The Bluestocking, vol XV: pubs, Trumps, power salutes and digilantes

Hello,

Greetings from Aberdeen, where I am rounding off conference season with a visit to the SNP jamboree. Want proof that the Nats don't like journalists? I got charged £2 for a cup of tea in the media room, and then had to ask specially to have actual milk rather than UHT. £2 for tea! In Scotland! It's not right.

Helen


Tycooniest

‘Our country needs to be glamorised,’ Trump says, and he’s the one to do it. He takes credit for the art of misnumbering floors – why tell someone that they’re on the 72nd floor when you can really wow them (as in the Trump World Tower) by claiming it’s the 90th? To shift condos, he created a rumour that Charles and Diana, recently married, were on the verge of buying an apartment in Trump Tower, also that the queen insisted on using his helicopter when she was in the States because there wasn’t a better one in the country. ‘I only have one regret in the women department,’ Trump boasts, ‘that I never had the opportunity to court Lady Diana Spencer.’

This LRB review of a new biography of Donald Trump will make you look at his poll ratings and be very, very afraid.


Twitter and the Abusive Society

What really happens on Twitter these days? People have self-sorted into cliques, little in-groups, tribes. The purpose of tribes is to defend their beliefs, their ways, their customs, their culture — their ways of seeing the world. The digital world is separated into “ists” — it doesn’t matter what, really, economists, mens-rightists, leftists, rightists — and those “ists” place their “ism” before and above all, because it is their organizing belief, the very faith that has brought them together in the first place. Hence, to them, it’s the totem to which everyone, including you, must pay homage, and if you dare notto bow down before it…or worse still to challenge it…well, then the faithful will do what they must to defend their gods. They will declare a crusade against you.

This goes a bit swivel-eyed at the end, with lots of arm-waving stuff about the great horror of our society's wasted potential, but the bit about Twitter (and the social web more generally) is great. (This from the Awl is also good on what the hell Moments is.)


The death and life of a British pub

The family had learned to be bullish about the passing of their pub from one lofty brand to another. It never much affected their lives at drip-tray height. In the eyes of their regular customers, the Murphys were the Golden Lion. Their hands were on the taps of Guinness and Guinness Extra Cold, they signed the orders on boxes of Tayto crisps. The Murphys brushed down the pool table before evening league matches and heard the grumbles of anyone who had lost a pound or more in the flashing Dream Machine. They had hosted parties for weddings, christenings, communions. One regular, his photograph kept afterwards on a shelf above the till, had been served a last pint by Mary Murphy before dying on the pavement outside; his wake took place back indoors.

Lovely longread by Tom Lamont about pubs, developers and what is lost when London loses a community hub and gains some more expensive flats.

Quick links: the heartwarming story of the white guy in the Olympics Black Power salute photo not doing the salute. A bleak but funny Paul O'Grady interview. Further proof that internet billionaires go crazy: Linked In's Reid Hoffman has a "conversation list" for his lunches. The Instagram that proves Renoir sucks at painting. American celebrity journalism, man. Life as a content farmer. Malcolm Gladwell explains why what school shooters don't have in common is as interesting as what they do. Jennifer Lawrence on why she's over worrying about being liked, and wants to get her money. A nightmare throwback to the internet in the 90s, in gif form. What do you call a digital vigilante? A digilante, of course. A visual representation of how rubbish panel shows are at representing women. Emily Nussbaum on how product placement is ruining TV. How an "executive coach" rekindled the Reddit founders' bromance. Michael Lewis on Tom Wolfe.

Me IRL:

(This gif is from Reign. If you love history, DO NOT WATCH REIGN.)

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