The bad news is in.

Journalist and author Mic Wright on what's really going on behind the headlines, why we don't get the news we deserve.

this is the place where I will put all my thoughts. Click to read ME THANKY, by Joel Golby, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

His inoffensiveness is what makes him offensive.

Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.

A glaring loophole in digital music distribution makes it very easy to piggyback on the talent of real artists with AI generated music.

The press obsession with software-powered doomsday is a misdirection overshadowing a much deadlier reality: our public interest regulators no longer function.

Eventide - the complete fifth season of The Sunset Chronicles, is out now.

I just want to melt into Chris Robinson's voice on this album. The first five tracks on this album are amongst my favourite songs ever written, and the rest of them ain't bad, either.

It's kind of funny how much Pantera are The Smiths of Metal - created a whole new sound that was much imitated but never bettered, with a dickhead right wing frontman whose career has inexplicably continued on and on and on, to the point where both are still headlining arenas and stadiums. That said, Johnny Marr never wrote a riff as good as This Love.

The internet once encouraged us to build entire identities around our weirdest, deepest fascinations. Then metrics and distribution flattened those obsessions into fungible content.

The sheer volume of incredible riffs on this is ridiculous. Might have aged better than any other 'grunge' album.

According to my last fm stats, I've actually only spun this album once in the last decade, which is mad, really, considering the total dominance it had over my teenage self. By Christ I loved this band, that man, this album. Revisiting it now, all I can hear is the sad little boy that was me, sitting alone in a room full of people who hated him for reasons he couldn't possibly understand, any more than they could. Can see the way he's staring into the middle distance of a dormitory, letting this album act as some kind of salve, feeling its righteous anger, but also its remove, its sneering conviction that though they like the same pretty songs, and like to sing along, that they know not what it means. I can come back to Bleach, In Utero, and Incesticide as many times as I like, and enjoy them. I can look at the myriad ways my taste developed over the next three decades and see that this album is a rosetta stone for all of it. But for all this is a flawless album, it's like some kind of Lament Configuration that holds some of my worst memories. That being said, Stay Away and Territorial Pissings fucking rule.

Never really understood why people get so sniffy about Lenny. Sure, he doesn't so much wear his influences on his sleeve so much as wear them like a Jame Gumb skin suit, but that would be more of a problem if he didn't have the songs to back it up, and he really does. This dips a little in the second half, but they're mainly quite charming little odes to baby Zoe, so I can forgive that.

Considering what an all-conquering smash hit this was, it's amazing how uneven it is in places, with the likes of Belong sounding like a half-baked idea, and Shiny Happy People just sounds like a completely different band.