Sophia McDougall

All my comics have happy endings!

Church of Madonna del Carmine, Manduria, Puglia, a beautiful neoclassical building of pale rosy stone.

Here's a picture of Italy being more normal, for balance.

A picture of a ...product, involving a pack of some kind of playing cards?? It features images of an anthropomorphic gumball machine with a sleazy expression riding a bike, an anthopomorphic shark wearing a pirate hat, and an anthopomorphic... dowel? Small piece of wood? I honestly do not know, but it's holding a tennis ball. The background features the Italian flag and is titled "Italian Brainrot."

Whatever this is, I have no idea why they called it that, but I suppose it's what I've suffered from for the last several years.

An illustrator friend did a kid's book where one of the mums wore hijab. Not to make a point, just as part of a normal city school background. Took it to publisher and was asked to remove because it 'wasn't a book about inclusivity'

Ugh

I *really* want more reporting on this because the book was pretty heavily vetted by lawyers in advance of publication….

Is Google stuff glitching for anyone else? My Gmail and Google Translate both seem very unhappy

Perhaps the bbc will report on the green surge with the same enthusiasm with which they promoted farage?

...the fuck?

I basically think American culture ingrains a sense that xenophobic bullying as entertainment is their birthright And "nice" Americans haven't unlearned that as much as they think they have. And they're happy whenever they find a target they think they can't be called out over.

It really can't be said enough: the goal of the "anti-woke" movement was always to destroy social norms against bigotry. And it worked. And there's a whole lot of purportedly "left" thinkers & commentators who helped it -- indeed, it couldn't have been done without them.

They should feel bad.

Once maybe we could all pretend we were broadly on a level but those days are clearly gone. Sitting in the imperial core laughing at the funny little ways of your subjects doesn't actually look different to us depending on whether or not you personally like the Emperor.

See, this is why I've had a total sense of humour bypass about Americans making any kind of joke about British politics, food, culture, looks, anything. Your president is dictating what laws we have, what statements we can make, what jobs individuals can hold. This isn't joshing between peers.

This is so damn scary. The book claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was the one who introduced Donald and Melania. Now the CEO of Harper UK is out.

This. No amount of "special advice" will fix the fact that some people CAN'T work, and it also won't fix the fact that flexible/part-time/WFH jobs that pay ok are like gold dust, and disabled folks who could work part-time/WFH under the right circumstances are at a disadvantage in applying for them.

I am in Italy and I swear to god I just saw an ad for St Francis. Just ... an ad for him. Get some St Francis of Assisi in your life, you know.

If a news organisation is making -200% margin after five years, it is not a commercial operation and should be assumed to have a different purpose.

Photo of a passage from "The Watch That Ends the Night" Jerome stopped and stared at me with incandescent eyes. "Try and understand this-the fascists have brought back tor-ture, and torture calls for martyrs. And what else is fascism but the logical product of the capitalist system?" "What do you mean—torture calls for martyrs?" "Simply this. Unless a man is able to stand up and look the torturer in the eye and say, 'I'm not afraid,' torture becomes the way of the world. It's as simple as that." "Is it really as simple as that?" "No." He shook his head impatiently. "No, because underneath it all is the plain economic exploitation of a rotten world. The communists are the only people who understand that. How can you pretend they're not one hundred percent right when they say that at a time like this the life of a single individual isn't worth a snap of the fingers? Wasn't Debs right when he said that so long as there was a soul in prison he wasn't free? What does a single marriage count in a balance like that? It isn't easy being me. I know what all this means. [Highlighted sentence:] This evil inside the human animal-the fascists are charming it out like a cobra out of its hole and the capitalists let them do it because they think it's good for business. You think I'm abandoning Sally by leaving for Spain. I tell you, if I don't leave for Spain then I really do abandon her to a future of fascism and concentration camps."

rereading a novel from the 50s set in the 30s and i know this passage did not hit as hard when i first read it in the 90s as it does now

That middle one is wearing a Seventh Doctor tank top. I know many lovely people who would do the same but it does not exactly scream The Tories Are Back.

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She married into the BRF. She got more than she bargained for. Her in-laws expect her to raise a changeling. So she wants a lawyer.

She gets one. He's confused. Especially when the Fairy Queens's champion arrives to negotiate-or maybe kill-on her behalf.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Despite the fact that Badenoch will never get anywhere near power again, this still frightens me. Remember what they did to Media Studies? Essentially destroyed it. And think how media illiteracy has shaped the last 20 years.

feels like yet again time to mention that the *videogames* industry (that's a creative industry, which people do creative degrees in) brings in more than twice the amount to the British economy as the fishing and steel industries *combined*

Hey kids!

Remember when the pandemic struck and eventually the (Tory) government told everyone to stay at home, and the arts and entertainment industries were one of the few things keeping everyone from pulling our own eyes out of our skulls from abject fear and boredom?

Remember that?

The Tories have the energy of someone who complains that there is dog shit on the pavements but also refuses to pick up their own dogs shit because its "not their job".

Just to be clear, an English degree - learning to critically assess texts - is actually one of the most dangerous for people such as Badenoch.

An educated population, able to bring hundreds of years of context to statements in a dawning age of AI slop and attention-seeking dishonesty is also vital.

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter

Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them