Are we doomscrolling our way into a democratic crisis? That’s what the playwright James Graham fears may be happening, as he suggests that our algorithms have led us into ‘a massive crisis of the new’ and are preventing us from imagining a different future
Aditya suggested reading (and watching) list for James Graham
James Graham has written a shaming amount. I’ve listed below three
1. Dear England: about England’s football team
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002qktz/dear-england
2. Sherwood: mentioned in the conversation, set in the village where James Graham grew up in the shadow of the miners’ strike
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0c724lz/sherwood
3. Quiz: set on the British quiz show, Who wants to be a millionaire, where a contestant wins a million quid
https://www.itv.com/watch/quiz/2a7854
On cultural stagnation:
A lot of people say culture is stuck, although few sketch out the political consequences of that stagnation as well as James Graham does in our chat.
Many also disagree on why:
For ‘it was the algorithm that did it’, read Filterworld: How algorithms flattened culture by Kyle Chayka
For a wider ranging explantaion look at Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx
Those two are fairly recent. Much earlier and truly magnificent is the much-missed Mark Fisher on what he called the slow cancellation of the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ
On the same theme this essay by Adam Mastroianni is great
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-decline-of-deviance
Turning boarded-up shops into community spaces is a bigger and more complex task than just adding funding
“It is nice to see something happening for once,” says Jack Vincent, a Grimsby resident, as he considers a wave of change finally arriving in a town that had become a byword for deprivation.
In June, King Charles visited the Lincolnshire coastal town, celebrating the opening of a youth centre in a previously derelict Victorian warehouse building and a Care charity community drop-in centre in a vacant bank on the high street. Scaffolding also shrouds one end of the town’s shopping centre, part of which is being converted to house leisure facilities including a cinema and a food market.
Continue reading...The Derry Girls actor has always loved food, so who better to take over as the new presenter of the Guardian’s Comfort Eating podcast?
Siobhán McSweeney is teaching me her preferred way to enjoy a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She has arranged two matching slabs of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, two piles of Tayto crisps and two cans of Guinness on the table in front of us – and is issuing strict instructions. “Don’t swallow!” she booms theatrically, and I freeze, my mouth full of Taytos. The trick, McSweeney explains, is to get the crisps, chocolate and Guinness into your mouth at the same time, and then swill it all around a bit to make a kind of boozy, oniony soup. “See?” McSweeney is watching me carefully to check I am putting all the ingredients into my mouth in the correct order. “It’s delicious! Just delicious!”
McSweeney burst into the public consciousness back in 2018 with Derry Girls, a comedy series about a group of Catholic schoolgirls, set against the background of the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland. McSweeney won a Bafta playing the girls’ headmistress, Sister Michael – a potty-mouthed, judo-loving nun – and can count Martin Scorsese as a fan. Asked for a TV recommendation during a panel discussion in 2022, the director name-checked Derry Girls and then lifted his fist in the air in a kind of salute, exclaiming rapturously, “Those nuns!”
Continue reading...The prime minister has defined and dominated his country’s politics for three decades and is putting his rivals on the defensive before Tuesday’s general election
They chant his name, they cheer and clap – and yet he is not the most dominant person in the room. Looming over the crowd that has gathered to hear Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who is the lead opposition challenger in Tuesday’s Israeli election, is a man who is not there. It is the man Eisenkot seeks to replace as prime minister, the man who first served in that role three decades ago and who has held it, on and off, for 19 of the past 30 years. It is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Naturally, the warm-up speakers at this evening rally in the modest city of Modi’in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, stress the virtues of Eisenkot, a son of working-class Moroccan Jews who rose through the ranks to become chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and entered politics only four years ago. But every sentence might as well end with two words that go unspoken: unlike Bibi.
Continue reading...PM and the Liverpool mayor prove to be naturals at watching TV, with a genuine connection and sense of fun
On nights like this a man can feel like he’s slipped through the looking-glass. I’m sitting on the sofa watching the TV, poised to make some gags about the prime minister and the mayor of Liverpool, who are themselves sitting on a sofa at No 10, poised to make some gags about what they are watching on TV.
Life doesn’t get more meta. The saving grace is that this episode of Gogglebox is a charity special for Stand Up to Cancer. Andy Burnham has requested that any journalist writing about the programme makes a donation to SU2C. I’m happy to oblige. Cancer is costing me a great deal more than money.
Continue reading...Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/tech/1017600/google-personal-intelligence-privacy-policy-ads-update
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