Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/11/passport-office-holiday

Now, I'm the first to admit I am bleedin' useless at filling in forms. So is my partner. We are so useless that we left Maya's passport until pretty much the last moment because we know the Passport Office is a stickler in the extreme, would joyously return the form with a big cross through it, highlighting all the errors, we'd have to start again, and it would result in a minor existential crisis.

Liveblog!
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/19/facebook-down-global-outage-website-and-apps

Users worldwide were unable to access the social network for 20 minutes

fuck's sake

can definitely see the appeal of producing content purely to annoy the angry-at-everything cross-eyed morons that make up most of their commenter base but it also seems like it would feel like shooting fish in a barrel by now

Why I, a 15-year-old grammar pedant, took on Tesco

Can't believe the Guardian would devalue their liveblogging brand with that FB thing.

defend the indefensible: Whose idea was this?

Might have been a bit more interesting if it wasn't 100℅ smug snark. At least the ILX threads only run at 50-60℅.

Cameroon infighting update. Former Cameroon coach Winfried Schaefer expected African sides to do better at the World Cup but was not surprised with the squabbling in his former team's camp, it says here. Was anyone surprised? Really?

"It's always about money," said the German. " It's always ahead of big tournaments. They work hard for four years and then they destroy everything over silly fights over money. "

Schaefer, who in a four-year spell coached Cameroon to the 2002 African Nations Cup title and took charge of them at the World Cup in Asia the same year, said the current squad lacked unity.

"It's like a cage of lions and they need a manager who disciplines them and is a strong leader. I've spoken to Samuel Eto'o and told him 'you don't play if you are not part of the group'. But in general the boys are good boys. The team is split in two groups. Eto'o and [Alex] Song. They need a strong group."

http://i.imgur.com/TiWhU7F.jpg

In disarray they stand. Photograph: Robert Ghement/EPA

http://i.imgur.com/3bABCG0.png

This week's bestsellers

[How to be a Husband] 1. How to be a Husband

by Tim Dowling £8.99

i feel compelled to say this every time this is brought up, i have no problem with people hating tim dowling, i just want the world to hear that i really enjoy his useless silly columns

What rhymes with disaster? Robin Thicke trolled hard in Twitter Q&A

Singer most famed for his Beetlejuice suit and misogynistic lyrics of Blurred Lines took to Twitter for a Q&A – in an epic PR fail

Hannah Jane Parkinson is a writer on pop culture, music, tech, football, politics and mental health. She lives in Camden, London, and previously lived in Russia, Oxford and Liverpool. She likes reading, sauvignon blanc, laughing and Liverpool FC. You can follow her on Twitter

HannahJane Parkinson @ladyhaja · Jun 29

I am drinking leftover amaretto from when @stuheritage did an Oscars drinking game. We liveblogging #Glastonbury

HannahJane Parkinson @ladyhaja · Jun 28

We're live blogging #Glastonbury in the office. We got hungry but couldn't find Chiellini so we went with pizza.

someone's got a new cruuuush

.....

haha nah she's fucking terrible of course but what do you expect from the fucking guardian

all of these things seem almost aleatoric? like that writer with the britpop thing hogan or whatever he was called, there doesnt seem to be any sort of organizational/discriminatory intelligence at work, random proletkult / news / content signifiers thrown together, every single one of them will have tweeted some variation of suarez & food this week, how would one even go about hiring someone writing in this genre

Michael Hogan @michaelhogan Jun 25

Dunno why Suarez is getting so much grief. Who hasn't fancied a bite to eat and opted for an Italian? #WorldCup

this is pure SEO-as-reportage, the dismal final frontier of journalism

the lowest common denominator of comment. these people are simply machines of the news agenda at its most brutalistic

yeah im glad there are still people ready to get upset about content under late capitalism or whatever you but im more just drawn to how little specialist aptitude is required for a writer on pop culture, music, tech, football, etc, surely 80% of the white people in london 22-40 could do this work

these people sucked the right cocks, went to the right schools, knew the right m8s, and probably had (very) slightly more sophisticated content published in some guise at some point (university magazines lol)

we kinda need suzy to explain tho

i mean, there's the possibility they worked incredibly hard to build up blogging/article portfolios & networked like fuck to achieve these positions no matter their background, so well done them, now look what they're required to do, regression to pigshit, idk

doesn't keep me up at night

lj i think your latterday male feminism is slightly undermined once u suggest female journalists get their jobs from prostituting themselves

