Kevin Dowling

Kevin Dowling Kevin Dowling is an experienced freelancer offering copywriting, content marketing, report and blog writing services to small and medium-sized businesses.

@samfr.bsky.social I’m a copywriter and proofreader. My website is kevindowling.work

This policy is the ultimate expression of what is wrong with the last three decades of technocratic liberalism. It hands public money to bad private sector actors. It will win over zero of the reactionary voters it is supposed to mollify. It will massively annoy every other voter in the process.

I don't like doing this. It feels fucked up to constantly point out the negative dimensions of someone who just died in a horrific, worrying way. But I would like the media to tell basic truths about this person and his impact on public life rather than resorting to euphemism and outright lies!

It's remarkable how ~2017-2019 was an all-hands existential struggle to eradicate the unacceptable scourge of bigotry and racism from British politics forever, and now it's this, all day, every day, and not a single one of our commentariat has noticed nor has anything to say about it.

Who else on God's green earth could make a room of people chant "WE HATE LAMINATES! I SAID WE HATE LAMINATES!" at the top of their lungs and mean it with every fibre of their being?

Headline: BBC under pressure to pull Sally Rooney dramas over vow to fund Palestine Action

Headline: Tory minister Robert Jenrick pictured with former Nazi terror chief at far right protest.

Perhaps, one day, schoolkids will study this squalid little chapter in British terror-panic history. When they do, I hope these two headlines from today are printed side by side, with clear annotation of which individual faced more outrage and condemnation.

Can't fault the clarity of Labour's message on protest. There are BAD protesters who must be punished (Irish musicians, anti-genocide vicars) and there are GOOD protesters whose views deserve respect (masked thugs with petrol bombs trying to start a pogrom)

Among the greatest promotional photos of all time are these for the 1990 television movie of IT, where it looks like a prestige legal drama about a firm of hot young lawyers and one associate who likes to dress up like a clown.

These tools were sold under the pretence of making work faster, easier, and producing better products.

Yet more often than not, we find they make the world duller, work less meaningful, and the products worse, while enriching the few.

And people are catching on.

Franz Ferdinand feat. Peter Capaldi - Take Me Out

this is just like the parable of the scorpion and the scorpion

Diabolus Ex Machina This Is Not An Essay

This is a hell of a thing to read.

Adorable smiling golden cavapoo dog (she did an unadorable wee in the kitchen at 3am)

Morning

Séamas O'Reilly: We are talking about Kneecap while more than 50,000 Palestinians have died Punk and hip-hop bands have been singing about killing queens and presidents for decades

I didn't want to talk about Kneecap this week, but here we are. On what we choose to be horrified by, and what those choices say about us.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

KNEECAP ARE NOT THE STORY If senior politicians can find neither the time, nor the words to condemn, say, the murder of fifteen voluntary aid workers in Gaza, or the illegal starvation of a civilian population as a method of warfare, or the killing of thousands & thousands of children in the same territory, by a state in possession of the highest precision weapons on earth; how much notice should a music festival take of their moral advice on booking performing acts? As a band that has spoken publicly for more than 30 years about the illegal occupation, apartheid system and killing with impunity of thousands of Palestinians, we are hyper aware of the both the human cost of abject political silence, and the commercial implications of publicly expressing solidarity with an oppressed people.

Language matters of course. The hideous murders of elected politicians Jo Cox and David Amess means there’s no scope for flippancy or recklessness. But do politicians and right-wing journalists strategically concocting moral outrage over the stage utterings of a young punk band, while simultaneously obfuscating or even ignoring a genocide happening in real time (including the killing of journalists in unprecedented numbers) have any right to intimidate festival events into acts of political censorship? Kneecap are not the story. Gaza is the story. Genocide is the story. And the silence, acquiescence and support of those crimes against humanity by the elected British government is the real story. Solidarity with all artists with the moral courage to speak out against Israeli war crimes, and the ongoing persecution and slaughter of the Palestinian people. Massive Attack.

Massive Attack 👏👏👏👏

Séamas O'Reilly: Trans people have spent a decade being attacked in a moral panic The poor provision of unisex children’s facilities— which reinforces gender stereotypes and inconveniences women and men both — was, incidentally, an issue I remember being quite talked-about a decade...

The UK's political and media class has spent years heaping sadism on trans people, and they want to do the same in Ireland next. Calls for civility and calm won't cut it. We need to fight them tooth and nail.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

So, for what it's worth: I don't think AI is taking over jobs because it's better than people or even good at its job. I think it's taking over jobs because it's cheaper than people and bosses like cheap and aren't necessarily aware of the (very high) risk of bad, dangerous quality output (7/7)

Every job you get AI to do is cash taken from working people, usually low earning freelancers. That money is now not in the system. You are not only making the world poorer culturally, you are making the economy poorer. And since there is no workable financial model for AI, not even moving money up.

A furious looking British Blue shorthaired cat, wearing a protecting sunflower around her neck (she’s just been spayed) sitting on a box, pondering her life.

A still-furious looking British Blue shorthaired cat, still wearing a protecting sunflower around her neck (she’s just been spayed) sitting on a box, pondering how to escape her sunflower prison.

An even more furious looking British Blue shorthaired cat, still wearing a protecting sunflower around her neck (she’s just been spayed) sitting on a box, glowering. She will escape the sunflower seconds later

Post-op Winnie entering her Victorian era. Not thrilled with it. Planning how to escape the sunflower neck brace.

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.

All I can really say at this point is if everyone isn't watching how trans people have lost basic rights and protections on a scale that hasn't been seen in decades in the span of 72 hours and realizing that even if you aren't trans there's nothing stopping it from happening to you, you're a fool

Saturday is treat day

I've built a machine that can be Confidently Wrong. It can also make pictures that all look a bit the same, as well as make a video of you kissing any celebrity or person you know. In payment, I'd like to boil the world's oceans dry, & steal all literature. For some reason, my head is not on a spike

Google I will pay you a subscription service to drown this shit in a bathtub and never show me it again

The Furiously Intrigued Mind of Tony Slattery Robin reflects on the loss of a British comedy giant

Some thoughts on the Tony Slattery

thecosmicshamblesnetwork.substack.com/p/the-furiou...

An 18-month old Cavapoo called Ruby, wearing a pink coat, waits patiently for her scrambled egg breakfast

Ruby waiting patiently for her scrambled egg breakfast

I'd go further – not only do I not want help with writing an email, I don't want it to help anyone *else* with writing an email either, because I judge my interactions with people based on *what they wrote*, rather than what Gemini thinks they want to write