alex

great read. reading the piece against itself, I would say AI is increasing the differential returns to good management

reading about the May government for a thing and mad, mad, mad that a Conservative Prime Minister said this nine years ago, I hate how much we've lost since then! I hate it so much! www.theguardian.com/society/2017...

British politics feels like a parade of middle-managers with barely any ideology beyond whatever polls well fighting over the poisoned chalice of leadership.

the great thing about it being the year of cabbage is it will also be the year of broccoli, the year of cauliflower, the year of brussels sprouts, the year of kale

Nobody. I do not think you can eat chair

if you unlock all of them we delete your account

UK’s problem is that we don’t have enough disposable income, which you can fix by things getting cheaper or by people earning more money, and also either one of those things makes the other easier.

the real vulnerability was the friends we lost along the way

when there was one set of footprints in the sand, that was when Kirby inhaled you

Violent or destructive left wing protest is framed as delegitimising the protesters' stated cause. Violent or destructive right wing protest is framed as emphasing the need for urgent action on the protesters' stated cause. As always, right wing men are treated as elemental forces without agency.

American money advice: invest in cheap trackers monthly. Don’t try and time the market. British money advice: switch energy provider every quarter, run your washing machine at odd hours to get free electricity and here’s a great trick to get more nectar points.

Just thinking about wage compression. In 2004, when I joined the BOE graduate scheme, I was paid £24,000. The minimum wage was £4.85 an hour, or about £9,500 a year for a 37.5 hour work week. Today the BOE grad starting salary is £36,000. The wage floor is £12.21 an hour or about £23,500 a year.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... yes it is 👍

RSS feeds were good weren’t they

my vet, who's hard of hearing: can you repeat your cat's name me:

... ever more performative cruelty (especially to migrants, but it's not like Trans people - the establishment's other present favourite group to be seen beating up on - are gonna dodge that blow) and even more destruction of UK state capacity and dismantling of our social safety net. Very grim imo.

A good tip for managing your own mood is to focus your worries on a relatively small thing you could ultimately live without. So, for instance, when I read stories like this, I redirect all my worries about what it could mean for the world into what it means for the Community movie.

“The right wing’s war on men consists of inducing insatiable demands in them—for love, respect, money, muscles—and then robbing them of any ability to even partially fill those demands” www.liberalcurrents.com/adolescence-...

an idle thought I've had at the back of my head for a while is that a lot of white collar/middle class jobs used to be legitimately fun and/or intellectually stimulating and/or ludicrously well paid and now they're few or none of those things, and we don't talk about that at all

Digital by default but not for you. Polish woman, 80, faces deportation from UK after mistakenly filling in form online www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... #govtech

More of the approach that's never worked once in political history: screaming "we're racist!" at the far right in the vain hope that people *who despise you* will switch from more racist parties, without your horrified base switching to less racist ones. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I think my model of the UK as committed to everything always being just a bit crap remains utterly undefeated. bsky.app/profile/last...

WEEKEND READ: I spent eight days on a container ship, travelling from Belgium to Finland and back through the North and Baltic seas. Here’s what it’s like to be aboard these unseen worker ants upon which our global economy relies. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/econom...

the thing no one ever really says publicly either is that part of the reason why casual, often (but not exclusively) younger journalists at the Guardian have few rights/unnecessarily low salaries is because the Guardian's union actively focuses on the often older, more senior full-time staff