I would imagine a lot of it is down to having the patience and confidence to keep pitching ideas until one gets accepted. If I had the time and inclination to propose this stuff to a variety of national newspapers five times a day, 365 days a year, knowing that the vast majority of the time it would be knocked back, I could be making that £82 a week too, but it is a hard grind.

its not like u could argue there is some underprivileged person who could do their work better than them because there is no level of achievement here, they are all exactly as competent as each other

and yeah sharivari probably gets it with the £82.....most of these people presumably dont earn very much at all so the question of who works in this field is either who is psychotically committed to content farming or who has other income streams

Rhiannon Cosslett still talks about temping to make ends meet. Even the successful bloggers are going to have irl jobs, for the most part.

the sad thought is that it's probably mostly ppl who grew up w/ journalism aspirations who still long to be intrepid correspondents in a world where the press has utterly collapsed

like it's kinda a calling

the question of who works in this field is either who is psychotically committed to content farming or who has other income streams

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

lj i think your latterday male feminism is slightly undermined once u suggest female journalists get their jobs from prostituting themselves

― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Thursday, 3 July 2014 18:49 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh i was talking about michael hogan here too, while alluding to the overly patriarchal nature of newspaper journalism

and it's a metaphor of course ;)

slightly affronted u called me on that tbh

that wasn't the post I fpd u for ITT fwiw xxx

the sad thought is that it's probably mostly ppl who grew up w/ journalism aspirations who still long to be intrepid correspondents in a world where the press has utterly collapsed

― Mordy, Thursday, 3 July 2014 19:59 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like it's kinda a calling

― Mordy, Thursday, 3 July 2014 20:00 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sector doesn't really have anything to do with anything that highminded

doesnt seem likely that stuart heritage decompensates in a panic during his oscars drinking game liveblog wishing he was writing about the sri lankan civil war

even if he does, cultural pessimism arguments don't seem that persuasive after that very lengthy and grave coates reparation article got record pageviews and serious traction all over the place

Aleatoric.
Aleatoric?
Aleato-ric?
Alea-tor-ic?

Lucy Rhiannon Cosslett is probably the worst writer in history

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/05/jackmaster-and-oneman-field-day-parklife-djs

This thread needs a few guardian Caitlin Moran pics:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/10/1357822542472/Caitlin-Moran-010.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/BOOKS/Pix/pictures/2014/1/29/1391015565519/Caitlin-Moran-011.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2011/6/16/1308246840164/caitlin-moran-on-tyre-swi-007.jpg

speaking of...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Br4KHIlIQAElEV-.jpg:large

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/05/jackmaster-and-oneman-field-day-parklife-djs

A few posts above you

But yeah, Jesus. I couldn't finish it

Haha, oops! So bad it had to be posted twice.

An article about an article

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/13/clayton-m-christensen-theory-disruptive-innovation-debunked

a few weeks ago, a Harvard historian had the temerity to ask if Emperor Christensen had any clothes. Writing in the New Yorker, Jill Lepore gave The Innovator's Dilemma the kind of unsympathetic third degree to which historians regularly subject the books of their professional peers.

first paragraph shows complete misunderstanding of innovator's dilemma, didn't continue any further. econ's a social science so picking it apart shouldn't be difficult (that's why the word 'social' is there, to let you know it's not actually science) but these lazy motherfuckers aren't up to the task. it's like watching a snail fail to outrun a tortoise.

Quiz: What type of Facebook user are you?

A 29 year old on being 29 years old: "being 29 is great!"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/29-perfect-age-friend