Maria Silva Cruz, heroine of the Casas Viejas uprising, was born into a family of day labourers and charcoal burners. She was the sole survivor when Republican civil guards burned the house of the rebels stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9244...

#OtD 17 Apr 2014 Spanish machinist, anarchist and Civil War fighter, Concha Perez Collado, died aged 99. She took part in jail breaks, insurrectionary strikes, the Civil War, the May Days and helped rebuild the @CNTsindicato after Franco's death stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8855...

every detail i learn about rod dreher's life is a totally self-contained maniacal part of the whole, like my brain cells are each individual blind guys trying to figure out the elephant

I checked this too.

*20 seconds* of Reform logo display.

*No other* party logo displayed.

In local election purdah.

This is not normal. At all.

I wonder where it could possibly have gone? It’s a real quandary.

Lets not forget that American christofascists are mostly evangelical protestants for whom crucifixes are papist idolatry and whose spiritual if not literal ancestors loved nothing more than smashing up churches.

The Columbine massacre was on this date in 1999. Instead of energizing our country to get gun violence under control, it kicked off a new normal. One of the best explanations ever of journalism's destructive impact on mass shootings came from Roger Ebert in his review of Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant.”

The Mandelson fiasco reveals the true nature of Starmerism This is a prime minister who does not understand the difficult trade-offs involved in governing

Keir Starmer famously said there was "no such thing" as Starmerism. He was half-right: there is no such ideology. There is however an approach to managing and running the country that is core to so many of the government's difficulties that we probably should call 'Starmerism'. In tomorrow's paper:

School: you need an app to track homework.

Also school: phones are banned.

School: we won’t provide buses so use local services that expect digital payments.

Also school: phones are banned.

And so on.

There is no benefit at all to Labour keeping Starmer now. The PLP could replace him with a bag of chips tomorrow and the party would be more appealing to the electorate. Dump him, try again, and put us all out of this misery.

A tweet from Pope Leo XIV that reads: “When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.”

Apparently the Pope has read Baudrillard.

Absolutely brilliant

with the water issues IT’S THE FARMER’S FAULT BLAME THE FUCKING FARMERS is like Newtonian physics: it won’t get every single particular right, but for practical purposes it’s all the information you need most of the time

Crime and Punishment in Early Modern London and the Home Counties Crime and punishment in early modern London and the home counties is a rich area of study. Students will encounter not only the changes in the law across the period, but also the very real human stori...

There's still space on my Summer course. I promise a week of highway robbery, pickpockets, pirates, burglary, murder, execution, & more. It'll be great fun!
Crime & Punishment in Early Modern London & the Home Counties | Oxford Lifelong Learning, University of Oxford share.google/sEp55JVrpBtZ...

Titanic's Last Scene: Band playing "Nearer My God To Thee" YouTube video by JY KHIEW

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZY...

We’re defending Western Civilization by kicking Plato and Shakespeare out of university classes.

Bloody hell...

Faculty Defect From Texas Publics, Citing Censorship Fed up with the state’s censoring of Plato, Joan of Arc and Romeo and Juliet, humanities professors are leaving Texas public institutions in pursuit of academic freedom.

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

BBC reports "more than 600 people crossed the Channel on small boats on Saturday, making it second busiest day so far this year".

BBC reports "Over the past three years, crossings have increased" while omitting 33% year on year fall this year
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...