skytrim

Nope. That is not the issue.

In UK, media is struggling to raise enough revenue from either ads or subscriptions. Many MSM titles have introduced a paywall where users are forced to fund the service by either commiting to a subscription or turning off ad-bkockers and seeing ads. In contrast, Guardian's 'unique selling point' was that it would 'never' do this which was why people should prefer it to other news sources. Then, without acknowledging what it was doing, Guardian quietly introduced the same paywall as everyone it had criticised. My complaint is not about funding a service but about the hypocrisy of a service saying 'I would never do that' and then quietly doing it.

Moreover, this change is not consistent - you do not always see this paywall when visiting the Guardian. This paywall seems to be in 'trial' stage where Guardian is testing to see how much push-back they get from users. We either push-back or Guardian goes same way as rest of British MSM. That would be an irreversible loss. I think what Guardian is doing is not help its own survival long-term.

I see no difference between Guardian strategy and changes in other media (YouTube or Netflix, for example), where the owners are struggling to generate as much revenue as they expect (as they used to do). Instead of asking why their content is not popular, or why users are leaving/using ways to by-pass ads or subscriptions, they just try to squeeze out as much revenue as they can from those still willing to pay subs or see ads, while their once reliable 'goose who lays golden eggs' slowly stops laying. I say Guardian deserves to die if it does not keep track of what readers want and it is only ensuring its own death by trying to cash in on the remaining goodwill of a dwindling readership instead of attracting readers back or reaching out to new readers.

They are going up a cul-de-sac and it has no good end for Guardian. I cannot save them from themselves so I just have to find alternatives which are better at this than the parts of the industry that are dying out.

Aljazeera is good. I once read CSM and thought it surprisingly good, not what I expected from the title, but that was around 1980s - have never seen it in recent years!

Cheers!

What is HEMA?

Watching the birds on the bird-feeders in the garden. I get a good mix of finches and their colours are great - not up there with tropical parrots or exotic waterfowl but still a joy to see.

I support a British charity called something like 'Save Our Songbirds' - £25 a year. It's money well spent. Also, Sainsburys let you order foods for wildbirds and get them delivered with your groceries so that's handy - keeps my 'wild pets' happy, keeps me happy :-)

I always have a jar in the pantry but I rarely eat it these days. When I want the meaty taste but meat-free hit, I prefer miso.

My main way of eating marmite was on buttered toast. But I switched from vegetarian to vegan about 20 years ago and never found a way to replace cow butter and get the same dopamine rush.

I recently discovered Lurpak vegan spread which is almost edible. In general, I hate all margerine - yuk! - but this product is not too offensive. Haven't tried it on toast with marmite yet as I do not want to be disappointed.

One great way to eat marmite is on spagghetti - cook pasta as normal, meanwhile heat a bit of butter in a pan until melted, add dollop of marmite and a bit of boiling water, let it simmer until it emulsifies. Drain cooked pasta, pour on marmite sauce, stir, serve. Very tasty (and cheap!) I still do this after going vegan but use extra virgin olive oil instead of butter - you can get some very mild olive oil that tastes very buttery - 'gordo' olives are the type I mean (avoid the strong oils like Italian Tuscan). Be careful and taste the oil first - some 'mild' olives are so sweet they taste like strawberry jam which wont go well with marmite I imagine!

I would subscribe. Not well enough to be a mod though. I just posted on this topic in another lemmy community. I don't want to repeat myself. I am new user - don't know how to link to my earlier posts. I guess if you search my comments from yesterday/earlier today you'll see it?

My interest is both practical, political/activist, and academic/theoretical so happy to connect with anyone who shares these various interests.

