Nick Hilton

I can't think of a really elite quality golf course that's in a city setting anywhere in the world. (But I may be wrong). That's why I'd say not an urban game. Obviously they will spring up near any major financial hub...

I would've missed the spring statement entirely if I hadn't heard this episode!

Sadiq Khan takes swing at London golf courses in affordable homes plan Car parks also on hit list as City Hall draws up plans for 880,000 new homes

I'm pro-golf, but it's not an urban game and the courses in London are largely crap. People who actually care about golf are already driving out to the home counties every weekend, so crack on and pave over them.

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/...

Axel Springer buys Telegraph in £575mn deal German media group scuppers proposed acquisition of UK newspaper company by Daily Mail owner

We mustn't let the latest twist in the Telegraph acquisition saga distract from the fact that £575m is an INSANE price for anyone – German or not – to pay for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩...

www.ft.com/content/e5cb...

“The faster a book is written, the better it (probably) is” - Emily Brontë

First t-shirt day of the year?!

It’s a game of two halves, after all.

The 25/26 Premier League:

2 teams I think are good.
4 teams I think are probably good, but might be bad.
8 teams who are really neither good nor bad.
6 teams I think are probably bad, but might be good.

YouTube video by First We Feast Daniel Radcliffe Worries About the Aftermath While Eating Spicy Wings | Hot Ones

I remain fascinated by Hot Ones. A fantastic format with the world's least charismatic host asking the most banal questions. Somehow it... works?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyw8...

How to Watch the World Cup (and not feel too morally compromised) You (which is to say: I) are (which is to say: am) going to watch (which is to say: devour) the FIFA World Cup this summer.

Soon self-justification for watching the World Cup, which starts in 100 days.
open.substack.com/pub/futurepr...

Curtis Sittenfeld in @theobserveruk.bsky.social confirming that her much loved coming of age novel is being adapted by Netflix as a limited series… 👀

observer.co.uk/culture/inte...

I don't know if this is part of the discourse about the show, but How to Get to Heaven From Belfast (which I'm largely enjoying) has one of the worst title sequences I've seen in the several years I've been reviewing telly.

Will be fascinating to see what this guy's idea for "how to save the media" is.

I adore these nostalgia Facebook groups which are a bizarre combination of incredibly banal observations ("remember this specific advert for grout from 1982?") and Nabokovian unreliable narrator auto-fiction.

Babysitters are woke nonsense!!!

Front Row - Ukraine Unbroken - New Plays Responding to the War - BBC Sounds David Edgar on his play about the war in Ukraine. Mariia Petrovska plays the bandura.

I was on Front Row last night talking about changes to Ofcom's remit and the question of whether they'll ever be given powers to regulate content on social platforms like YouTube (chat from 35:39).
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Perfect reading for the train

Brilliant that WH Smith are still championing print media through their Magazine of the Week selection in newsstands. Now to check which worthy publication they’ve opted for this week…

ITV’s Sarah Ferguson drama The Lady just feels uncomfortable – review Four-parter tells the story of how Fergie’s assistant Jane Andrews ended up in prison for commiting a brutal murder

I thought ITV's The Lady was more than a little icky, and exposes how the pollutant powers of the royals can extend even to true crime commissioners.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Gisèle Pelicot and the language of rape culture In her memoir, Pelicot examines the vocabulary of sex and violence in the bedroom, the chatroom and the courtroom. She insists that the way men talk about women matters

The Pelicot case is about rape and violence, of course, but it’s also about misogyny and the internet. The horror of the crime is easy to condemn; the quotidian horror of internet rape culture, harder.

observer.co.uk/style/featur...

Beyond my control, my Instagram algorithm is dominated by two competing forces: the sports algorithm, and the pervert algorithm. As a result, I am currently getting 99% figure skating content.

Thank you Instagram for suggesting me this post: John Patrick Shanley, Oscar/Pulitzer winning writer of Moonstruck and Doubt, taking a creep shot of some woman on the subway 🫠

One of my main takeaways from the movie SEND HELP (which I just watched) is that it should, surely, be called GET HELP.

The Spectator is asking the question, but I fear they may not like the answer...

Being Gordon Ramsay is sanitised propaganda that lacks proper honesty – review There’s a psychologically compelling show to be made about Gordon Ramsay, but this isn’t it

Kitchen Nightmares superfan disappointed by show that is not Kitchen Nightmares.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

This guy spent $16.5m on a Pokemon card in further late capitalist nonsense. This is the opposite of doing the impossible - doing the eminently possible and making it look very, very hard.

Macclesfield v Brentford in the 4th round of the FA Cup not being on BBC One is a disgrace. Sleepy Keir Starmer should've intervened.

The latest way that one AI service is interacting (negatively) with another: setting terrible memes against a backdrop of images of nature, to trick the algorithm into thinking it isn't just regurgitated slop. Dead internet, dead planet.

The TsunamAI: are our systems ready for the coming flood of vexatious AI? Shortly I will send out my subscriber-only email, The Frigest, with stray thoughts, recommendations and gossip.

I see that people are writing again about "the AI tsunami" without the courage to use my, hard to pronounce, coinage.
open.substack.com/pub/futurepr...

I pay(!) for a West Ham patreon that has started distributing a podcast dedicated, bizarrely, to all things non-West Ham. Today's episode is about "the weird and wonderful world of Science". Enough to restore your faith in the power of the podcast.