Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Its weird, the AU Guardian has been very good - I've stopped reading Fairfax and replaced it with the Graun/au. None of this rubbish on our side of the site. those photos are shite.

If they can filter out all the British crap then why does the app persist in the delusion that I'm interested in Australian football and reviews of random Brisbane indie bands?

i'm glad i'm not the only one!!

TBF it doesnt filter ALL of it out, just mostly off of the front pages.

for some time i've been a fan of looking at this page and reading all the headlines as fast as possible: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/experience

so i decided to compose a poem using only headlines i gathered from it: https://soundcloud.com/ronan-fitzgerald/i-was-attacked-by-a-seal

Ha, that's great

:)

It is good; also, surprised at how many of these i remember.

Lovely

https://i.redditmedia.com/St9NDD2bOPvISfh5LkLXZmp1x1T82Dt-fAQOXLWEmd0.jpg?w=430&s=385a363c9a1e5d832a81d9719a9264c0

o_O

I had to read that 3 times before I realised they *weren't* saying the body was to be used for beach volleyball.

when life gives you a mutilated body - play beach volleyball with it

This is the plot of Swiss Army Man

great to see it isn't just the usual perfect bodies in olympic volleyball

as it makes me miserable whenever I read it, what other sources of news does ilx recommend?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/17/olympics-hysteria-britain-turned-soviet-team-gb

I actually agree with bits of this, but...

the funding system feels very wrong and jingoism is bollocks so i agree

That's the bits I'm alongside with too.

Agree with all of that, it's not exlusively a GB thing either.

Yeah that's a great article

i mainly agree - the olympics is infested with weird politics, the whole concept of "team gb" sounds like what the tories will call the country after scotland fucks off.

I mean, the Olympics are aesthetically a load of shit at this point. I was stuck for things to do last night so I tuned into a men's handball quarter final, and discovered my favourite Olympian of 2016 this way (not a difficult position to attain given I've basically avoided the lot) - the Danish second-choice goalkeeper, Jannick Green, who wasn't any sort of flag-draped musclebound Perfect Athlete but a lanky long-haired guy with about as much sporting talent as me (decent amateur soccer goalie fyi), who did an extravagant celebration every time his prancing saved a shot, often directed at the benched first-choice goalkeeper but mostly at the viewing public. At one point he failed to save a shot and in a fit of angst flung himself feet-first at a pitchside hoarding, denting it. Throughout, he and his mane fully embodied the absurdity of Olympic sport. I envisaged a Games populated by none other than his kin. But then I probably wouldn't watch that either.

Handball is better than I thought it'd be, though

Wish I'd seen that. Are Denmark still in it? I'm sure Fred B will remind us they are. Fuck basketball btw, I hate that fucking sport.

Yeah they crushed Slovenia. Handball is basically Euro basketball, but the existence of a goalkeeper adds something, sure

Have to say I too have enjoyed watching the (womens) handball, admittedly because of the fact it's shown so much because 'TeamNL' (ugh) are doing well. The pace is relentless, and I've yet to see a player raise as much as an eyebrow when penalized or sent off for some minutes. It's accepted without any form of protest and keeps the game going at a ridiculously high pace.

Not one word on Guardian online about the scrapping of the Human Rights Act afaict. Nada.

It's here but framed as "Bill Of Rights will not be scrapped" rather than "Human Rights Act will be scrapped".

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/aug/22/uk-bill-of-rights-will-not-be-scrapped-says-liz-truss

What the fuck.

truth to power lol

I see they've dropped their "£49" banner to an option for contributions starting at 25 quid.

Which, funnily enough, is the same fee you need to become a member of the Labour Party.

Curious if anyone anyone has paid up?

What the fuck.

The Bill Of Rights is what the Tories plan to replace the HRA with and the question has always been whether they'll actually go ahead with implementing it, so it's not an entirely unfair take though it does kind of assume that anyone scanning the headlines will know that. If people think the BOR = the HRA then, without reading the article, they might think the latter is being retained.

Yeah that's what I was what the fucking. Far too lenient on the Tories for our supposed left wing broadsheet.

What has actually happened this week other than Liz Truss reiterating in a Radio 4 interview that they haven't changed their plan to replace the HRA with a bill of rights? The Canary frames this as a "bombshell" that the MSM are hiding from you, but it's only a bombshell if you were convinced by this unspecified "speculation" that the government was set to change course.

The Canary's whole MO is hyped-up clickbait headlines but why would you not want to keep on reminding people how vile the government is?

As far as nhs cuts go, I don't know another way of saying 'his is what happens when you vote Tory, and people have been telling you that most of your lives and you don't listen'. It's profoundly depressing. A bunch of Tory voters in the pub today saying that's wasn't what they voted for the Tories for.

had a convo with my brother on Wednesday about how can we find hope for a better world in the light of the way people approach their vote and the political system in general?

didn't word that right - the general tenor of the convo was "how to even think about this stuff without massive depression?"

It's odd, because it makes me (and I think most people) uncomfortable to start talking about the psychology of convincing people to do certain thing. We maybe like to frame it as 'communicating truths'. But relying on the the 'virtue of our message' to necessarily convince people seems like a doomed enterprise.

I gave up a long time ago on the notion that my political beliefs were in any sense provably "right". I guess at best I might argue that the kind of society I want would benefit the greatest number of people, but even that would be v debatable. in the end I simply have class interests and think the number of people who are in the same broad class as me is far greater than its members realise

but anybody who believes in nuance and complexity and moral philosophy has to do a lot of breath-holding to engage with parliamentary democracy as is

But even accepting a realpolitik view, I have no idea how you would counter the current forcings.

I don't think you'll carry millions of people with you by saying "what you think you understand about your own best interests is wrong", that's for sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-a5hy7QO8

an ilx favourite that feels painfully true about politics as it plays thru the media in 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/zero-hours-contracts-worse-jobs-for-life-work-unions?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=soc_3156

Makes u think.

Deborah Orr working hard to be challopian in chief

fucking blinkered moron needs exiling to Hartlepool for 20 years.

It is good to see the Graun strengthening their case as bastion of high quality journalism that is worth paying for again tho

so if you're in a handsomely-paid middle class job flexibility of working hours might be a positive? ouch, my mind.

Guardian journalist - there's a job for life, these cunts walk out of one job straight into another like it's fuckin' 1952 or something.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/09/zero-hours-contracts-lousy-recovery

This is from a few years ago. I would like to navigate through Debz's confused mind but I have things, i.e. work, to do.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/sep/13/the-great-british-bake-off-disaster-why-the-bbc-got-burned

Mark Lawson puns, the stubbed toes of prose