Matt Zandstra

obviously today is a huge embarrassment for Matt Goodwin and for Reform, which is something that we absolutely ought to celebrate, but we must also remember it's a huge embarrassment for Morgan McSweeney and Maurice Glasman and all the Blue Labour weirdos, and that's important to celebrate too :)

I think I've forgotten how to process good news. I keep reaching to denounce something. Then I remember I don't have to. Such a good result. #greenparty

Remigration by stealth? The government’s earned settlement proposals - UK in a changing Europe James Bowes analyses the potential impact of the UK government's proposed changes to its settlement schemes to both new migrants and migrants already in the UK.

The extremism and racism of Reform (and the Conservatives) should not obscure that the most immediate issue is the vindictive, retrospective and entirely unnecessary/self-defeating nature of the government's own proposals.

More details here.

ukandeu.ac.uk/remigration-...

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Roses are redde
Violettes are blue
Hieronymus Bosch
lobster violin, birde yn robes, partye yn a shoe

Maisy (cat) asleep with her chin resting on a ball of wall

This is a CAT checkpoint. Show me the most recent cat image on your phone.

Countries may fall, but their rivers and mountains remain: when spring comes to the ruined castle, the grass is green again.

- Bashō putting Brexit in context.

And now I'm crying first thing in the morning

I do not fear the rise of superintelligence.

I do, however, fear the rise of billionaires, organizations, and world powers who seek to use computing to maximize their power, influence, and control.

I Owe You an Explanation: Graeber and Marx on Origin Stories

Reposted for David Graeber's birthday.
www.unemployednegativity.com/2011/09/i-ow...

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, On Liberty John Stuart Mill's argument for the limits of power that society has over the individual.

The very first episode of In Our Time with its new host Misha Glenny doesn't mess about: he's tackling JS Mill's On Liberty.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

A rabbit in overalls and a goat in pants are sitting on the ground drawing pictures. The rabbit is saying “ART POSES A THREAT TO CORPORATOLRATIC SYSTEMS BECAUSE A PURPOSE OF ART IS TO REMIND THE INDIVIDUAL OF THEIR INHERENT AUTONOMY.”, the goat adds “THEIR HUMANITY.”

Make Art (1/4)

i love thinking about bagpipes as auditory heavy weapons

Grimsargh residents left in the dark over when broken streetlight will be fixed – Blog Preston <p>There is a light that never goes on in Grimsargh and a councillor wants action.</p>

PURE DRAMA. (Yes, that's the town's name, and bonus points for the post's gratuitous Smiths / Morrissey reference.)

"Grimsargh residents left in the dark over when broken streetlight will be fixed

"There is a light that never goes on in Grimsargh and a councillor wants action..."

Reading “Land of Precious Snow” by Thaddeus Tuleja Thaddeus Tuleja’s Land of Precious Snow (1977) is a fantasy-adjacent historical fiction novel about religious and spiritual experience, disaffection with modernity, and an American adventurer…

A year ago today I published my essay on Thaddeus Tuleja's Tibetan historical fantasy(?) novel LAND OF PRECIOUS SNOW (1977). It's obscure as hell, pretty fascinating, and I even tracked Tad down and interviewed him about this book!

This morning free write will go no further:

Luke flexed his fingers and imagined himself a gunslinger.

"Cool hand", his sidekick said to him admiringly.

"Thanks", said Luke. "Hey, that's a good idea for a nickname."

And that is how he came to be known as Luke With The Flexible Fingers.

Hopefully the kind of disaster that pushes us to a Green Party future with @zackpolanski.bsky.social

💚 🚦

Green for going forward to a brighter future.

Morgan McSweeney does have some fans in the Parliamentary Labour Party, of course. One MP says they are "devastated" he has left. Another warns it represents "full speed ahead to uber-woke, net-zeroist, rejoinerism". An MP who has been through several general elections when the tide was against Labour says of colleagues: "Good luck to all these careerists when they face an election without someone like Morgan at the helm. "Some of us are old enough to remember the Corbyn era with no one in charge and the party floundering."

Nothing here to contradict my thesis (they’re just personally repellent, horrible people).

this labour government man . . .

#Trump

#Epstein

#EpsteinFiles

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Statement on ICE Operations in the USA Strange Horizons stands with immigrants in the US facing these conditions.

Strange Horizons stands with immigrants in the US as they experience intensified anti-immigrant operations.

We have the opportunity to lend our strength as a global community.

Read our full statement:
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

every epstein file drop underscores how elite power operates through shared socio-economic networks, regardless of people's ideological differences, populist posturing, or public feuds

A View from the Slush

I wrote a thing about short stories, why they get rejected, and what you can apply to your own work.

clhellisen.beehiiv.com/p/a-view-fro...

Got told, again, to keep politics out of my posting here as it will affect my book sales. Fuck that. My readership mostly knows my politics and doesn't give a fuck. And if you're a nazi cunt, or want to appease nazi cunts, you're not going to like my books anyway.

*Exactly*. Despite feeling like a bit of an idiot when someone pointed it out to me, I still found it quite thrilling to re-live the entire book in the light of the revelation.

I was about to admit my own horrendous misreading of The City and the City! I wonder how many others get turned around that way.

extract from The Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken [1] 140 Don't default to the ordinary or average in fiction altogether. If either is your subject, yes: you'll...

extract from The Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken [2] ... find meaning in the ordinary and average, and strangeness there, too, because even the seemingly ordinary are very strange indeed, and no human being is ever truly average, average being a mathematical term, not a human one. No default average plot is interesting, no average language (which can too easily mean clichés that you don't notice are clichés, like blood-curdling). If you're tempted to think of yourself as ordinary- think of the things you d be hor- rified for other people to know about you, your genuine hidden freakishness, the most inexplicable thing you did as a teenager. Something you've never told anyone, or nearly nobody. Then give that kink or shameful secret to a char- acter. Who'll know? Only you. That's what fiction is for.

I read this in Elizabeth McCracken's A Long Game today. It's a little scary, but that's part of the point, I guess.

LABOUR: "We must defeat Reform by stealing all their anti-immigration policies."

LABOUR: "We must defeat the Green Party by ignoring all their pro-immigration policies and calling their leader weird."