Mark Brown

I haven't, but I will check it out!

I very much like The Captain and The Enemy, The Comedians, The Human Factor and The End of The Affair.

The whole economy of supporter, follower, stan, brigade, merch, live stream, direct payment for nowt, algorithm and share- an incredible machine for the elevation of cock heads to figure heads of movements of horrific ideas and practices based on nothing but their ability to present self online

Someone should write a really good long essay for me to read about how the Internet has created 'fandoms' for cock heads in a way that has never quite existed before.

being Leo Tolstoy and writing down “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” with an old-timey fountain pen and going “oh fuck, that’s a fucking banger”

Wonder what would happen if we had another EU referendum, this time for re joining?

What you said, and also 'with wrestling you know it's going to be fun'

Interviewing Mat for Tales of the Suburbs was an utter delight

We assume everyone uses the web in the ways that we do, based on the norms of when and where we started to use it. I can just about imagine how you could be on your phone and laptop all day and never actually use a browser to go to a search engine and look for things

I sometimes wonder whether there are people who have never experienced the web as a place with URLs and pages and have only experienced Web pages within apps or using social media as if it were a search engine for Web pages. If there are, that'd explain a lot about AI use for researching stuff

Like a drunk man in flip flops leaving a park, it slow clapped itself as it departed from view.

Either that car that just went past was taking some seals for a performance or it had a flat tyre.

I don't know quite what it's called, but the enthusiasm of thr Trump administration and acolytes to make every day life unlivable is a real thing. Is this accelerationism?

The Government has tabled an amendment in lieu that would grant Ministers the power to introduce restrictions on children’s use of internet services, following its ongoing consultation on children’s wellbeing. This would give the Government a significant delegated power to legislate in this area, despite the Bill containing very little policy detail explaining how it would work. In practice, the power would allow Ministers to require providers of internet services to impose restrictions on any “specified internet service” for children under a “specified age”. This could extend far beyond social media. In theory, it would allow restrictions on any designated website or category of websites, as well as services such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or AI tools. The amendment provides no detail about the types of restrictions that could be imposed. Restrictions would ultimately be decided by Ministers and implemented through a Statutory Instrument. This would mean that Parliament could not amend the Minster’s decision. Scrutiny would be limited to a short debate followed by a vote to either approve or reject the measure. The proposed provision therefore embodies two undesirable legislative practices. First, it introduces an extensive new power at the final stage of the Bill’s parliamentary passage, when opportunities for debate and amendment are already constrained. Secondly, when Ministers come to exercise that power, the resulting Statutory Instrument would itself be subject to limited scrutiny and could not be amended by Parliament.

Good summary from @hansardsociety.bsky.social on how today's ~the children~ Commons debate on a social media ban for <16s is, regardless of your opinion on the issue, very bad lawmaking and government, rehashing (as I've said) bad ideas which were smacked out of the OSA years ago for a reason.

Fella just stopped me in the street to tell me that today would have been Mark E Smith's birthday.

The vegetarian yeast based pates that come in tubes are pretty brilliant for that. Jars of ajvar are great. And Lidl sometimes has in jars of olive tapenade. Aubergine meze/baba ganoush in jars is pretty terrific, too. Mushroom pate from a tube with sliced apple and grapes on toast is fantastic

That Steve Hillage record is great!

It's amazing watching a US administration auto documenting the evidence that'll be used against them in their own future trials. Because that's how this shit works, right? Get people so incriminated they have no choice but to keep going, legs spinning in air hoping to overcome the gravity of history

It must be pretty amazing to grow up in a country that never had an empire and to never find yourself showboxing with the ghosts of a past that your country should never have had.

The Fall - Eat Y'Self Fitter (1983) YouTube video by Iain McNeilage

Became a recluse
And bought a computer
Set it up in the home
Elusive big one
On the screen
Saw the Holy Ghost, I swear
On the screen

Where's the cursor
Where's the eraser

#fallfriday

youtu.be/yFCOt6wbm80?...

I think with Pelicans you had a scarcity of access to academic-ish subjects for people who really had a desire to find out about them or an embarrassment at not knowing enough about them. I've been fascinated by the ways non-fiction publishing hasn't taken advantage of digital means in terms of form

I think if you are (as I always am) hankering for shorter non-fiction books, its because I am interested in lots of things with lots of specific angles, positions or subsets. We'd be looking for novelty, but entirely based on criteria that wouldn't apply to people who want the bumper book of XXX

I think part of the driver also is novelty. Which is not always, in itself, a signal the information is new but that either the wrapper of the book around it or the moment in which it arrives is new. Both tend towards 'this is the only book you need' positioning, feeding into my previous comment

I think there's a couple of things happening. The main target of non-fiction is not people who read lots of non-fiction but people who don't read much or people purchasing for others. If you read a lot of non-fiction your purchasing habits are atypical and you also want very different things

By which I mean the NHS has always required other bits of social policy to also work toward building health in society and communities structurally through law and engineering to prevent it eventually being unable to deploy resources sufficient to deal with health demand.

I had no grand parents from the age of twelve. I have had decades more with my dad in my life than he had of his parents. I have already outlived my Mam by four years.

The denigration of public health and state power to improve health through means outside of the NHS has undone our hope for the NHS

Good piece on falling life expectancy and falling quality adjusted life years.

As a working class person I have occasionally had to point out to others that in the past 'we did not live long' when talking about family and relatives.

If you want a hero, get a T shirt of Michael Marmot.

I think there's something about the way the verses jog on the spot that makes them feel reflective because they kind of ruminate between the choruses. Like everything apart from the chorus sounds like an intro, that it's leading towards somewhere it never arrives.

I think the response to the first Strokes album was fascinating from the folks who had gone through britpop. Always saw this as a song with Hard to Explain as a godparent. I always forget that there's really only a couple of years from the arse end of britpop to the early MySpace / rock revival

Book Launch 💥💥

A really important book for the psychiatric survivor/Mad movement ❤️

Online launch on Friday 17th April 2026, 5pm GMT