This is so 100% spot on.

"It feels a little like that moment before the tsunami in 2004. Remember how, in Thailand and Indonesia, the ocean drew back from the coastline? People ran out to marvel at the miles of pristine new beach that suddenly emerged, not realising that, far out at sea, a wall of water was building up and would come crashing over them. We’re in that moment now. A towering wall of stupidity is about to inundate us."

Arundhati Roy

The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America’s Biggest Racket by Thomas Frank (Penguin Press, 2026)

The beauty industry exists to make you feel ugly, so they can sell you products which promises to transform you into some boring flattened standard. Interesting interview with Heather Widdows about her book 'Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal'.

Incredible SA victory by an innings in 3 days, sets up the series beautifully for Cape Town : )

American media covers elections like sports, they focus on polls and punditry. This election that isn't the story, this administration is going to try disrupt, disenfranchise and rig the vote.

Hilary Mantel on monarchy, a brilliant essay on what royalty does to them and to us.

“In looking at royalty we are always looking at what is archaic, what is mysterious by its nature, and my feeling is that it will only ever half-reveal itself. ... Royal persons are both gods and beasts. They are persons but they are supra-personal, carriers of a blood line: at the most basic, they are breeding stock, collections of organs."

Tesla just revealed their 'flying car' to the screaming of muskbros everywhere. It uses compressed air to bounce the thing around, and can suck itself to the road. It's more of a vacuum cleaner than car, it both sucks and blows. The real world problems with this are going to be enormous, for instance what if you suck up a loose rock on the road and it punctures one of your compressed air lines? So many fun ways to die.

Listen to an interview about the book

Morbid

Debunking Modern Longevity Science
By Saul Justin Newman

Very funny stuff.

Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco's book is out 'Requiem for Gaza', mainstream media is going to try and ignore it as much as possible.

With the weather turning cold this vegan lentil mushroom stew was really good.

Really sad to see all the empty stands at Kingsmead in Durban. Everyone blames the fans, no one cares about test cricket, everyone just wants the bang bang of T20s. I completely disagree, I blame the cricket boards and admin who took the easy money and ran. If you want to grow the game, give it back to local broadcasters so everyone can watch and listen, let kids in for free, and fund school teams.

Forty five minutes of booing at Anfield, and this is just the start. Football in the uk is more religion than sport and they are going to spend this season visiting all the teams and fans they cheated against, just brutal. I wish it was the bosses on the field having to face up to this, not the players and visiting supporters.

Incredible gutsy knock from Matt Renshaw, hope he doesn't get stranded before getting the chance to get to 200.

1st day of the 1st test starting in about 1hr, hope it is good competitive series.

Roy Dotrice's reading of A Song of Ice and Fire is remarkable, the series might never be finished, but it'll be very hard to find someone to match him if the last two books do come out.

Nicky Falkof is one of the most interesting intellectuals working in South Africa. Interview about her book "Worrier State, Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa."

MacDonald's is pushing algorithmic pricing, a guarantee that you'll pay the worst price possible and have no idea what it'll be because it depends on time, date, location, weather etc.

Even before this they were losing sales, people are going to really hate this. It does give you a good idea what corporate wants.