Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

me reading this:

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/034/711/Screen_Shot_2020-07-24_at_11.33.38_AM.jpg

Juliet Jacques wrote one but I never read it:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/transgender-journey

i started reading this yesterday and gave up about a third of the way in but has the grauniad ever run a piece of this length by someone who has transitioned about their experiences

A lot of people have already criticised this article but I'm quietly raging about how trans people *never* get to tell our own stories in our national media while cis people are free to talk about us and get every support in doing so. We are repeatedly denied our own agency. https://t.co/RbuDDqyxwX

— Elaine Scattermoon (@scattermoon) October 9, 2022

After my ex and I split up when I transitioned she married a Conservative councillor, so if anything I'm the one who should be getting the article in the Guardian here

— Natalie Washington (@Transsomething) October 9, 2022

TERFs assemble: Hadley Freeman and Sarah Ditum both joining Sunday Times, no doubt at the behest of Janice Turner and her nepo-baby husband.

The Times is maybe even worse than the Guardian for terfiness, it's just that nobody expects any better from them.

All behind a paywall too.

There’s no maybe about it! JT is the worst for it and her husband is a) Peter Preston’s son and b) the executive editor.

i thought this was going to be a revive about the JRM column

"In an article for Unherd in February, Freeman wrote that “there was a period, about three years ago, when I honestly thought about quitting my job. I felt so hated for saying things — things that are scientifically, biologically and factually true — and so unsupported by people who I know secretly agree with me”."

https://pressgazette.co.uk/hadley-freeman-leaves-guardian-sunday-times/

scientifically, biologically and factually? now that's writing

It may well be trolling, but Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is Steven Spielberg's third-best film:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/13/all-steven-spielberg-films-ranked-director-the-fabelmans-et-harrison-ford

Better than Duel, Raiders, Last Crusade, and Close Encounters, among others. It's not even the third-best film he worked on in 1984. The little capsule talks about "some regrettably archaic attitudes towards Indian culture", which is putting it mildly, but on top of that it doesn't even work as an action film because the editing is choppy. And none of the characters are likeable, not even Indiana Jones. And it has no good lines. The baddy falls off a bridge.

I mean, I can quote extensively from the other two Indiana Jones films. The other two Indiana Jones films. "He chose... poorly", "she talks in her sleep", "no ticket", "it's not the years, it's the mileage", "snakes", but I can't remember any of the dialogue from Temple of Doom. And it had that stupid futuristic font on the poster that didn't fit the period.

Agree, Ashley Pomeroy. Baffling choice. I was always somewhat frustrated by the film, but wanted to be generous and like it (when I was 10 or 11). I watched it again about 2 years ago and it was still poor.

And, as you justly say, there are other films 'RANKED!' below it here that are wonderful.

Nonsense.

I'm glad to hear that Freeman is leaving the Guardian. You could say: the Guardian is bad, so it doesn't matter if a bad person leaves. But still, she is a bad person and is one of the reasons it has been bad.

Temple of Doom is my favourite Indiana Jones film, it's a straightforward but very detailed homage to pre-war action serials and everything about it is deliberately kitsch (including the acting) in a refreshingly non-postmodern way, no expectation at all that you'll have seen the serials. It doesn't have that classic Spielberg feel like ROTLA or TLC, but the classic Spielberg feel is so saturated into the culture now that it's hard to get much out of it. TOD just feels different, it conjures this hyper-unreal world like a Paul Verhoeven film, there aren't any quotables but I watch films to be immersed, not to chat about best bits. And yes, some parts are pretty fucking problematic, but still less so than any of those (often ridiculously racist) serials.

You’re going to have to pick one of these mate pic.twitter.com/TMmb9BLs5F

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) October 14, 2022

On a pragmatic level, attacking a Van Gogh painting isn't going to win anybody over. Attacking art in general is uncomfortably reminiscent of certain regimes from the past.

But using soup was clever because cans of soup are potent symbols of the working class (true fact (official)). Even if the National Gallery introduces compulsory bag screening with an x-ray machine, will they ban people who carry cans of soup? But presumably they will mandate that you have to leave your bag in the cloakroom. I know from the internet that it's possible to hide fist-sized objects in a certain body cavity, but again they might introduce whole-body X-ray machines. Who knows.

The Guardian keeps sending John Harris up to Huddersfield and other places in the north to interview people on the street. Without wishing to sound snobbish I wonder if someone at the newspaper dislikes him. Hadley Freeman gets to interview Aubrey Plaza in a nice hotel in London; John Harris has to stand in the rain talking to disinterested shoppers about the need for direct action. Why is he even doing politics, anyway? He wrote a book about Britpop. He's a mid-1990s pop music writer. For such a progressive newspaper The Guardian has an odd habit of giving the heavyweight political stuff to "great modern thinkers" who are always men, e.g. Sir Michael White, Sir Simon Jenkins, Timothy Garton-Ash etc. Who all come across as low-budget knock-off of Thomas Friedman, without the first-class air travel. Meanwhile the women write about cooking and how horrible life is in New York if you're well-off.

