Home

Not-so-slow news

What a week it's been.

Last week was noted most importantly by the lack of a new feedpost on this website (right?), but this week is noted by many important events.

My prediction of a quietening before a storm was answered -- quite aptly by a desert storm. Another U.S. campaign in South-West Eurasia (the 'middle East' to some), this time -publicly- assisted by Israel under the pretence of ridding Iran of it's current leadership.

Ignoring the fact that most articles I've seen would speak on the Iranian missiles landing in Israel like that's the big story here, I've said it before and I will again. The mask has dropped. The U.S. under current administration is doing what they want wherever they want because they can -- without trying to hide it. They're being terribly noisy and blantant about their doings.

It'll be interesting to learn what the plan is after disposing the Iranian rulers --the chief of which is already dead. Will the country, and surrounding, be left alone? Or should we expect to see occupation? West Iran to the U.S. and East Iran to Israel? To be seen.

In other news...

An astounding loss for Reform UK in Gorton and Denton and an Incredible win for both the Green Party and for hope. I chuckle thinking about the salt that Nige' and his lackeys are publicly spurting.

A near-endless purveyance of radical ideologies, lying for popularity and being generally hateful is condemnable, unacceptable behaviour. Being a sore loser and having a hissy fit while alleging cheating is very embarrassing and also very hilarious to witness. Keep going, it makes you look great.
Up the RA, Nigel.

To close, I want to congratulate Hannah Spencer and those Green members who helped make the win happen.
I also want to congratulate Matt Goodwin for the funniest Twitter crashout I've seen in months.

New post next week.

Slow News.

It's been a relatively stagnant news week once again. How are we doing? More Epstein, more Farage, more Starmer -- but not a lot to really talk about... Yet. Something big is building up. "A calm before the storm" -- to word it typically and inanely. With the UK and America.

It's building up, tangibly. A fuse leading up to this by-election; the results of which, have multiple outcomes.

If Reform does happen to win there are two I can think of: 1. It could act as a launchpad from the dull plateau Reform currently rests upon, creating a new surge of racists to feel comfortable outwardly sympathising with Reform.

2. Reform's win sparks a wake-up call to Brits who aren't racist, work hard, and want to stop Reform at all cost -- showing them that splitting votes between Green and Labour is ineffective. With the current paedophilia and inadequacy of Labour right now, more Labour voters would presumably go Green as opposed to the reverse.

The second of these is obviously preferable.

Slow news can be good news. It just makes my job more boring. I promise I'll have something more interesting next week...

Lightning Round.

My personal news feed has honestly been nothing but tragic and I have nothing current to really talk about.
I mean... I could repeat on and on about Reform being entirely comprised of inexperienced, traitorous grifters and how It's coming out that Jeffrey Epstein is actually connected to anyone famous, old and white you can think of -- but it gets tiring after a while.

So instead of yammering on about the same old same old, I'd give you a sort of lightning round of thoughts and opinions that've burrowed betwixted my cerebral folds. I'm actually upset with myself for typing that last bit. Sorry.

Grievance i

I often look for news in nature; browsing for hopeful revelations about thriving habitats and plump creatures that reside within; however, There is a type of nature article I've been noticing pop up more.

Articles roughly about 'how nature can benefit your life' and that 'scientists say' a 'nature based household' is benficial to your wellbeing and good lord I do not care.

When I want news about nature and the environment, I want just that -- not about how nature can be used to our personal benefit. I'm not self-centric enough to think that way and it upsets me how the environment can be treated as if it's a commodity or a lifestyle product or something to be sold.

Grievance ii

Whether it's the new hit Marvel movie or the next 'Must-see!' TV show, spoilers are the scourge of the frequent media enjoyer.

These fanboys (gender inclusive) love to speculate and share their thoughts about announced projects -- that can be said.
They follow the newest leaks, the fan discussion pages, they watch trailer 1, trailer 2 trailer 3, for any amount of pre-release content they can until (in some cases) The entire plot of the movie is known before release...

God forbid you watch the video before them and 'spoil' anything however.

It's all fine to try and figure out the exact plot, the characterisation, the overall theme, or whatever before a film comes out but then if someone who's seen it actually confirms anything then eesh. Best get the sacrificial dagger ready.

If being told something about a film before watching it is 'spoiling' it, then surely these people have well and truly spoiled it for themselves, right?

Grievance iii

Thirdly and Finally and briefly, please eat vegetables. That's all. I've met too many people -young and old- that simply do not and it's an issue.

