cf also i.f.stone's weekly
― mark s, Thursday, 3 November 2022 11:48 (one year ago) link
Wheen is stepping down, and surely The Octopus's days there are numbered, maybe this will lead to some improvement.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 3 November 2022 12:51 (one year ago) link
My comments here don't relate to PE's politics as such (which might be awful or not), more just to the poor journalistic ethics of leaking a private letter to be published somewhere as another vent for your own tendentious opinions. As far as I can see, in a formal, procedural sense it stinks, leaving aside the content of HF and PE's views.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 3 November 2022 12:57 (one year ago) link
chiles is a far better columnist than hf in any case.
― oscar bravo, Thursday, 3 November 2022 15:50 (one year ago) link
sneering at chiles while acting under the assumption that people revere the columns of HF is uh not well-judged
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 3 November 2022 15:56 (one year ago) link
Chiles' columns are all elaborate acrostics concealing dangerous revolutionary sentiments MI5 won't let Kath Viner print iirc
― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Thursday, 3 November 2022 16:35 (one year ago) link
Good tweet.
Listen: Zoe Williams has come unstuck in time. pic.twitter.com/4BJtTaVEiu— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 10, 2022
― the pinefox, Thursday, 10 November 2022 16:41 (one year ago) link
There is now a mentality – popular in some progressive circles – that to give someone “a platform” (ie, interview them) means you endorse them. But this is only true if you write puff piece interviews, whereas I like to have what Mrs Merton used to call “a heated debate”, or what I call a conversation.
hadley freeman in her last piece being so disingenuous it's not funny.
― ledge, Friday, 25 November 2022 09:01 (one year ago) link
quoting a comedy persona to vindicate your bigotry and the both-siding style of hack journalism is it?
― calzino, Friday, 25 November 2022 09:07 (one year ago) link
Freeman can go have a heated debate in the bin.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 25 November 2022 10:52 (one year ago) link
Well, she’s going to the Times: same thing.
― put a VONC on it (suzy), Friday, 25 November 2022 11:59 (one year ago) link
What attracted you to the millionaire Rupert Murdoch
― glumdalclitch, Friday, 25 November 2022 12:19 (one year ago) link
I never watched Mrs Merton much at the time, but wasn't there sort of an unfiltered bigot playing for laughs element to her character?
― calzino, Friday, 25 November 2022 12:43 (one year ago) link
No cos she very explicitly insulted bigots, see eg the Bernard Manning interview. Her character was waspish and blunt but not bigoted
― glumdalclitch, Friday, 25 November 2022 12:53 (one year ago) link
The truly strange thing about soccer writer Jonathan Liew is that his writing is a pastiche of Barney Ronay.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/26/blandest-of-displays-proves-england-are-still-far-from-top-of-the-food-chain
This could be Ronay, word for word. Liew must know this. Ronay must know this. And yet they work for the same newspaper.
If I imagine turning up for work and performing a specialised task in exactly the way that another colleague was well known for doing, in front of that colleague - the idea seems excruciatingly embarrassing.
And yet I get the impression that Ronay actually approves of the fact that he has a colleague who has copied his quite distinctive manner, down to the smallest rhythms and phrasings.
Separately: why does Liew state that ENG vs USA was 'fey'? If there is one thing it was not, that is ... 'fey'.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 November 2022 11:31 (one year ago) link
i don’t think he knows what that word means tbh. he was quite good on cricket before he joined the guardian, and maybe after he joined too; i’m not an assiduous reader. i found out the other week that a close colleague lived with him for a while. “abrasive, but not in a bad way” was the summary.
― Fizzles, Saturday, 26 November 2022 13:13 (one year ago) link
Funnily enough he is really good on trans rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2022/jun/28/nadine-dorries-offers-the-illusion-of-easy-choices-while-trans-athletes-pay-the-price
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 26 November 2022 13:23 (one year ago) link
assume he'll be sacked soon then
― this display name blocked by FIFA (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 26 November 2022 13:33 (one year ago) link
That Amelia Gentleman article about transitioning teens, arrrrrrgh.
― put a VONC on it (suzy), Saturday, 26 November 2022 15:10 (one year ago) link
fey (adj.): https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fey
"of excitement that presages death," from Old English fæge "doomed to die, fated, destined," also "timid, feeble;" and/or from Old Norse feigr, both from Proto-Germanic *faigjo- (source also of Old Saxon fegi, Old Frisian fai, Middle Dutch vege, Middle High German veige "doomed," also "timid," German feige "cowardly"), from the same source as foe. Preserved in Scottish. Sense of "displaying unearthly qualities" and "disordered in the mind (like one about to die)" led to modern ironic sense of "affected"
i didnt watch the match so i wouldnt know either way, but hats off to him if he was going for "of excitement that presages death (feeble, cowardly)"
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 17:05 (one year ago) link
relevant modern-ish books he *might* have picked up this past-tiems usage from lol:
https://cdn.ecommercedns.uk/files/4/211944/3/11569543/8819-7.jpg
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 17:32 (one year ago) link
wasn't that recently mentioned in the authors no-one thread? (yes it was)
― koogs, Saturday, 26 November 2022 17:58 (one year ago) link
yes but im very old
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 18:02 (one year ago) link
Credit to Mark S - that is a strong etymological statement which could possibly actually make sense of Liew's use of the word.
At best, then, Liew was perhaps saying the match was deathly dull?
