When people moan about social media, I don’t usually recognise the description, cos my experience of it (friends and interesting people I like chatting, a chance to reach people with stuff I make, a way to find out about new things, jokes) is actually pretty good… … but the people in charge of running it now don’t want that version, because it’s hard to monetise. The version it’s users hate is the only one that works for its owners, and the one that works for the users is unsustainable without subscription, which we won’t accept.

I never understand people clutching their pearls about this stuff and saying “oh, I see, right, it’s all about money, is it?” as if the publishing industry were some sort of artistic commune. Of course it is. Want stuff that the market no longer wants? It’s in second hand shops.

https://twitter.com/pulpcurry/status/1640189284409020417

If the market wanted to buy the books unchanged, for historic reasons, or because standards of acceptable language *hadn’t* changed, then the books would stay unedited, or be published in academic or collector’s editions. It’s a false culture war. The horror is staged.

Biblendum

#nichejokes Ah. Bollocks. Have found out that this is a fucking Midjourney AI image. I mean, wrecking humans’ fun at daft caption games was not something I saw coming, but there you go. AI really is the Covid 19 of comedy.

Cried from the beginning to the end of that final ep of The Last Of Us. A unique experience, to see something for the first time when you know the story, but are reliving it, with an emotional memory. It’s unique to games and unique to an adaptation as brilliant as this. With a book adaptation, you’ve read the story before. With a much loved film or show, you’ve seen it before. But with a game adaptation you feel - and it’s such a strange feeling - “I remember this.” I remember DOING that. I remember BEING here.

If you start from the position that you can’t be wrong, and are unable to empathise or self-examine, then any criticism is an unfair attack, even if it’s actually fair. The government was built in the image of Boris Johnson and so displays crippling narcissistic adaptations. These people can only ever be victims, even when they are hurting others.

Needle drop of an important influence. This Milligan LP was a childhood favourite, and this sketch is basically the @framleyexaminer classified ads, but done in 1961. It's even got the 'Child's X: used once' joke in it. Don't think we realised at the time.
It's produced and scored by George Martin, and sounds wonderfully Yellow Submarine once it warms up. I love that the corpsing is kept in. Glorious, glorious stuff.

The turnips thing is just more of their relentless batshit WW2 cosplay and I don’t know why these weirdos don’t just go the whole hog and gravy browning their legs and sleep down the tube eating spam. So strange to fetishise your country’s darkest hour. What’s wrong with them? Is it what happens when a natural human small-c conservatism is allowed to fester and spoil? That anything from before “it all went to pot”, in whatever sense you maybe feel you got left behind, must therefore be good, even if it’s literally the definition of when it was awful.

Sitting here with the cat and wondering why cats don’t smell at all really, and dogs do, and so I looked it up, and it’s brilliant. Cats are mesopredators, who hunt smaller animals, but are also prey to larger ones… By spending half of their waking hours grooming, they remove smell that would give away their location to bigger creatures who hunt by smell, like dogs…

It’s a day to think about Bill Watterson and give thanks. I’ve just read his piece in the Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book about the craft of writing for character and found I had burst into tears. “Calvin’s personality dictates a range of possible reactions to any subject. So I just tag along and see what he does.” God.

Wombles in at 6 on the most fondly remembered British kids’ characters despite not being on telly or even really current in the culture for donkey’s years. BAFTA really dropped a clanger not honouring Bernard Cribbins. His stuff endures… mirror.co.uk/tv/top-10-brit… Two Ivor Woods (including the original telly Paddington), two Aardmans, two Smallfilms (and three Peter Firmins cos of Basil Brush). Our collective childhoods were such a cottage industry. The work of a few brilliant minds, small teams…

@Andr6wMale The documentary A Bird In The Hand really made me think. When you see the other guy whose act he borrowed, you appreciate what Rod Hull brought, and it’s a blend of pure clowning and almost mediaeval jester Lord Of Misrule carte blanche. It’s powerful shit. @Andr6wMale The Emu act was originally a vent routine. Hull can’t do ventriloquism so the bird goes silent. Then he uses his gloved fist to punch and tease everyone, including himself, regardless of social norms. Hierarchies are no protection. It’s wild, savage, shamanic. I love it.

The mark of a civilised country is the quality of life you can enjoy with not very much money. Obviously, more money gives greater luxury, that’s our system, fair enough, but there should be a minimal level of pleasant existence available to all. Other countries do manage it. US / UK seem hellbent on making sure the poor are denied pleasure, as if the difference in lifestyles wasn’t already inherent in the system. It doesn’t need active effort expended to make it more fun to be rich, less fun to be poor. But they push for it, relentlessly.