I have literally left every other mobile phone provider in a rage, but Giffgaff have given me only one cause for complaint in the six or so years I’ve been with them (their fascist policing of cannabis-related websites). Plus, they’re cheap. Why are you paying more for less?
I got turned onto craft beer around twenty years ago now, when I was living in Philly (thank you Dan). Trying new beers became a hobby for around eighteen years and I rarely drank the same one twice. Then I tried Beavertown Neck Oil and I realised that the world was complete and I never needed to try another new beer again. It is what a carbonated alcoholic beverage should taste like. Thank you for the comfort and joy you bring my tastebuds. I salute your excellence.
I was given this domain name as a gift in 1999 and I promptly set about learning HTML in order to build the website. Finally, no one could tell me to shut up! I launched myself into the internet with abandon and in the early days, this website housed a very successful and regularly updated blog. That all feels like a very long time ago now and the internet I remember from then – before the rise of the social media giants and before newspapers had really clocked what was happening – feels like a much more varied place. (Does anyone remember that beautiful word-linkage website blather?) At first I eagerly used all of the social media things as they were released: MySpace, Google/Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so forth. Sometimes I would get fatigued and want to unplug, but mainly I participated to a high degree and was glad of
When veteran campaigners say that Pride is now capitalism with a pink hue, they ain’t lying. In fact, I’d go further than that and say it’s the perfect example of how to emasculate activism through co-option. The pay-for tickets to march, the heavily restricted numbers, the barriers between the marchers and the many-thousands-more in the crowd, the way people were chanting the names of the organisations who paid to be part of the march (umm, hint, it’s not about you Corporation, Ltd), and the huge amounts of personal space around the marchers has hollowed out any reference to protest. You must pay to join the snake at its tail and walk through its fortified and impenetrable body until you emerge, bored, underwhelmed, and full of anticlimax at the mouth of the beast located conveniently far enough away from Downing Street and Whitehall. Yeah, London Pride 2019 is the perfect example of
Imagine you went to Brighton four years ago and bought a stick of rock which you had a little lick and gnaw of before putting in a drawer without bothering to wrap it back up. Then, one night, you were fishing about looking for some such essential item and you come across the dirty, still slightly sticky, old piece of rock and you gingerly have a sniff. That’s what using peppermint essential oil in the steam room smells like.