Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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

And the hair dryers.

(Public baths are featured in The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson and The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson and Happy Hour by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi. I did not know they (once) existed in the UK!)

There's a notorious bath house scene in Cronenberg's 'Eastern Promises'. Once seen never forgotten.

I think they existed in many countries before home plumbing was widespread! Where else could one bathe of a weekend?

There was a lovely Islington Council-run Turkish bath near Old Street that I used to go to about once every two weeks but like the writer says, it became a Spa Experience by Better a decade ago and unaffordable for just about every service user - the concessionary rate used to be £6 with no time limit.

Although when I looked it up now to share the link, I see it closed quite suddenly at the start of the year.

That CIF piece was a follow up to this article:

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/02/campaigners-fight-save-carlisle-turkish-baths

I hated what Better did to Ironmonger Row - they should’ve leaned into the Spartan aesthetic of the place and kept the lovely older women who’d make you a cuppa and a cheese and pickle sandwich for £1.50 while you reclined on a lounger in the recovery room. Does anyone truly feel relaxed by faux flower arrangements and those clichéd pan pipe instrumental CDs that are meant to telegraph SPA to morons?

gnnnnnGGGggHHhAAAaaaAaAAAAAAARGGGHHHHH

Feel genuinely sad at the terribleness of take pic.twitter.com/yJL6tobk7s

— Hannah Rose Woods (@hannahrosewoods) October 17, 2022

columns vmic

Seeing that headline I thought it would be merely a joke, but now I see the text I see that it is genuinely extremely bad.

It is a "joke" in that if pushed Mitchell would say he doesn't actually favour an absolutist monarchy.

It is also serious in that he sincerely believes Charles to be a decent human being and inspirational figure.

The second part is alas way funnier than the first.

'extreme socialist' go fuck yourself you smug twat

Yes that was the extremely bad part.

I thought the whole thing was the extremely bad part.