The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

Still wild to me that he called that kid Hamnet.

It's not even a "people are instinctively good" thing. I wish that were true, but people are... everything. But I do think selling kindness is more frictionless than selling hatred. It's just less useful for the kinds of people who might have the money to wage either kind of propaganda campaign.

Think about this a lot. My most hippy-dippy belief is this: constant, expensive, powerful right-wing hate campaigns do a lot of damage, but properly packaged decency sells quicker, and for a lot less, cf. my 77yo dad is solid on trans issues cos of a single sympathetic Corrie plotline from 20yrs ago

Seeing how much of the right-wing on Twitter is just bot farms, kinda lays bare how much hate and hatred is a project that needs to be constantly maintained, a fire that needs to be fed all the time lest it go out for a moment, so much time, effort, and resources to keep people angry and hateful.

A hearty "fuck you" to everyone involved in creating the trans panic that has led to a 12-year-old girl being verbally abused by a parent and, worse still, Irish clubs and governing bodies doing what they do best - hushing it up.
I hope yizzer Culture War Hero medals are worth it, yiz gowls.

Couldn't be me.

Nothing was more of a revelation than a recent trip to Ireland, however. Each summer, I do interviews for the Belfast dance music festival AVA, and regularly end up surrounded by beautiful, positive and accomplished twentysomethings. At one point during my last jaunt, just such a room of young people began avidly swapping tales of disastrous Hinge and Tinder dates. I offhandedly mentioned I’d never used a dating app, because my relationship with my wife predates the invention of the smartphone by about six months. Now, I realised, it was me doling out the psychic shocks, as I looked up to find my youthful colleagues were staring at me as if I was a gnarled and toothless corpse they’d just pulled from a bog, one which had now gasped back to life, demanding mutton and hog’s blood. With something like reverent horror, they listened as I went on. Whiskers grew from my cheeks as I informed them that, for many years, text messages didn’t show you when the other person was typing. “You couldn’t even tell if they’d seen or received your message,” I told one, while another cast me a worried look and asked me I’d like someone to fetch me a chair.

👴

Turning 40 didn't bother me, but then I interacted with some young people | The Observer

On turning forty.

observer.co.uk/news/columni...

a) this is very fun, b) I have genuinely not even considered before the prospect of "straight-for-pay" porn

This is the piece I posted about earlier. I think the best short summary I can come up with is… eye-opening

"In the background, I can hear Hard Tom and Jak’s scene coming to a momentous climax."

Looking for answers to ‘case closed’ following troubling events at a girls’ football match in Cavan On a Friday in August, a WhatsApp message describing troubling events at a girls’ football match began to spread in Cavan GAA circles. It read:

Genuinely mental story. The obvious intersection of trans panic and deranged sports parents: adults gleefully bullying the shit out of a kid

Or Martin Amis, on James Buchan: “By calling him humourless I mean to impugn his seriousness, categorically: such a man must rig up his probity ex nihilo.”

It's really worth watching this in full. It really does seem unlikely that there's ever been a man simultaneously THIS famous for being unfunny, and THIS desperate to be thought of as funny. bsky.app/profile/wapp...

It's really worth watching this in full. It really does seem unlikely that there's ever been a man simultaneously THIS famous for being unfunny, and THIS desperate to be thought of as funny. bsky.app/profile/wapp...

Three absolute bangers from Elon Musk. I'm so sorry but you asked for ALT text. How many flies does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, but how did they get in there?? -- Me: How many radical leftists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Radical leftists: That's not funny [frowny face] Me: [Crylaugh emoji] -- When I see the troll emoji, it's like looking in the mirror

If anything, I think Musk's harrowingly shit sense of humour is under-discussed. The Florence Foster Jenkins of it all. The deeply unfunny freak who bought the joke factory and juiced its algorithm so he could subject all its users to... this. The gas leak comedy of a psychedelically humourless man.

Summa Cum Laude ‘It’s not sex,’ Andy Lee declares of what he does to earn a living. He’s showing me a pair of worker boots that he sometimes demands a submissive scene partner to sniff, assuring me they’re not just…

For the latest issue of the Fence, we sent @garyiship.bsky.social to the border of Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, to check in on Porn Star University, the UK's premier academy for Gay-For-Pay adult performers.

www.the-fence.com/summa-cum-la...

