Looking forward to this a lot. I was completely obsessed with Nikki Sudden in my teens and 20s, and am still very much a fan now. I remember exactly where I was/what I was doing when I heard he'd died.
And I just realised that was almost exactly 20 years ago. Bloody hell!
My mate grew up in Shirley/Solihull and took a demo of his first groupβs efforts round to Nikki & Epicβs house one day and said they were very nice about it (considering it was inevitably shite).
My mate's claim to brief encounter fame is that he was once in the next hospital bed to Jowe. Can't remember what for. Nice piece but does every band these days require Thurston Moore's blessing? Asking for a stock journalistic endorsement goes here.
It's the law!
Hey, check out this Gaudrian feature on Swill Mops
On the plus side, this post brought the gig to my attention & I have just bought a ticket
Nice piece on the forthcoming Swell Maps album in The Guardian today (of which I'm very proud of my unmentioned contributions to almost every song), although in true Grauniad style, they get my name wrong ...
www.theguardian.com/music/2026/m...
Yes, I'm old β not quite that old!
I'm alive but just by dumb luck, i'm connected by sheer chance, will get diconnected soon probably, saw death 2 times in one day, it's hell now in this city, dont know if i will live another day. Don't know what type of person i'll be if i make it.
I find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone experiencing what honestly looks like the apocalypse is going to regard it as a form of liberation or that anyone responsible for it actually cares about how Iranians regard it at all.
Black rain from the sky and sewers exploding in flames. Trump has created hell on earth.
This is where our global utopia crashes into laser-guided reality Britons will all feel the impact of the war with Iran, not just those who have moved to Dubai expecting peace and security Charlotte Ivers Saturday March 07 2026, 11.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times οΌ Share n 2013, when I was at university, I used to Facebook-_ message friends who were lounging by private pools in Tehran and Tel Aviv while studying abroad. Back home it had become something of a status symbol to teach yourself Russian, largely because the nightlife in Moscow was so good: dark, sexy and glamorous. In the little English pubs we frequented, friends would airily report on what was happening on the Russian social media site VK, or China's WeChat. Life was good, goods were cheap and the world belonged to us. I feel rather uncomfortable thinking of it now. There's something a bit jazz age about the whole thing: gilded youth toasting their own cosmopolitanism and sophistication while the world trundled quietly towards chaos. There were signs, obviously. In 2014 Russia invaded the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. But, still, the nightlife in Moscow was fantastic.
Whose global Utopia? The news that the party is over and things are going to get especially miserable is IMO going to come as a major surprise for millions of people who did not get invites to the festivities in the first place.
Dying with unearned wealth, getting away with heinous sex crimes, and leaving other people to clean up your messes is the Boomers version of the American Dream.
WHO hub in the Middle East has frozen emergency assistance due to bombings. They've stalled shipments of medical supplies, eg $6m in medicines for Gaza & polio supplies to Afghanistan & Pakistan.
WHO says >100,000 people displaced from Tehran & >60K from Lebanon. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
βΌοΈβΌοΈβΌοΈβΌοΈ
ICE using the same ruse that Ted Bundy used to kidnap people should tell you something.
Essential viewing before offering any opinion on the Iran war, I would say:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlX...
βWhoopee! Weβre all gonna die!β
RIP Country Joe McDonald.
youtu.be/eRl6-bHlz-4
Now, as then.
#fuck
Obit (gift article): www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/a...
'One of the most successful wildlife comeback stories': The Alps lost its vultures - then it got them back π
www.bbc.com/future/artic...
One of the lessons of the Iran war is that it was a huge mistake not to even try to put any of the Iraq war architects in prison. We shouldnβt make it again.
Presuming this isnβt the end (see, I can do optimism) it would be good if this war made people go βCan I shock you? I like renewable energyβ
A wise administration wouldnβt start another war in the Middle East.
A competent administration wouldnβt bomb an elementary school full of children on day 1 of the war they started.
They are neither.
Call me a filthy commie but I really don't think wearing a burqa is in any way worse than, you know, DYING
newrepublic.com/post/207415/...
Matthew Petti β’ @matthew_p... β’49m saying "the regime" like a magic talisman that lets you pretend that oil refineries, water plants, police stations, courthouses, schools, and hospitals are not just part of society
They did this in the Lebanon War in 2006: they just bombed anything that looked like it had any social or economic value - bakeries, ports, factories, on and on, then told the world every single one was a military target. It was all lies then, just as it has been for years here.
Tweet from Daniel Pipes: "The uprising in Iran in early January suggested an even greater insurgency would then follow on the U.S.-Israeli campaign to erode regime power. Yet, the populace now appears cowed into near-silence. This ranks as the most surprising and disappointing development of the past week. Without a new uprising, the regime will likely remain in power, less powerful but more awful than ever. (The picture below is from Jan. 10 in Tehran.)"
Amazing how quickly "We're fighting this war for freedom of the Iranian people" becomes "The Iranian people are at fault for not rising up."
There was a huge propaganda campaign to pretend that Israel was not doing the obvious war crimes it was doing, and part of it was BBC News silencing any inconvenient report or investigation that too troubled the pro-Israeli narrative.
Broadly speaking, I'm delighted at the American reaction to European hesitancy, because behaving like this is a great way to make it easier to harden that hesitancy.
Article 3-7-26 by Julie K Brown. I am not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories but there does seem to be more and more evidence that Epstein may have been murdered. Remember, Julie K Brown is the journalist who has doggedly followed this coverup from its earliest days.
Dear @theguardian.com this article has been welcomed like a s***sandwich
www.theguardian.com/thefilter-us...
The muder of 23-year-old American citizen Ruben Ray Martinez by fascist paramilitary invaders (South Padre Island, TX 03/15/25)
Source:
#ice #resistance #resist #usa #authoritarianism #fascism #protest #civildisobedience #US...
#democracy #gop #fascists
π Vote 'em Out!