For me Harris will never be just *a* 90s music writer, he will always be *the* 90s music writer / editor that ruined my favourite music magazine, so let's not give him too much credit there either.

cans of soup are the symbol of andy warhol (also working class (official))

was heinz though. they should've used campbells

i also wonder what happens to people who glue themselves to things. are they still there?

quite torn about the fucking up paintings thing, don't feel like i'm enthusiastically thumbs up

i mean on the other hand John Harris is trying his best to make me go full soupcan

I'd prefer it if they targeted shitty art only of the Damien Hirst variety

I'd be torn about fucking up paintings too, but I think throwing soup at a painting protected by glass was never going to damage the painting (as indeed the National Gallery has confirmed it didn't) and that the protesters probably knew this was the case.

the sunflowers don't care they'll be fine

i didn't realise it was behind glass, ok thumbs up then i guess

Yes as soon as I knew it was behind the glass (which the Stop Oil org knew) I was like who cares.

something about the micro nitpicking of everything by the online left is a bit upsetting and demoralising

there was something in the new inquiry a while back about how the concept of cringe is weaponised as a form of social control and that applies to many of the reactions to this I think

as XR-adjacent actions go lovebombing the police as they arrest you or whatever

*this beats

Like, good, rich people can pay for bail, legal representation, they are more likely to get away with it.

I learn that Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".

— Emily Kate 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@BucketsOf_Rain) October 14, 2022

it's only bad to be posh if you're not a tory

Taking sides:

https://metro.co.uk/2016/01/19/artists-naked-protest-got-her-arrested-in-an-art-gallery-5630953/

nude women drawn by men is high art but an actual nude women is scandalous

these things are a bit silly but people should be allowed to do them without facing state violence and people get way too hung up on the first part and ignore the rest

Must be Sunday

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/16/what-just-happened-by-marina-hyde-review-words-as-a-lethal-weapon

if my mates were writing puff pieces for me i would ask them to dial it down a bit

i never feel more like the kid in The Emperor's New Clothes than when i see melts wetting themselves because Marina has written "Boris Johnson? More like Boris Terribleson" again

in guardian-being-slightly-better-than-by-now-expected news, it is currently stoutly defending one of its writers (aina khan) against a far-right hindutva pile-on (the pile-on is attacking khan of an "islamist" in her leicester reportage)

caveat: i'm not qualified to litigate the dispute but the guardian is doing the right thing here imo

In a commentary on Brexit, another head-on collision generates a gloriously smutty joke. Why did James Dyson, synonymous with hand-dryers and vacuum cleaners, support leave? Hyde’s answer to the riddle is succinct: it’s because Dyson “basically does things that blow or suck”.

yeah but sometimes they also blow, did you think of that

From the Guardian obit of Captain Beefheart by Sean O'Hagan (not that one):

A short stint as a vacuum cleaner salesman followed in which he toted his wares around the desert communities of southern California. Once, legend has it, he knocked on the door of a mobile home and none other than Aldous Huxley answered. Beefheart pointed at a vacuum cleaner and shouted, "I assure you sir, this thing sucks." He made his sale.

yeah but sometimes they also blow, did you think of that

lol i knew i'd made an hilarious tweet adverting to the beefheart story so i search *dubdobdee huxley* and discovered various dangers chortling abt the anecdote (back in 2012 so i cant be cancelled, no really i cant)

anyway this was the (2018) tweet actually i had in mind (which naturally got no such engagement): "hilarious sitcom feat.harrison ford, philip glass, don van vliet, joan didion, robert hughes and aldous huxley, plus some decking, a washing machine and a vacuum cleaner"

give me marina hyde's job u fvcks, no one will ever think my posts are funny clichéd

Has anyone ever actually used a vacuum cleaner on the 'blow' setting, assuming such a thing exists? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen - not unlike Liz Truss/B. Johnson/Brexit/etc! (that'll be 2 grand please or however much she gets paid for this tripe)

The blow part refers to hand dryers tbf

and the fans / heaters they do

old fashioned vacuum cleaners would suck the one end and blow the other (the holes in the bag being small enough to catch the dust and big enough to let the air out). the hoover Constellation cleaners that we had would divert this air down so that the hoover glided like a hovercraft.

I only ever buy 2nd hand Dyson vacs and none of them have had blow option. Maybe I should reverse the polarity at a socket and see if that makes the motor run backwards so I can blow dog hairs everywhere rather than vac 'em up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIsdxPY_8H0

Shop vacs have a blow option.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/16/carlisle-council-turkish-baths-closing