Links tagged with “politics”
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Tom Crewe · Carnival of Self-Harm: Good Riddance to the Tories
Even having lived through this mess, it’s shocking to read how badly successive Tory governments have screwed the country.
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What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain? | The New Yorker
A good read, but what a mess we’re in. I feel even more hopeless about the country after reading this.
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Deborah Friedell · A Piece of Pizza and a Beer: Who was Jane Roe? · LRB 23 June 2022
I did not know, or had forgotten, how Roe v. Wade came to be.
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Do the verdicts in the trial of the Colston 4 signal something wrong with our jury system? 10 things you should know – The Secret Barrister
A really clear description of all the possible reasons the verdict could have been “not guilty”. (via FaveJet)
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How a Jeopardy! Contestant’s Hand Gesture Became Part of a Conspiracy - The New York Times
I love/hate this. Quite amazing where we’ve got to.
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Peter Geoghegan · Cronyism and Clientelism · LRB 5 November 2020
Depressing piece from November on the UK’s kleptocracy.
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the sun is going down and you’re getting cold - Garbage Day
“Things that make sense on the internet, when spoken out loud, slip away from you as if you were trying to recall a dream.” So good, on social media and the US Capitol riot.
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An Oral History of Dominic Cummings’s Barnard Castle Scandal
“The Bishop of Manchester: I love the meme with the eye chart, where all the letters spell out Barnard Castle. That’s my favourite meme.” That meme was me me.
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I Lived Through A Stupid Coup. America Is Having One Now | by Indi Samarajiva | indica | Nov, 2020 | Medium
The next instalment after “I Lived Through Collapse…”. I’d welcome more articles comparing the US to the worst aspects of non-“Western” countries at normal times too.
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I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There. | by Indi Samarajiva | Sep, 2020 | GEN
“If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like ‘this is it’, I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says ‘things are officially bad’.” (via Kottke)
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Sweet Moderation, Heart of this Nation
On why Britain, its media, and Rory Stewart aren’t moderate and centrist. (via @markhurrell)
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How bad can it get? (London Review of Books)
Good, but not much hope about UK politics. But I learned an excellent word: “rhodomontade”, extravagant boasting. Word of the year.
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BobFromBrockley: The RCP’s long march from anti-imperialist outsiders to the doors of Downing Street
No it’s all fine I’m sure.
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Ruining a country near you soon: the beta males who think they’re alphas | Marina Hyde | Opinion | The Guardian
I could link to every Marina Hyde column, so take this excellent example as a placeholder for all of them.
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What I Learned Trying To Secure Congressional Campaigns (Idle Words)
Entertaining and interesting. “You will fare especially badly if you have written an app to fix politics.” (via @gwire)
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Notes on some artefacts | The Monthly
“It is impossible to say whether this is a bot account, though, because conservatives appear to be modelling their online presences on bots.” Good stuff. Like pointing out how much stuff around now is Gibson-esque.
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Tom Crewe · What will be left?: Labour’s Prospects · LRB 18 May 2017
Slightly out of date opinion poll-wise, but I liked this as a summary of where Labour is and how we, as a country, got here.
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Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in | World news | The Guardian
I’m ashamed to say that I was barely aware of much of this. How did that happen then? And until now? (via Buckslip)
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David Runciman reviews ‘Theresa May’ by Rosa Prince · LRB 16 March 2017
I haven’t had much of a sense of what May is about, what makes her tick. This article seems to have an interesting set of ideas about it.
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4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump – Medium
This was a good read on a segment of Trump’s supporters being like, or actually, 4chan in origin.
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The Strange Death of Municipal England (London Review of Books)
A good read, especially if you’re feeling all full of optimism about a new year and need to be brought crashing back to earth.
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Who Will Command The Robot Armies?
Loads of good stuff in this transcript of Maciej Ceglowski’s latest talk. The section taking the piss out of silly IoT things seems like a trivialising distraction though.
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You Are Still Crying Wolf | Slate Star Codex
Good on keeping some of the Trump stuff in perspective. Yes, he’s terrible but the media tends to focus on certain things out of all proportion to their actual importance or relevance.
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The State of the Presidential Debate - The New Yorker
Interesting history of the debates and how they came to be what they are. (via @antimega)
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Inside The Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns | GQ
How the non-computerised method of finding out who bought a particular gun, from its make and serial number, works in the US. Crazy.
