Gareth Watkins

I will never not repost this if I see it.

Quick question: do Americans use the term 'pay at the pump' for paying for gas at the pump itself instead of going into a gas station?

Final offer: £129 for a shopping bag. Not even a nice one.

I'll do you a deal: leave NATO and shopping bags will cost £83.

Reform UK is too weird to win From Matthew Goodwin to Restore Britain, the online right isn’t radical – it’s cringe

It's like what I argued here: Reform work as a political temper tantrum, but when people actually get to know them they find them weird and off-putting:

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Green/Lib Dem coalition:

🟢Decriminalised drugs
🟢 Nationalised utilities
🟢 Pulling out of NATO
🟠 £57 plastic shopping bags

Who is voting Lib Dem and why?

I don't know if I would trust those people to do the important work of Philosophy (creating wise sayings about how to live with Intent and generate Success-Wins in lean startups).

This Spec-Ops The Line prequel is looking LIT 🔥

Between Brewdog, Labour and Dubai eating it, a very specific type of guy is having the worst time and they absolutely deserve it.

Oh man, we've all been there right? 4.30 on a Friday, you're itching to start pounding some #gronies and you end up giving the paedo-fascist regime an AI model.

There have been 22 seasons of American Dad.

None of this is real so you don't need to report it.

The MAGA Plot to Take Down Canada A growing movement of MAGA-pilled Albertan separatists would happily break up the country to be closer to Trump.

This is an excellent summary of the looming Alberta Crisis. Probably not much much new information if you’ve been following the issue, but it’s one that neatly lays out the pieces on the board

Reform UK is too weird to win From Matthew Goodwin to Restore Britain, the online right isn’t radical – it’s cringe

New from me in the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social: Reform lost in Manchester not just because voters want to be able to hope again, but because Reform's activists and Matt Goodwin in particular are offputting and weird.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Weirding the Periphery: How Imperialism Infiltrated Our Imagination Through Fantasy So much of foundational fantasy is about the (often imperial) core versus outside territories.

Were the very premises of traditional fantasy narratives priming our brains to accept imperialism this whole time?

www.typebarmagazine.com/weirding-the...

Cover sheet of a journal article: "Why do cars get a free ride? The social-ecological roots of motonormativity" by Ian Walker and Marco te Brömmelstroet

HOT RESEARCH NEWS!

Motonormativity ("car brain") is a bias that stops people making rational judgements about driving en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonor...

Our new study shows where this bias comes from AND how it makes people think they're odd for supporting changes to the transport system 🧵

Which episode of Girls is this?

Mitski : Nothing's About to Happen to Me | Album review | Treble Returning after three years with 'Nothing's About to Happen to Me,' Mitski delivers her strongest set of songs to date

Album of the Week: Mitski's 'Nothing's About to Happen to Me' contains some of the strongest songwriting of her career

@pyramidmaster.bsky.social reviews

www.treblezine.com/mitski-nothi...

Here are some thought exercises that may be helpful if you’re struggling right now: What effect would it have on my life if…
1) I didn’t find out news the moment it happened?
2) I kept up with the news once a day or less often?
3) I didn’t get the news alongside people’s onions about the news?

But what if there are things in this movie that I saw in other movies?

Reform UK is too weird to win From Matthew Goodwin to Restore Britain, the online right isn’t radical – it’s cringe

"Ordinary people simply do not talk about “regulating the sexual economy”. These are not things that you will encounter if you are, say, a plumber and councillor who wants to reduce fly-tipping. They are phantasms that exist entirely in digital spaces"

Great read from @garethwatkins.bsky.social

Reform UK is too weird to win From Matthew Goodwin to Restore Britain, the online right isn’t radical – it’s cringe

Good point in this piece by @garethwatkins.bsky.social re X talking points not translating to ordinary life. Feels like X to populist right is what Twitter was a while back to Corbynite left or Remainer liberals:

Things like dignity, character, even honour get talked about a lot on the right and not nearly enough on the left, but late capitalism is a constant assault on people's character. Being able to accept mass death because you need to eat at Schmucklers four nights a week is deeply undignified.

People really do not want to talk about the reality of the Covid pandemic being a test we failed in regards to eugenics and Necro politics being normalized and centralized as facets of governmental response to everything from climate, pandemics to war.
This shift was a direct shift towards fascism

Opus having you sectioned under the mental health act 1983 when you realise how much it would cost to build an entry level gaming PC.

-Must be willing to be involved in a gruesome sex-murder that Rammstein will later write a song about.
-Basic Microsoft Office skills.