My disabilities are mental, sensory, and physical. Some are life-long, some developed as I aged. My sense of myself as 'disabled' has ebbed and flowed depending on how well I am coping/how others treat me. If you shook me awake from a deep sleep and asked me 'are you disabled?' I would probably say no. But every day I have serious health problems and get stumped by accessibility barriers so in reality I am disabled but I cannot see myself that way. It's weird. It's like my 'felt identity' does not match my actual life. I suspect 'internalised ableism' and I think I need 'woke disability' to fix this mismatch but buggered if I know how to do this. I get inspired by others' struggles e.g. people fighting racism or transphobia because I think there is a shared 'alienated from my own self' experience behind these struggles. And those attacking 'woke' and 'DEI' and 'human rights' are persecuting us all, dehumanising us all, and pushing whatever it is that is keeping us from being our authentic selves. Starmer cutting disability benefits as an 'easy target' is just weaponising this enforced inequality. It's a complex oppression so it needs sophisticated resistance - this will not go away by rattling cans/fund-raising to set up a community centre or whatever. Nor will a protest with placards outside Number 10 fix it. The problem is systemic so it requires systemic change. Sadly, it's not going to be a quick or easy fix!

My two-penn'oth. If that sounds like stuff you care about, that makes two of us, and we have the start of a community. Let's see if others come along too :-)

"finest silks and linens' washed in orphans tears and the blood of martyrs.

No thanks - I know where he's been.

In Britain our most powerful parties are competing to kiss Trump's massive arse - our Prime Minister 'likes and respects Trump'. Honestly, Starmer, get a room! Ugh! I am sick of being shamed by my politicians.

I hope Canada elects leaders who will tell Trump to get lost. You need Zelenskyy energy. You deserve it. Give 'Uncle Spam' hell, Canada!

'Masters of the Return' like dangerous politicians, toxic influencers, child-molesters, con artists, neighbours-from-hell, serial adulterers (to give a few examples) keep recycling the same old behaviours because behind what they do is a pathology, a closed loop with no exit ramp, a compulsion they rarely have enough insight to acknowledge or control. How do these parasites/predators keep finding victims to exploit? Because society constantly creates a supply of new victims to use. Behind every victim there is a matching pathology, usually going back to childhood abuse or neglect, that sets them up to be abused.

Thus in a society like Britain, we have a minority of sociopaths and psychopaths (1% or less), a large group of people with sub-optimal childhood experiences (some measures might say as many as 80% have poor childhoods and thus grew up to some degree vulnerable to be exploited in adult life), that leaves very few citizens who had a good enough start in life to not become either an abuser or a victim (maybe as few as 19% or one in five of us).

What is a shock to me is that the ideal of how we should be, is actually a minority experience. Few people are what we call 'normal'. Actually, 'normal' is the exception not the rule. Our politics has not kept pace with reality. We need politics to see itself as a branch of therapeutics - see it as necessary in order to heal society. Sadly, politics is one area of life which has very few 'normal' people in it - not even one in five MPs is psychologically healthy, more than 1% are sociopaths. People like that cannot fix politics any more than they can fix their own pathologies. Starmer and his Cabinet are same as Farage and Reform, in that they are not mentally healthy and not offering the kind of politics we actually need.

If I had to guess, I'd say this level of pathology is required by capitalism and will only end if we curtail capitalism to protect ourselves i.e. capitalism harms us in childhood, we grow up exploitable, and capitalism duly exploits us - ultimately it is profitable to hurt kids. To be able to exploit people capitalism requires a supply of sociopaths, so such people are not just tolerated under capitalism but promoted into powerful positions and weaponised to exploit the rest. The good news is that just by being normal, giving your kids and others close to you a healthy, well-nurtured, psychologically normal life - being just normal humans, good mams and dads, happy kids - is actually radical politics and helps the push back against tyranny. I reckon this is one deep reason why capitalists hate stuff that promotes good human relations e.g. woke stuff, gender politics, trans rights, stuff that heals and empowers 'ordinary people' who would otherwise have just been victims. A happy child will not grow up to be anyone's doormat. That's the hidden revolution going on right now.