I once knew a guy called Farouz Farouz Farouzmand

Such a shame about Michael Parenti. If the world was just he’d still be well enough to carry on dunking.

could’ve thrived in the era of street sweeping vigilante exploitation films

the silver lining here is that they live in Milton Keynes

a real scrapper of a place, known for artwork such as ‘concrete cows’

I quite like them really, but they’re the only good thing about the place

Kid Rock - ‘We The People’ - uses the Let’s Go Brandon chant in one of the choruses, and the whole song is so hilariously bad that last year it became one of my most played songs. Always cheered me up.

He thinks it’s talentless in comparison to classical music, but his main talking point with lots of it was about the ‘values’ - twerking, violence, etc etc the usual conservative hypocrises.

This sort of ‘rap’ is about personal responsibility and stuff so it’s all good.

All part of their avoidance of material analysis so they can say rap music and single mothers make black people poor.

that movie is much better if you imagine it as Willem Dafoe and Matt Damon trying to escape the set of The Great Wall

it’s true I asked Xi just now

you shouldn’t be able to claim the title ‘Sir’ if you’re not willing to engage in trial by sword duel

The Oscars are just an advertising scheme these days. Maybe it always was.

Barbie was a good light hearted comedy. Oppenheimer was boring. Poor Things I’m yet to see but from the trailer alone I can see that it’s going to be overplayed ‘deadpan’ and ‘surreal’ in the way that many modern movies are… or aren’t, I should say.

Cinema is in a shite state. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about the majority of films that come out these days. Look at the success of Saltburn. It’s all mindless garbage based around actors with the star power to put bums on seats. I come out of most movies these days with ambivalence at best.

of course it is, it’s directed by Wes Anderson

heard a lot of people in Chile don’t like the guy cos he eats up all of the film funding for projects which tackle Pinochet from a questionable perspective - like that one where he sort of puts Pinochet’s exit down to a good advertising campaign

mmmm true

They’ll blame left wingers not voting.

It’s the same as always.

So what’s the next thing that knocks streaming off it’s platform?

YouTube’s already pretty dominant and it’s turning more and more into cable TV too. Loads of shit British TV shows have their entire backlog uploaded with ad breaks built in that are almost as long as TV ones.

Where’s the next ship to jump to as a early adopter? I find VR as a possibility hard to imagine taking over any time soon. Is there hope for alternate platforms - the same format but without all the shite and a genuine focus on good content like MEANS.TV?

what ways are there to optimise listening to a podcast?

surely it’s just click play

I think it’s because straight white dudes are most likely to be caught up in extreme politics on the left or right online. Feel like a lot of young leftist men went down the right wing pipeline first and then awakened - you’ve got that political sense activated and use it to backlash on the ideology that you now find so abhorrent.

Also I think they’re most likely to be secular where I’m from, whereas other ethnicities seem more likely to have some sort of religious community to find a place that they belong, or they naturally fit into a community of people of a similar cultural background. (In my city the population is very diverse, so these groups are easy to find)

On the other hand white dudes don’t have that same sort of culture or tradition, so they end up having to create and find their own form of culture, especially if theyre secular.

I dunno, it’s a confusing move really. I don’t think the left leaning stuff in his songs was done to falsely find a niche. He grew up rough, faced constant racism, and was discharged from the army for speaking out against abuse. He’s got some authenticity about him.

His niche that very few people come close to is that he makes insane beats and raps through them. I don’t think his leftist leanings got me into his music - it was that signature cacophony of noise that somehow comes together. The leftist lyrics were just icing on top once I’d already started listening.

I think people are forgetting that he’s never said that he’s some committed leftist. He’s just rapped about shit that makes him angry, and a lot of that stuff has intersection with the left.

I have this memory of watching the History Channel show about the Falklands when I was like 9. I was a patriotic empire fanboy back then so I distinctly remember a story from it. I’ve forgotten exact details and I can’t find anything about it otherwise. Anyway, the story is:

Brits faked a radio transmission for the Argentines to intercept.

In the transmission, they pretended to be organising some huge attack with however many destroyers and tonnes of artillery bombardment support, when really they only had a few gunboats.

The Argentines buy the bluff and retreat from the position. A group of dudes wander on up to find it empty, and plant the flag unopposed.

Could be total propaganda, but I swear that’s a faithful retelling of it. It was my favourite story for years.