Conceivable that he was. Otherwise he was just misusing a word for alliteration's sake.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 November 2022 18:22 (one year ago) link
i chased this up bcz i had a v dim memory of encountering an unexpected meaning at some long-ago point, a memory i couldn't quite pin down (probably bcz at the time i'd interpreted it from context, not from knowledge: knowledge being i guess the "modern ironic sense of affected", as it says above, with a strand too of "fairylike" viz "fay")
tolkien uses it of fëanor apparently but eddison uses it (more translateably) of king gorice xi, as being driven towards death by presentiments of death, and making aggressively dangerous political and military choices accordingly
had liew a similar memory? i have no idea (and i i guess i think error is more likely, though i'm interested in what the sub-editor processing the sentence was thinking)
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 18:49 (one year ago) link
I'm sticking with the misusing the word theory.
― Oh wouldn't it be rubbery? (Tom D.), Saturday, 26 November 2022 18:50 (one year ago) link
at the time i think i guess-translated it roughly as "fierce to the point of wild recklessness" -- which is a long way from timid or dull
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 18:52 (one year ago) link
England and Wales play out eldritch, fell bore draw -- Barney Ronay, Guardian, 28.11.2022
― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 November 2022 19:09 (one year ago) link
would watch
― mark s, Saturday, 26 November 2022 19:21 (one year ago) link
liew is probably my favourite sports journalist, although I am also partial to jonathon wilson parodying himself.
― oscar bravo, Saturday, 26 November 2022 20:25 (one year ago) link
i think my comprehension of fey may be slightly out of date itself. my only understanding was a feeling of elation/fairylike deception as a prelude to disaster and death. certainly not 'affected'. 'you're not going fey on me are you George?' (from TTSS). it meaning 'affected' is tedious: affected how?
― Fizzles, Sunday, 27 November 2022 15:02 (one year ago) link
What's TTSS?
― the pinefox, Sunday, 27 November 2022 15:21 (one year ago) link
"a feeling of elation/fairylike deception as a prelude to disaster and death"
That still doesn't seem to describe ENG 0-0 USA very well. Not much elation, at least for ENG.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 27 November 2022 15:22 (one year ago) link
no i agree. i’m with tom d. just think he misused. and apologies pf - tinker tailor soldier spy. it’s uttered by pompous civil servant Oliver Lacon, when George Smiley first starts putting his paranoic seeming theories forward.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 27 November 2022 15:31 (one year ago) link
etymonline does its best to insist that fey and fay are distinct words w/difft roots (the first germanic the second romance) and that the "fairylike" element derives from and appends only to the latter -- but evidently they've p much fused in sense these days, ftb now sounding identical
(were they pronounced differently in like the 14th century? i do not know)
my new theory is that lacon is also misusing the word, entirely bcz i dislike the character
― mark s, Sunday, 27 November 2022 16:18 (one year ago) link
i mix up fey and fay, and the combined word in my head has always had fairyland connotations in that sense of fairies as dangerous and not to be trusted and beguiling unto death
― this display name blocked by FIFA (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 27 November 2022 16:49 (one year ago) link
Lud-in-the-Mist to thread.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 27 November 2022 16:57 (one year ago) link
what does ftb mean?
I didn't really know that these were in fact two different words.
'Morgan Le Fay' (a masculine looking name for a woman character if I have remembered it correctly?) is perhaps many people's encounter with it - and suggests fairies and danger I think.
Interesting that John le Carré had the word in mind and thought he knew what he meant by it. le Carré was quite precise with words, I would say.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 27 November 2022 18:11 (one year ago) link
ftb means because
― mark s, Sunday, 27 November 2022 18:16 (one year ago) link
Why?
― the pinefox, Sunday, 27 November 2022 18:17 (one year ago) link
i don't know: it's old internet slang that popped out of my head and into the post without me catching and reworking it into grown-up english
― mark s, Sunday, 27 November 2022 18:21 (one year ago) link
it's short for "for the because"
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 27 November 2022 21:23 (one year ago) link
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/024/027/blog_image_3822_4926_Webcomic_Name_April_Fools_Day_201703231756.jpg
― mark s, Monday, 28 November 2022 11:41 (one year ago) link
Have to hand it to Liew - here he is basically correct about a big, dreadful development, which I can discern even as the same old TV and radio consumer I've always been.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/world-cup-technology-fans-qatar-2022
― the pinefox, Monday, 28 November 2022 13:10 (one year ago) link
Ronay, his profile photo increasingly looking like Dorian Gray's portrait, produces an odd article.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/nov/28/gianni-infantino-fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar
He and others have attacked FIFA for years. Now he says that the World Cup is producing controversies, and what is needed is strong action from ... FIFA.
Doesn't really add up. I agree that Infantino has been less visible, but find that a good thing. Like many, I have enjoyed the soccer.
Fifa has bowed to Qatar’s will on the armband-of-love, even as Qatari officials wear their Palestinian rights symbols in the seats.
Do they? I haven't seen that at all, but if they do, they've gone up in my estimation. Doesn't sound like Ronay's keen on it though.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 29 November 2022 11:02 (one year ago) link
Freeman celebrates her arrival at the Sunday Times. Her followers concur.
Hello, Sunday Times When did feminism become a dirty word?https://t.co/yJ4PHIbK4y https://t.co/11zgllgVwv— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) December 3, 2022
― the pinefox, Monday, 5 December 2022 11:35 (one year ago) link
The journalist @HadleyFreeman has recently resigned from The Guardian. She joins @emmabarnett to talk about her claims of being “censored” from writing about gender identity, trans issues and antisemitism. Listen here ⬇— BBC Woman's Hour (@BBCWomansHour) December 5, 2022
the censorship tour starts here
― devvvine, Monday, 5 December 2022 13:18 (one year ago) link
I wonder if Barnett challenges her on anything? I expect not. I will not listen to check.
― the pinefox, Monday, 5 December 2022 13:24 (one year ago) link
I think Emma Barnett would be the last person in the world to challenge her on anything.
― Gulf VAR Syndrome (Tom D.), Monday, 5 December 2022 13:27 (one year ago) link