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Income and inequality historical data explorer
Graphing the data for successive UK governments.
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YouGov | The leadership effect - how leaders can shift perceptions of parties
Because I like charts showing the left/right position of parties and politicians over time.
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They Could Have Picked… (London Review of Books)
Eliot Weinberger on all the Republican presidential candidates other than Trump. At this point it’s become easy to forget that they were *all* nutjobs. Still, makes me thankful to live in the UK.
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Who Are All These Trump Supporters? - The New Yorker
A good read by George Saunders. “What unites these stories is what I came to think of as usurpation anxiety syndrome—the feeling that one is, or is about to be, scooped, overrun, or taken advantage of by some Other with questionable intentions.”
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A final response to the “Tell me why Trump is a fascist”.
Amazing list. (via @spongefile)
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I’m With The Banned — Welcome to the Scream Room — Medium
Laurie Penny. A good read, but depressing. I don’t know what you, we, do when people who believe nothing get all the attention.
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A-Z Index of Euromyths 1992 to 2016 (European Commission in the UK)
Hundreds of myths about EU rules. (via @dracos)
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Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit - Political Economy Research Centre
Another good read on understandable reasons why people have voted for Out. (via @tomskitomski)
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‘If you’ve got money, you vote in … if you haven’t got money, you vote out’ | Politics | The Guardian
A good read for getting beyond “Out voters are all racists!” (via @tomskitomski)
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I’m Voting For The Democrat In November Because I’m Not A Human Tire Fire — Medium
I just enjoyed reading this. (via @GreatDismal)
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Nigel’s Against the World (London Review of Books)
I’ve mostly been ignoring EU referendum stuff but this is quite good on the things we don’t really know about what happens if we leave.
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America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny — NYMag
There are loads of worried articles about Trump but this is a nice long overview of worries. (via @spongefile)
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Corbyn in the Media - Paul Myerscough (London Review of Books)
This is good on the Guardian being out of touch, in denial, with all those who voted for Corbyn, and on the “impartiality” of the BBC.
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Labour leadership race: How has Jeremy Corbyn galvanised so many people - young and old? - UK Politics - UK - The Independent
Scroll down, and down, for Frank Cottrell Boyce’s bit. (I haven’t read the rest of it.)
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Labour through the looking glass: 15 early-morning speculations on the Corbyn surge | Dougald Hine
A (hopeful) scenario for what a Jeremy Corbyn victory might look like and how this isn’t a Militant-style surge but a modern network Occupy-style one. (via @paulpod)
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Jackson Lears reviews ‘The Age of Acquiescence’ by Steve Fraser · LRB 16 July 2015
How left-leaning beliefs have disappeared in the US, mostly over the first half of the 20th century. (Subscribers only)
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Labour is now so passive, it might as well be led by an out-of-office email | Comment is free | The Guardian
All of this. Good stuff in every paragraph.
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The Early Days of a Better Nation
Mainly for Régis Debray’s gloomy description of May 1968, written in 1979: “We had to imagine ourselves as Chinese, in order to become Californians.”
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HM Government Horizon Scanning Programme - Social Attitudes of Young People
“The aim of this report is to assess if and how social attitudes of young people in the UK today differ from previous generations, and how they might evolve in the future.” December 2014
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Coalition calculator - General Election 2015, FT.com
Simple and clear. Nice. (via @AftertheFloodco)
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James Meek · Why are you still here?: Who owns Grimsby? · LRB 23 April 2015
A long, good piece from Grimsby on its history, its industries and its general election candidates. Lots of things relevant to the rest of the country too of course.
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UK Election Quiz
I Side With’s quiz came out best in Francis Irving’s roundup. I got 97% Labour, 94% Green. “Your political beliefs would be considered extremely Left-Wing and strongly Authoritarian”.
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“I find politics inaccessible”: User testing voter advice apps : Francis Irving
Francis Irving tests out a load of “Who should I vote for?” websites.
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PLOS ONE: The Rise of Partisanship and Super-Cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives
For the couple of diagrams showing how the number of congresspeople voting cross-party has changed over time. I love attempts to visualise party political changes over time.
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Mr. Miller Doesn’t Go to Washington - Matt Miller - POLITICO Magazine
“A candidate’s memoir.” Being a candidate sounds like even less fun than I ever thought it would be.