People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet.
I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans has been open since 1945 and Freedom since 1886. It's not the inevitable fate of radical bookshops to implode like this.
Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.
"Performative radicalism" is a problem left and right
Look at UKIP, blaming the cluster fuck of the Brittish economy on immigrants, who are weak, other and easy to blame for damage caused by making taxpayers pay for banker's misfortune and Brexit
I am in New Zealand and we have the same problems, on the left and the right.
Labour has been "Blairite" ("centrist pro-capital," or just say neoliberal) since the SDP sabotage and the endless, worthless reign of Kinnock. This happened at the same time the New Democrats were stomping the Rainbow Coalition into the ground to finalize the transformation of the US Democrats into the exact same thing.
UK Labour has been a "centrist, pro-capital party" for probably your entire life (or at least most of it.) The only reason Corbyn even ended up in front is that a bunch of centrists nominated him as a joke candidate, and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party. Of course the membership voted for Corbyn, everybody else was garbage.
Same reason why Trump won the Republican primary in the US - the Tea Party had forced the voting process to be democratic. Unlike the Democratic party, which doesn't even have a vaguely democratic process, culminating in them having absolutely no process in the last election. I still insist that if Sanders had run as a Republican in 2016, he would have been president.
> To Parker’s mind, for a project started with the aim of platforming sex workers [...] to have reached such a point was mortifying. How had things gotten so bad?
I’m intentionally omitting all the objectives that actually make sense for a book store to have, in order to highlight what apparently was the main one...
This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together under ostensibly noble causes (cue all the aims previously omitted above) they tend to implode rather quick. Often, the objectors feel as though it's the responsibility of the other side (usually the leadership) to afford them with some sort of power of their own.
Also I'm a bit let down it never disclosed how Blaise Agüera y Arcas wound up there. If a Google employee is introduced in the beginning of a story it must be explained as to why. But if I was watching my competitors face legal issues for supposed illicit processing of intellectual property, I’d definitely send my guys out to embattled book stores to get their stock for the cheap.
This is a joke right? No one refers to people as "melanated POC", do they?
I actually got in spat with a coworker once at a previous company for politely and sincerely asking what one of these neologisms meant (latinx in that case).
These frequently happen among these people. I'm reminded of the Current Affairs episode and my favorite since it was so irrelevant: Matt Yglesias getting lambasted because he dared suggest hiring cleaners for the Vox office.
People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet.
I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans has been open since 1945 and Freedom since 1886. It's not the inevitable fate of radical bookshops to implode like this.
Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.
"Performative radicalism" is a problem left and right
Look at UKIP, blaming the cluster fuck of the Brittish economy on immigrants, who are weak, other and easy to blame for damage caused by making taxpayers pay for banker's misfortune and Brexit
I am in New Zealand and we have the same problems, on the left and the right.
Labour has been "Blairite" ("centrist pro-capital," or just say neoliberal) since the SDP sabotage and the endless, worthless reign of Kinnock. This happened at the same time the New Democrats were stomping the Rainbow Coalition into the ground to finalize the transformation of the US Democrats into the exact same thing.
UK Labour has been a "centrist, pro-capital party" for probably your entire life (or at least most of it.) The only reason Corbyn even ended up in front is that a bunch of centrists nominated him as a joke candidate, and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party. Of course the membership voted for Corbyn, everybody else was garbage.
Same reason why Trump won the Republican primary in the US - the Tea Party had forced the voting process to be democratic. Unlike the Democratic party, which doesn't even have a vaguely democratic process, culminating in them having absolutely no process in the last election. I still insist that if Sanders had run as a Republican in 2016, he would have been president.
> To Parker’s mind, for a project started with the aim of platforming sex workers [...] to have reached such a point was mortifying. How had things gotten so bad?
I’m intentionally omitting all the objectives that actually make sense for a book store to have, in order to highlight what apparently was the main one...
This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together under ostensibly noble causes (cue all the aims previously omitted above) they tend to implode rather quick. Often, the objectors feel as though it's the responsibility of the other side (usually the leadership) to afford them with some sort of power of their own.
Also I'm a bit let down it never disclosed how Blaise Agüera y Arcas wound up there. If a Google employee is introduced in the beginning of a story it must be explained as to why. But if I was watching my competitors face legal issues for supposed illicit processing of intellectual property, I’d definitely send my guys out to embattled book stores to get their stock for the cheap.
> Also I'm a bit let down it never disclosed how Blaise Agüera y Arcas wound up there.
I'm assuming the article forgot to mention they were the angel investor, given that it was heavily implied.
This reminds of this discussion about the closure of a 'cooperative' bookshop in New York:
https://x.com/narrenhut/status/1970884747833585690
This is a joke right? No one refers to people as "melanated POC", do they?
I actually got in spat with a coworker once at a previous company for politely and sincerely asking what one of these neologisms meant (latinx in that case).
This read like an episode from Portlandia.
These frequently happen among these people. I'm reminded of the Current Affairs episode and my favorite since it was so irrelevant: Matt Yglesias getting lambasted because he dared suggest hiring cleaners for the Vox office.
This is a great read. Just hilariously unserious people
I enjoyed reading the initial part of their currently most popular story:
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/karl-marxs-labubus/
Karl Marx’s Labubus - The memeification of the communist grandee’s final resting place