It gets on my nerves that some people don't and actively refuse to for some reason. I'm fully sympthetic to people struggling with Arfid as long as they strive to work through their disorder.

But Arfid and 'picky-eater's ignorance' are two very different things. Something as palettable as a portion of fried onions isn't exactly going to make your [Meat] and fries taste worse.

To anyone out there who has a friend or family member who seemingly just eats meat and carbs, please just introduce some vegetables into their diet. Spike their food with cabbage, if you want. I don't know. It's important that you eat plant matter. You could get scurvy otherwise.

Y'arr.

The Little Things, I Guess.

Today, I started writing a piece on Tory defectors and Reform and blah and blah but I was too in my own head to finish it. Instead, I just want to get out what's been playing on my mind.

I'm annoyed and confused with this country.

I'm annoyed that so many people now are okay with open, blatant racism and are even willing participants. They're uninformed and gullible, accepting the lies of national manipulators.

I'm confused that despite everyone in charge of running this country being more concerned with self benefit than public wellbeing, all-the-while convincing idiots that that it's okay, I still would rather live here than anywhere else.

Waking up and stepping into the cold, damp, grey air with traffic whirring past and people walking to and fro with haste -- hopping on a delayed train to the city and watching the houses and scaffolding fly past through dewy streaks of fine raindrops before finally disboarding into the dragging crowds and mysterious, detatched music is actually an experience I kind of find comforting. It's easy for me to like this country.

'We live in a confusing time', or whatever the new parroted governmental excuse is -- but it's true. Every day-to-day thing we do besides eating, breathing and copulating is a made system we -as humans- have forced upon ourselves. Life has been confusing since the start of civilisation.

You will go crazy if you don't take a breather and watch the houses and the scaffolding go past, or enjoy the moments of down time between your daily activities. Much the same will happen if you deny faith that there are those who actually care for our (and our country's) wellbeing.

There's a lot to be annoyed and confused about right now. A lot.

Being stuck on the recieving end of extreme politics and uncertain leadership is a big one. Hatred can rise alongside the right, but holding fast is an exponentially increasing movement on the people's side who are fighting back for what really matters: Empathy and Equality.

The New Net.

It was recently I decided to remove myself from most social media in a personal and engaged way.

I did this because, as most folk nowadays, I would find myself waking up and turning to my phone to have my grey matter inundated by an endless inane stream of flashing lights and useless information. Social media is designed this way; it's sole purpose is to keep you scrolling, reading comments and engaging with the media it presents you with.

The idea is to feed you content which makes you laugh, cry, curse, aww and cringe -- all in an effort to make you scroll on and on until you've sank hours of time into these apps. This gains the publishers ad revenue, positive usage stats and a user that will come back later to continue engaging.

The most genius part is that the content you consume is user made, and costs nothing other than the file hosting costs, creating a golden goose of 'slop' content that cost nothing to make and creates a near endless cashflow.

This relatively recent shift of online operation marks a change in how we use 'social' media. Not to keep in touch with friends and see what they're up to, but instead to sell, promote and create engagement loops to make the mindless horde unknowingly line the already stitch-burstingly full pockets of the app developers.

In the UK, more and more laws and legislation are now coming in to monitor people's online activity -- forcing ID verification for any app that might maybe contain sensitive content. They pitched this as a way to keep kids safe online; which granted, it will; but also links everything you do online to your government ID.
This means that yes -those engaged in harmful, unlawful or hateful activity online could face comeuppance- but that comes at the cost of the average user's personal privacy. You can be the most morally good internet user and understand how mandatory data collection by anyone might not be good...

While that's happening, everything you like, view, post and comment is saved in algorithms and ai datacentres to further personalise the media that you are shown. The companies -like Meta- know what you like and how to keep you engaged.

So if everything you do on social media is monitored and recorded by the apps (and is also all linked to your government ID), there's a very easy correlation to be made that ID could be linked to your personal interests, favourite sites, political tendencies and screen time in a much more mandatory way than ever before -- allowing media sites or the government a highly detailed glimpse into your private life and personality. The more you use these apps, the more they know.

It's even happened now where people discussing protest against our country's support for Israel have been pre-emptively arrested by the thought police to prevent peaceful actions that haven't yet been committed. This is an insane invasion of both personal privacy and democratic rights.

In response to this new net we must use, I will continue to spoof my ID, remove myself from social media and consolidate every online movement I make to deny corporations access to my online identity.

I will also never shut up about it. "keeping kids safe online" is not the true intention behind these laws and I'll make sure to tell that fact to anyone fooled by that faux cause.

