Richard Cookson

Gonna repost this every time I come across it on socials. 💚

"we shat the bed so comprehensively, for so long, that just going back to the standards we used to adhere to in less than a generation is literally impossible" is a bold line to take for an business hoping to avoid going into administration

This tweet has been doing the rounds on Twitter now that Nathan Gill has pleaded guilty.

If only someone had tried to investigate UKIP & Russian interference 🧐

There’s another timeline where the Guardian supported me, doubled down on the investigation & I look 5 years younger ..

1817 map snipping, "Well. Well. Well."

Look what we have here then.

Writing a novel— actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs— is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.

These very true words from Steve Hely have given me tremendous comfort over the years.

It is insane to me that we are not exploring the benefits of just making sure people have the basics, and how humanity thrives because of that.

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - scoop.me In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”

It costs a lot less to house people.

A tumblr post that says The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well. Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.” She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”

She really is the best to ever do it. I will always adore Le Guin.

Let’s be clear about what happened to Jimmy Kimmel Trump’s most brazen attack on free speech yet.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

Screenshot of part of the LEGO Ideas website, showing a side view of a diorama featuring both creatures

🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨

We’ve just seen this, by creator “Menapian” - a 4,998-piece set of the Great Exhibition (1851) Crystal Palace - complete with a bonus Megalosaurus and Ichthyosaur…

beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

In London, hate will never win.

An excerpt from an interview with the director of The Graduate, Mike Nichols. "I interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands of men", Nichols admitted of the casting process per Vanity Fair, before his conversation with Redford turned out to be a short one. "I said, 'You can't play it. You can never play a loser'. And Redford said, 'What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser'. And I said, 'OK, have you ever struck out with a girl'. And he said, 'What do you mean?' And he wasn't joking."

My favourite Robert Redford story is the one about why he got rejected for the lead role in The Graduate. RIP to a real one.

Did Taggart write this poster?

You join us live from Danny Dyer’s birthday drinks.

A drawing of ET waving at us on the cardboard packaging for a 1980s product called "E.T. Punch Balls" As this is a repost of a Feb 2023 tweet of mine, found here https://x.com/DemonTomatoDave/status/1623464715077795840?s=19 , I have taken this photo from the No Context E.T. account who posted it there, and who originally I retweeted.

Never became as popular as "ET Phone Home" did it

I had this exact experience: accidentally watched the trippiest, mind-bending, time-bending, sci fi Euro-pop odyssey at a very formative age in’86, and convinced myself it was a dream until I described it to a friend in 2012 and they went: “Time Masters”

- you clean up that banksy?
- sure did, your honour, leaving a perfect, permanent outline, imbuing the work with real fuckin gravitas while making its point better than the artist did himself just like you asked

Daily Mash article reading "We need to look after our own first, say people who would never help anyone"

Every fucking day

So you’re telling me these are the new iPods?

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits

The start of every 80s movie:

Obligatory repost

The BBC is about to shut its Written Archives to the public. Writers and researchers rely on these archives. They belong to the licence payers. Please sign and share this open letter.

"I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING STRANGERS ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING TRAIN"

I love our town fair day, but there's always one violent idiot who has to ruin it for everyone, trundling around making threats.

Dear Disney.

In Moana, we establish the sea is sentient.
In Frozen, the sea kills Elsa's parents.

ELSA VS MOANA is a revenge thriller where, etc, etc.

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

The movie The Purge, but only super-rich people are allowed to commit crimes and get away with it, and it’s every day… and I’m just describing our country right now… never mind.

*young me, developing a strong sense of justice*

This is gonna be great, what an asset, this will never drive me insane

Street greening transformation before and after in Paris

New forest in front of Paris city hall

New “school street” with greening in central Paris

According to the City of Paris, in the last 10 years 150K trees have been planted & 45ha of parks created in the already hot city, all intended to not only improve quality-of-life today, but also help the city adapt to & manage summer heatwaves of 50℃ (122F) by 2050.

Just the start.

Common sense.