[LMG]LMG RSS Feed 
[Search][Projects]A Moment Of MooreMe and Belle de Jour TimeMachineGo Evening Standard Headline Pictures [UK Bloggers]
London Bloggers [Comic Blogs][Other Blogs] | 22 February 2025
[tetris] Apotris … This is the best modern version of Tetris I’ve found – available on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch and Gameboy Advance. You can play on your phone if you use an emulator like Delta with the GBA version.
21 February 2025
[politics] Nigel Farage, Jordan Peterson & co worship each other in alt-right heaven … John Cace watches a Culture War Conference so we don’t have to. ‘Then Jordan [Peterson] moved on to his favourite subject. What the world needed was more heterosexual couples to get married. Homosexuality was a deviation. There was too much abortion and divorce in the world. You’d be hard pushed to hear a more unpleasant rant all year. It was too much even for Nige, who confessed he had been divorced twice. He looked nervously at Jordan before ending by saying there would be more children under Reform. Trying to win over the audience. Still, at least no one asked him about his admiration of Putin. I’ve never seen Nige more pleased to leave the stage.’
20 February 2025
[history] Distressed 99 Foot Concrete Portrait of Ferdinand Marcos … More details here: The exploded bust of Ferdinand Marcos… ‘The bust was completed in the early 1980s when Mr Marcos was still in power, but fell into disrepair after he was overthrown in a popular revolt in 1986. He died in exile three years later. This is a real modern-era Ozymandias, the broken remnants of a statue to a powerful man who grabbed command by the throat and rode it until he was overthrown.’
19 February 2025
[lists] 25 Dull Lists from Diamond Geezer … ‘Hills in the City of London: Addle, Bennet’s, Cock, College, Dowgate, Fish Street, Garlick, Huggin, Lambeth, Laurence Pountney, Ludgate, Old Fish Street, Peter’s, Primrose, Snow, St Andrew’s, St Dunstans, Tower, White Lion’
18 February 2025
[podcast] The Missing Cryptoqueen… Finally got round to listening to this fascinating podcast on the story of Ruja Ignatova and OneCoin from Jamie Bartlett. Recommended.
14 February 2025
[herzog] Happy Werner Herzog Valentines to those that celebrate … ‘Valentine, in your eyes I see the light, the heat; also chaos, hostility, and murder.’
12 February 2025
[movies] Bad Movies: The 100 Worst Movies of All Time … Following up from yesterday, here’s Rotten Tomatoes list of the worst movies. Jack and Jill (2011): ‘Although it features an inexplicably committed performance from Al Pacino, Jack and Jill is impossible to recommend on any level whatsoever.’
11 February 2025
[film] Splat’s entertainment: I watched Rotten Tomatoes’ 40 lowest-rated films to find out which was worst … Rebecca Liu watched 40 of the worst movies so we don’t have to. ‘While good art can be transcendent and awe-inducing, bad art at its best reminds us of our humility and vulnerability and the inevitability of failure. We all feel the desire to create; we all see grand ambitions fall apart. Plenty of the films in this list were corporate cash-grabs and paint-by-numbers productions that could have been generated by AI. Beyond them, it’s those moments of humanity – funny, absurd, too close to home – that will stay with me. That bizarre piece of dialogue; the performance that tries too hard; Nicolas Cage signing up to a questionable script because it would make his brother happy.’
10 February 2025
[comics] Unused cover for The Collected Bojeffries Saga … Really lovely painted cover by Garry Leach.
7 February 2025
[life] What parking apps tell us about the UK… A deep dive into why digitisation is leading to the eshittification of society. ‘Our 5G is patchy; our internet speeds middling; our websites crash; the train plug sockets are out of action, etc. There are so many hidden costs to digitisation, and most are passed on to the consumer. I call this ‘techno-admin’. Large firms use automation to cut staff and reduce administrative overheads, especially when it comes to customer service. But what they have actually done is outsource the admin work to the customer. We are the ones now form-filling, changing passwords, self-serving, and (this is the worst bit) fixing errors. I sometimes wonder if the UK’s productivity problem – which has flatlined since 2010 – is partly caused by a surge in techno-admin.’
6 February 2025
[art] What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? … I reread this article from 2017 recently about the complexity of enjoying the work of men like Woody Allen. ‘Just as Manhattan never authentically or fully examines the complexities of an old dude nailing a high schooler, Allen himself—an extremely well-spoken guy—becomes weirdly inarticulate when discussing Soon-Yi. In a 1992 interview with Walter Isaacson of Time, Allen delivered the line that became famous for its fatuous dismissal of his moral shortcomings: “The heart wants what it wants.” It was one of those phrases that never leaves your head once you’ve heard it: we all immediately memorized it whether we wanted to our not. Its monstrous disregard for anything but the self. Its proud irrationality.’
5 February 2025
[lifehacks] The Most Powerful Life Hacks I’ve Found … I always seem to find something useful in these posts with lists of life hacks. Maybe you will too. ‘Be reliable. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.’
4 February 2025
[comics] Alan Moore And Chris Claremont Speak Out On Writing (from Speakeasy 054) … A real moment of comic history captured here. Moore has just written Watchmen #1 and the Claremont era of the X-Men is in full swing. Moore: ‘I agree that the establishment of invisible character detail, the stuff that is not on the surface, the stuff that is just subliminal – context – is an important thing. With Watchmen we tried to really go in for that. It’s an extension of the technique that I used in Halo Jones, probably a lot different to the clear establishing that Chris was talking about, in that it’s an extension of the idea of teaching parallel languages by dumping people in a room full of foreigners. Okay, the first time it’s going to be hell and the first time it’s going to be incomprehensible, but eventually your understanding of that world will be much more thorough. It’s a long shot, but I think it’s going to work because we have got a lot of space: we’re working on nine panels of page as opposed to the normal six. That gives you half the book again and you’ve got twenty eight pages so, in effect you’re doing a forty two page book or something, which gives you a lot of information. It’s not a very big story either. It’s a story that I could probably have told in three issues, but were telling it in twelve. It’s not going to be padded, it’s just that having twelve we’ve got room to explore all the characters.’
3 February 2025
[comics] Green Lantern Theory … ‘Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, who coined the term, explained that the Green Lantern theory is “the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics.” The assumption is that the president is all-powerful, and when he can’t get something done, it’s because he’s not trying hard enough.’
30 January 2025
[batman] The Batbible … A comprehensive guide to Batman’s character, history, and universe, originally written by Dennis O’Neil in 1989 for creators working on DC Batman projects. ‘Batman is a detective, but not of the genteel ilk– no Hercules Poirot or Nero Wolf, but rather a Marlowe or Continental Op times ten. We should achieve a balance between ratiocination and action, neglecting neither, but perhaps emphasizing the latter. Stories should above all, move. Batman should never do something sitting that he can do running or leaping or jumping off a rooftop. Exposition and explanation should always be integrated with action. Talking heads are to be eschewed. Villains should be larger than life, and preferably grotesque. The Joker and Two-Face are perfect examples of Batman bad guys; they wear their villainy on their faces and they represent archetypical traits (Joker: anarchy and chaos: Two Face: the dichotomy between good and evil that exists in most human beings.) And they are both natural antagonists to a hero like the Batman. Keep them in mind when creating new baddies and you won’t go far wrong.’
29 January 2025
[comics] Dave Gibbon’s Early Gigs – Underground Comics 1970-1973 … Go buy a great collection of obscure, early comics from Dave Gibbons.
28 January 2025
[life] Wikenigma … An Encyclopedia of the known unknowns. Paracetemol: ‘One of the most widely prescribed drugs in history works by mechanisms which have not yet been agreed upon by the medical establishment. It‘s currently thought that paracetamol acts via more than one neurological pathway…’
23 January 2025
[tv] An oral history of Twin Peaks … Lots of interesting details from the cast and co-creator. Mark Frost: ‘When we were shooting in Seattle, we asked our local casting agent to show us some young women who might be right for Laura Palmer. We saw hundreds of photos, then we met with Sheryl Lee and loved her – so much so that we said: “Well, we can’t just have her be a picture on a television set. We have to find a way to bring her back to life.” Sheryl was absolutely perfect and a dream to work with. There’s a lot of serendipity when you’re doing something like this, and on almost every occasion, the right person walked through the door.’
22 January 2025
[tv] Adam Curtish – The Ascension of Incomprehension Part 2… Adam Curtish studies the hidden meanings of Camberwick Green, Mr Benn and Bagpuss.
20 January 2025
[woke] Wokeipedia … A list of things that the right have claimed are Woke. Chicken sandwiches are woke: ‘Gen Z are almost as likely to include continental cheese (48%) as they are English cheddar in their sandwich. This compares with just over a quarter (27%) of baby boomers.’
17 January 2025
[tv] ‘The high point of TV as a medium’: David Lynch’s Twin Peaks may never be bettered … Stuart Heritage on David Lynch and Twin Peaks. ‘After teaming up with former Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost, he realised what the pair could be capable of together. Frost’s more formalised, drama-driven narrative chops paired well with Lynch’s murky surrealism, and they went to work producing a small-town murder mystery. A girl next door. An idealistic detective. A peripheral cast of oddballs. And The Red Room, an unknowable antechamber connecting the real world to another dimension, that Lynch claimed to have thought up by touching a warm car on a cold night.’
13 January 2025
[sonic] Go listen to this Ska Version of Sonic The Hedgehog’s Green Hill Zone Theme …
10 January 2025
[doom] DOOM: The Gallery Experience … Take some time to browse an art gallery whilst drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvres within DOOM!
9 January 2025
[web] A great selection of RSS Tricks … ‘Get the feed for the top posts of the month for a subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com//r/simpsonsshitposting/top/.rss?t=month (Replace simpsonsshitposting with a subreddit you want to monitor) This gives you the top posts from the month, so it’s not a firehose of stuff flooding your reader–just about a post a day.’8 January 2025
[internet] Remembering Cyberia, the World’s First Ever Cyber Cafe … The story of the first cyber-cafe which opened in London. ‘Linking up with like-minded pioneers David Rowe and husband and wife Keith and Gené Teare, Eva found a spot on the corner of Whitfield Street and launched Cyberia there in 1994. With Hackers-style aesthetics and futuristic furniture, it was based around a U-shaped layout that meant visitors could see each other’s screens. “I wanted women to feel safe, because a lot of the stuff on the net was dodgy,” she explains. Many of Eva’s mates chipped in to help out––architects, interior designers, graphic artists, publishers, and ravers among them.’
7 January 2025
[web] Essential tools to make the modern web more bearable … A great list of useful tools to make browsing the web less anoying. ‘The most user-friendly way to block ads on desktop is to use an ad-blocking extension in your browser. The main thing to be aware of is that some ad-blockers use monetization strategies that “soften” their ambitions (search “acceptable ads”). I would recommend uBlock Origin Lite (I assume you are using Chrome). Two additional things about ad-blocking to note: Blocking ads is generally easier on desktop than on mobile, and (at the time of writing) ad-blocking extensions are more effective on Firefox desktop than on Chrome desktop.’
6 January 2025
[books] In Search of the Golden Brain … A deep dive into the hunt for Spitting Image’s Golden Brain. The brain is a long-forgotten prize for solving a Masquerade-style spoof found in a Spitting Image tie-in book released in 1985. ‘And just one question flicked across my mind, when I first read all the above in the 90s: is this real? Had they actually buried a golden brain, or is all just a big joke? After all, the very nature of the Spitting Image book was that it was full of silly parodies. Sat next to a stupid advert for products like “The Sinclair We-haven’t-thought-of-it-yet”, or trying to get you to bank with “Natlays Midloyd”, the idea that this might be a real competition just didn’t seem particularly likely.’
5 January 2025
[london] Today I learned… that there is a submarine in Camberwell. Take a look inside. ‘Deep below the ground, boilers provide heat for local council estates, with the ‘submarine’ acting as ventilation.’
2 January 2025
[blogs] Diamond Geezer’s 2024 Blog Index … A neat roundup of posts of Diamond Geezer’s travels last year. Focused on London, wider travels around the UK and the minutae of DG’s life.
1 January 2025
[til] 52 things I learned in 2024 … Fifty-two TIL from Tom Whitwell. ‘The London Underground has a distinct form of mosquito, Culex pipiens f. Molestus, genetically different from above-ground mosquitos, and present since at least the 1940s.’
|