Europe and Asia.

A seven year old sits on the mottled greyscale carpet, readjusting his white polo collar and chewing idly at the pink meat of his pinky finger.
The other kids beside are -at least somewhat- eagerly watching Ms. Forbes' PowerPoint about the 'countries in the world' -- but that's boring. Everyone knows about England and France and Spain and America and Australia with the kangaroos.

The drone of her monologue gets tuned out alongside the hum of the overhead projector and the shuffling of Velcro shoes behind. One word makes it through the thudding jabber of her otherwise tiresome explanation.

A dormant mind and vacant eyes are reawakened with a flutter of curiosity which triggers the laziest of half-focused glances towards the whiteboard. The new word is repeated in speech and the miasma of muted sound becomes clearer; The seven Continents of the world.
Ms. Forbes now utters how continents are essentially big islands, or landmasses, that are split up into countries before she starts pointing and naming: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica.

The child quickly understands the concept and also understands that Ms. Forbes said 7 names, but is all but terribly confused at why there are only 6 big islands on the map. A cooling sensation is felt upon five gnawed fingertips as they are raised above the heads of the pupils.

"What's the difference between Europe and Asia, Miss?"

Let me take it from here, Ms. Forbes.

Some people like to tell you that Europe and Asia are different because they lie on separate tectonic plates, and that the Ural mountains are a sort of natural border which separate the two; Don't listen to those people. They're wrong. Google it.

The geological argument is however usually overshadowed by the cultural argument -- wherein Europe and Asia are classified as separate continents due to a difference in culture between the two.

So okay, let's just accept that. Let's accept that most of the world's Muslim majority countries are more culturally similar to East Asian countries than they are to most of the world's Christian majority countries in Europe because what? Lebanon is more culturally connected to Cambodia than Moldova? I don't buy it.
In a world more interconnected than ever, an imaginary line from the classical era drawn through a major landmass which seemingly just separates 'white' from 'not white', feels exponentially outdated and ignorant.
With a new wave of fascism on the rise, an increasing resurgence of a 'save Europe' sentiment and a behemoth political focus on immigration, this conversation is especially relevant as maintaining these arbitrary, Eurocentric 'us and them' border names helps to fortify these disconnected and racist ideologies.

All I would ask of you, readers, is to also question the unconscious language we use to describe certain regions; Europe, the middle East, the far East... The far East from what? Civilised society? The idea of Europe in it's simplest form is to unreasonably separate who's white and who's not and I really don't think that makes much sense.

Anyway. Back to you Ms. Forbes.

New Year, Nothing New.

So it begins. Welcome to the first post on my feedsite. As you can see I decided to start this project alongside the new year, optimistic for what it may hold and excited to write during it.

Unfortunately -for us all- the dregs of last year hath seeped through that ephemenumerical membrane of the new year and have stained the start of this one red.

When I was certifiably wasted at 00:00 on the first of January, welcoming in new beginnings with Will.i.am and Papa John, I had a feeling of true, undeniable hope that maybe just maybe this one won't be as bad.

Three days is all it took. The Aquilifer (Herr Trump) successfully initiated the beginning of his annexation of Venezuela. The mask of righteousness has well and truly slipped. The United States are outwardly operating under a fascist regime.

It's really interesting to me that since the Epstein case, US-Israeli entanglment and all the other major scandals of 2025 have been brought into the light, it kind of feels like the US isn't awfully bothered about hiding it's authoritarian 'I'll do want I want because I can' ways. I in-a-way miss when it was easier to be ignorant and the evil schemes weren't as overtly evil.

With re-emerging talk open threats targeted at Denmark over the ownership of Greenland, the murder of Renee Good by the admin-allowed killsquads and the ever ongoing support in favour of Israel, It's becoming easier for the people to see the US for what it is; to see the actor through the act; and be ready and armed with a rotten stinking tomato destined for it's tumescent face.

What makes my teeth grit the most is the reluctancy of Starmer to reveal any indication that what props him up when he sits is a spine and at all critisize the US for breaking international law.

UK deals with the US is clearly all that matters. So much that he's shooting down proposed trade deals with the EU -- favouring instead to send arms to Trump's ventriloquist: Tel Aviv Ben.

Thirteen days into the new year and it's already been so eventful. I'm eager to see which way this will all end up going -- whether we'll finally see a massive leftward pushback against blatant fascism or a full-on fall of empathy among us apes. Anyway...

Nice try 2026. I won't be giving up that easily.