stephenkb.bsky.social
Associate editor and columnist @financialtimes.com. Post too often about culture, public policy, management, politics, nerd stuff, Arsenal, wosoc. Try my UK politics newsletter for free here: www.ft.com/tryinsidepolitics
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This is my underlying objection to “buy, make and sell” - frankly it’s only the “make” bit that is worth worrying about.
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That would fit (unfortunately) with the 'buy, make and sell' thing that was a key theme yesterday and throughout much of the government.
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It seems to be, but also isn't quite.
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Oh good, I'm glad!
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The 'Following' tab is an algorithmically sorted list of people you follow. 'For You' is an algorithmically sorted list of people Twitter thought you might be interested in/X wants you to see.
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No, Twitter did not allow you to use in the same way the Following tab works. The Following tab was also algorithmic.
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I think a big part of Bluesky's strengths, but also its weaknesses/difficulties onboarding people, is it makes intuitive sense if your first online discussion forum was a proper forum, but it *looks* like Twitter and a lot of people who've bounced off it only know Twitter.
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Linked to this, it’s why almost all the good jokes one sees here are in replies, not posts.
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Indeed. Bluesky has three cultures:
1) forum posters (who the site is actually built for and around, for good and ill)
2) Twitter posters who don’t understand how much that website handheld you in terms of what you saw, etc (for good and for ill)
3) Facebook posters.
Most Bluesky pieces are from 2)
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Me, after burning dinner: “there’s a gap in this flat for edible food!”
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Such a mad amount of incongruence atm - in the space of an hour we had Kemi slamming Keir on winter fuel at PMQs and Mel Stride hailing the SR a spending frenzy.
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To win and hold power, agree. But big enough for the Conservatives to survive in some way. And also more hospitable to them specifically than any of the other bigger markets.
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It’s delightful, isn’t it? Next: Coca-Cola CEO suggests there is a market for sugary soft drinks?
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Clumsy wording, I guess, but the Tory leader saying 'there is a gap in the market for a serious centre-right party' is quite something. Does she think she leads a band of merry insurgents?
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Yes. Some people in the UK are on the centre-right and want to vote for a centre-right party. Didn’t you know?
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I think also, always helpful to signal 'we're open'. The question always should just be 'will this backfire on us?' - it wasn't a good idea for the Conservatives to accept Lee Anderson, who was always going to do *something* unhelpful for them.
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I would like to register that my liking of the 'karmic justice' post was entirely earnest, though.
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Look, we all know that Ibrahim X Kendi said 'no-one is free, while a children's book is not stretched painfully to an eight hour running time by a struggling network'.
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Just checked. Hadn't clocked that they think that the Harry Potter TV show will be 'turgid tripe' because it will be too 'woke'.
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Yeah, completely agree.
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What are the 'progressive' beliefs that Kemi Badenoch, Keir Starmer and now apparently *I* all share?
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They do and they are! I am talking about the catch-up service figures.
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No, I am not 'completely ignoring the numbers for catch-up viewing'. Most of the consolidated seven day figures did not get above three million.
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Kemi Badenoch is not a progressive, come off it.
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A soi-disant small-stater who wouldn't even back means testing winter fuel!
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Really some of the worst fan myopia around on this to see what is actually a crisis for the UK's sense of shared community (the top drama programme for most of the run was getting a little under 3mn viewers) as a crisis for *the top drama programme for most of its run*.
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A self-described libertarian who I don't think has yet taken a *single* libertarian position on any issue as leader.
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The "not even wrong" concept, only she's not coherent enough to be an identifiable flavor of right wing. Not Even Right.
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Badenoch references her slightly peevish R4 interview this morning, and complains about “an interviewer who didn't understand that there are other ways to reduce the size of the state". That's Emma Barnett told.
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Yes, was running for position (both in the next Cabinet and in the battles to come) and did both effectively.
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I think the brutal argument for Penny Mordaunt is she wouldn't have a) ran as far away from the 2019 manifesto and b) wouldn't have had the double whammy of trying to do so while not being white British.
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God, I loved that bit of the plot. 'What if the new Conservative leader gave you a billion pounds? What then?'
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Yeah - the biggest thing she has going for her is 'please god, not Bert!' among a large chunk of the parliamentary party.
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Indeed. The overlap between the Jenrick people and the people who gave us 'Day one: Simon Clarke. Day two: Will Dry Day three: Well, surely Sunak will have gone by then' is not perfect, and people do learn, but it is is large enough that when I hear 'they're plotting' I think 'to do what?'
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Also who actually had the right theory of how you should approach a leadership campaign which is to....simply and openly call for one?
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A Bert leadership would harsh the vibe somewhat, it's true.