There is no way you can guess how the thread that ends in this instant classic begins.

Ha, as I said... ANECDOTALLY! Also, a lot of googling at the time seemed to imply that it does still basically rain as often at Wimbledon, and sometimes heavier too. And that this could itself be a climate change related phenomenon so I don't have a fucking clue.

Anecdotal, but in June a pal returned from Glastonbury and Wimbledon, comically sunburned from both. "Ha!" I said, "remember when we were kids, every year it was mudbaths at the main stage and rain-stopped play on centrecourt? That was the *whole* deal with both those things- oh right jesus fuck".

Nothing was more of a revelation than a recent trip to Ireland, however. Each summer, I do interviews for the Belfast dance music festival AVA, and regularly end up surrounded by beautiful, positive and accomplished twentysomethings. At one point during my last jaunt, just such a room of young people began avidly swapping tales of disastrous Hinge and Tinder dates. I offhandedly mentioned I’d never used a dating app, because my relationship with my wife predates the invention of the smartphone by about six months. Now, I realised, it was me doling out the psychic shocks, as I looked up to find my youthful colleagues were staring at me as if I was a gnarled and toothless corpse they’d just pulled from a bog, one which had now gasped back to life, demanding mutton and hog’s blood. With something like reverent horror, they listened as I went on. Whiskers grew from my cheeks as I informed them that, for many years, text messages didn’t show you when the other person was typing. “You couldn’t even tell if they’d seen or received your message,” I told one, while another cast me a worried look and asked me I’d like someone to fetch me a chair.

👴

Turning 40 didn't bother me, but then I interacted with some young people | The Observer

On turning forty.

observer.co.uk/news/columni...

He's every bit as classy and accomplished but no, an entirely different man.

Women's Institute Declaration on Twitter: No XY in the WI

WID Account based in: BANGLADESH

WDI: Afghanistan Account based in: United States

ROFL

We should rest assured that on Mark Zuckerberg's watch, nobody, and I mean nobody, will do sex trafficking eighteen times.

I also kindof love it. The phone bit is so incredible. "You don't mind do you? I presume you'd just say if you didn't mind".

Headline BBC news: US judge resigns after being disciplined for wearing Elvis wig in court An image of Judge Thornhill sitting at the court bench, taken from official court documents, showing him wearing an Elvis wig with the singer's signature black pompadour and sunglasses, as well as a traditional judge's robe with a white scarf around his neck. In front of him is a computer screen and a bottle of water. Behind him is a flag of the US and a flag of the State of Missouri. Image source,The State of Missouri's Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges Image caption: Judge Thornhill of Missouri was disciplined for referencing Elvis Presley and dressing up as the singer in court

The judge "would routinely wear an Elvis Presley wig on or about October 31" - or Halloween - in court while conducting court business, according to a report by Missouri's Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges, which investigates allegations of judicial misconduct. The report shows images of Judge Thornhill sitting on the bench while donning an Elvis wig with his signature black pompadour and sunglasses. It adds that, on occasion, he would give litigants or witnesses the option of being sworn in while playing Elvis music from his phone. He would also refer to the singer occasionally during court proceedings, including mentioning his date of birth or death and lyrics from his music, according to the inquiry report.

Science discovers the End Level Boss of guys who think "everyone loves it when I do this!" when, in fact, everyone does not love it.

This is what happens when a stable family groupchat has not been firmly established.

Times are tough so please enjoy the most I've ever laughed in my entire life which was when my brother did this in the family groupchat nine years ago.

“Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, had written to my then-fiancé. “Drink from me Love.” He continued, “I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. I’ll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. ‘Dont spill a drop’. I am a river You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you. I mean to subdue and tame you. My Love.” I can’t say there weren’t any signs. I did find it odd that Olivia was simultaneously reading Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction and Maureen Callahan’s Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed. But the poem—let’s call it “American Canyon”—and many others, too explicit to print, changed everything. (Thanks to Bobby, I am now aware of something called felching.)

Watchmen's Dr Manhattan stares at a starfield from his base on Mars. He says "I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives".