Angus Paterson
@AngusTPaterson
Freelance writer. Electronic music obsessive. Displaced leftist. Amateur political commentator.
I lived in Berlin for over a decade, and I found the city’s creative energy intoxicating. However, by 2023, I was looking for a change. Hamburg was the unexpected new home that I was looking for. Red Tape Translation invited me to write about it (link in reply).
Memories from my first few years in Berlin. View from my apartment in Wedding where I lived for 5 years, across the road from the legendary (and now tragically deceased) STATTBAD Berlin 🥳 #BerlinMemories
Matches a lot of my observations about "Germany beyond Berlin". I miss some aspects of Berlin (lived there twice) — most especially its crazy abundance of music events — but don't miss the infrastructure decay, constrained food choices & slow loss of the "liberated zone" feel.
I lived in Berlin for over a decade, and I found the city’s creative energy intoxicating. However, by 2023, I was looking for a change. Hamburg was the unexpected new home that I was looking for. Red Tape Translation invited me to write about it (link in reply).
As @AngusTPaterson has noted, it’s reminiscent of Trump Derangement Syndrome — not because Trump is ideological like Mamdani but because Mamdani’s opponents (like Trump’s) project so much of their own ideological preoccupations onto him.
Watching the right’s freak-out about Mamdani is hilarious. He benefited mostly from focusing relentlessly on cost of living while playing to Dem voters’ distrust of their failed political establishment. Ideological attacks aren’t gonna work to stop him.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg testified in court that time spent on Facebook and Instagram has "gone down meaningfully", acknowledging that Facebook's "cultural relevance is decreasing quickly". Wow, I am shocked and surprised, I would never have guessed. creativebloq.com/design/social-…
Re. Google Veo 3 and it's generative capabilities, what'll happen now is people will just have to develop stronger critical thinking. Honestly, there's plenty of convincing stuff out there already; anyone under 50 already good at sniffing it out and only Boomers falling for it.
What’s scary to me is the usage of this is 100% going to be abused by bad actors who make money off of misinformation. The average person I think doesn’t have any idea how fast this tech is progressing and they won’t be able to discern what’s real and what’s not… scary stuff.
It seems fitting for today’s political class to decide that a lurid fictional streaming series is profound proof of the irredeemable nature of large parts of the real-life society over which they preside. The word slippage here belies a deeply-held anti-society worldview.
It's beyond a joke that this is the second time Starmer has called "Adolescence" a documentary. He either isn't entirely sure of what the series *is* or he's completely lost his grip on the difference between fact and fiction.
I think you'll actually find that it's largely men (from every corner of the globe), in company of other men, who are getting pissed on / doing the pissing / searching for the piss / kneeling at the piss troughs, staring with pleading eyes at every strange man that passes by.
I was gonna say how funny it is that German women will go to a sex club and get pissed on by random strangers but throw people in jail over shitposts but maybe that’s all women in a way
Holy shit! Didn't expect the news to start rolling in so quickly. It's certainly gonna be FUN watching these institutions placed under the microscope this year. nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/…
Beautiful take, you are my kind of displaced leftist 😎
Trump sucks. We all know that. But do you revel in every little thing he says, or every little mannerism he may display and ignore anything that may be somewhat positive in what he's trying to do? You might be a ShitLib.
So all of a sudden everyone is concerned about political censorship? Perhaps you should have taken it more seriously when it was your political opponents falling victim to it?
TikTok is now reportedly flagging the phrase ‘Free Palestine’ as hate speech.
Our political media era is marked by an angry insistence on trusting legacy gatekeepers who systematically distort reality in the interests of their preferred side…alongside a refusal to admit major mistakes by simply moving onto the next big campaigning issue. It’s suicidal.
It’s quite a feat but key outlets that treated claims of Biden’s mental & physical decline as right-wing propaganda—despite the evidence in front of everyone’s eyes—are now reporting on how the WH maintained the charade as if the media played no role. nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/…
I purchased an Xbox Series X this generation mainly to access the titles landing on Game Pass. The discourse on the console is divisive, though personally, I've had an incredible time enjoying a huge range of games past few years. Exclusives mean absolutely nothing to me.
now that exclusivity is no longer a reason to own a console what are the remaining reasons for you to own one give me your best answers.
Politifact labels Bernie's statement about the H1-B program "Mostly False" but admits in the article his statement is 100% true. You do not hate these people enough. politifact.com/factchecks/202…
This is exactly what self-anointed "disinformation experts" and "fact-checking groups" believe. At heart of censorship is hubris: somehow these people convince themselves that their own views are so unassailably correct that nobody should even be permitted to dissent from them:
Don’t you know Nina Jankowicz has a unique ability to discern the truth! Peasants like us simply don’t have the ability to interpret information as flawlessly as she does! (this is what they actually believe lmfaooo)
I am really struggling to understand why the likes of The Chaser are bellowing for more online censorship, yet haven't even stopped for a second to consider its implications? Are they implying here that their brand of satire should actually be banned, toned down, or censored?
Meta CEO and dog fucker Mark Zuckerberg has said that his platforms don’t need fact-checkers. So to celebrate this win for free speech, we wanted to relive his best quotes.
The funny thing about this is that as I write this tweet the Chaser’s tweet has been so well understood as satire that no community note has yet appeared under it.
Meta CEO and dog fucker Mark Zuckerberg has said that his platforms don’t need fact-checkers. So to celebrate this win for free speech, we wanted to relive his best quotes.