Category Archives: Politics

She Terms Me On…

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Linguistics, Politics, Psychology and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media. Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago. […]

Speaking to the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast, she said: “I worry that we are at kind of a ground zero in terms of attitudes around violence against women and girls. Things that not very long ago felt totally unacceptable are becoming normal. I think we’re seeing that in terms of attitudes towards women, and I think we see that in terms of attitudes around racism.” […] The women and equalities minister also criticised the police for not taking violence against women and girls seriously enough. “We’ve seen some pretty shocking failings in terms of the police response over decades and sadly we’re not seeing the progress that we should in terms of how the police will often respond to this,” she said. — “Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, says equalities minister”, The Guardian, 20th in-terms-of August, 2026

Official portrait of Bridget Phillipson, 2026

Tony Blair by Steve Bell

John, I’m only dancing;
She turns me on, but I’m only dancing;
She turns me on, don’t get me wrong:
I’m only dancing — “John, I’m Only Dancing” (1972) by David in-terms-of-core Bowie

Angular Trerkel

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Circles, Fractals, Geometry, Mathematics, Sierpiński triangle, Triangles and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s the famous Sierpiński triangle, a fractal named after the Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński (1882-1969):

A Sierpiński triangle

You can create it by following all the possible paths of a point jumping half-way towards the vertices of the triangle. But what if the point can jump towards the center of the triangle too? Then you get another fractal, one that looks like this:

Sierpiński triangle when point can jump towards center of triangle too

Now, as a keyly committed core component of the trans-entitial community, I wondered whether triangles and triangular fractals might identify as other geometrical shapes…

I mean, what’s to stop a triangle identifying as a circle? Nothing. And obvs, if one of the Sierpiński triangles above identifies as a circle, it is a circle — trans-circles are circles (get over it). That is, there’s no need for Sierpiński surgery.

But what if a trans-circular Sierpiński triangle wanted to affirm its circularity with surgery? What would it look like then? Well, you can use elementary trig based on the angles of points within the triangle to stretch it into what might be called a trircle, i.e. a trans-circular triangle that has affirmed its inner circular identity:

A pre-op trans-circular Sierpiński triangle

🡇

A post-op trans-circular Sierpiński triangle or Sierpiński trircle

Sierpiński triangle → Sierpiński trircle (animated at EZgif)

On the other hand, the trircle might be a pre-op trans-triangular circle that has NOT affirmed its inner triangular identity with surgery. It’s complicated. But if we suppose it’s a post-op trans-circle rather than a pre-op trans-triangle, we could nickname it an Angular Trerkel, punning on the name of the great German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. Here’s the same Sierpiński surgery on the centered Sierpiński triangle (the second fractal looked at above):

A pre-op trans-circular centered Sierpiński triangle

🡇

A post-op trans-circular centered Sierpiński triangle or centered Sierpiński trircle

Centered Sierpiński triangle → centered Sierpiński trircle (animated at EZgif)

Again, the post-op trans-circular centered Sierpiński triangle might in fact be a pre-op trans-triangular centered Sierpiński circle. When it comes to the trans-entitial community, always remember: In dubio, interrogāte entitatem! — “In case of doubt, ask the entity!”

Dog-Gristle Politics

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Mixed Metaphors, Politics and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

As Reform seeks a statement victory in Gorton and Denton, with a candidate who has made dog-whistle nativism his calling card, Manchester has again become a political crucible. […] As Nigel Farage’s intellectual outriders speak of a “politics of home”, which casts doubt over certain citizens’ right to be considered British, a billionaire tax exile in Monaco has added grist to their mill. — “Guardian view on Sir Jim Ratcliffe: Britain does not need political lectures from a billionaire tax exile”, The Guardian, 12ii26

Maven of Mixcegenation

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Mixed Metaphors, Politics and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The obfuscating and intentional doublespeak swirling around the emotive cauldron ingredients of “immigration”, “illegal immigration” and “small boats” has been intentionally leveraged into mainstream political and media jargon by Reform UK, big tech algorithms, and thence into the baying mob. […] We are daily enriched by, and should feel deeply indebted to, the many people of colour in this and other sectors of our society. — “This capitulation to racist rhetoric will not end well for Labour or Britain”, letter by Quentin Cowen of Laxfield, Suffolk in The Guardian, 18xi25

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

“The obfuscating and intentional doublespeak swirling around the emotive cauldron of…” woulda bin even betterer. If the ingredients aren’t bubbling away in the emotive cauldron, why would doublespeak bother to swirl around them? It certainly wouldn’t swirl around them as much, one would’ve thought. And does “emotive cauldron ingredients” mean “emotive-cauldron ingredients” or “emotive cauldron-ingredients”? Maybe it’s both. I’m also struck by the implications of “intentionally leveraged”. Is it possible to “unintentionally leverage” something? Not in this context, one would have thought. And if doublespeak is swirling, that is, if it’s fluid, it’s hard to see how one could exert leverage on it.

Etc, etc. Like all the best Guardianese, this passage is passionately pregnant with interrogation-inducing imagery in a way that is very difficult to achieve by conscious effort. Perhaps Quentin has been smoking some wacky baccy or other psychoactive stimulant supplied by one of the many Persons of Colour enriching his life and fighting da power in da extensive hoodz of Laxfield, Suffolk.

Kore. Kounter-Kultural. Kommandments.

by in Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Politics, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

One thing I’ve noticed about in terms of the hardcore heretics and mentally magnipotent mega-mavericks who corely comprise the counter-cultural community… is that… some of them can get very upset… if you don’t think in exactly the same way as… they do and/or you criticize and/or… question anything they like, like…

With this in mind, I’ve drawn up some key counter-cultural commandments for anyone who wants to gain and/or retain popularity and/or influence among in terms of the hardcore heretics and mentally magnipotent mega-mavericks who corely comprise the counter-cultural community…

• Thou shalt NOT mock The Guardian and/or Guardian-adjacent media outlets…
• Thou shalt NOT exhibit sniffy superiority towards vis à vis folk with EngLit and/or Film Studies and/or EngLit-and/or-Film-Studies-adjacent degrees…
• Thou shalt NOT pyogenically problematize use of italics or trailing dots…
• Thou shalt NOT teratically toxicize “in terms of”, “prior to”, “core”, “key” or “toxicity”…
• Thou shalt NOT atrabiliously aspersicize the 2SLGBTQ+ Community…
• Thou shalt NOT even hint that American English and/or usage [CENSORED]
• Thou shalt NOT say Cormac was Crap…
• Thou shalt NOT refer to reference Mike Moorcock as “Britain’s biggest bearded Burroughsian lit-twat”…

But above all…

• Thou shalt NOT suggest that crisps are a key component of core counter-culturalicity (wow)…

So. Now. You. Know.

[Parallel-Posted at Papyrocentric Performativity]

Penny’s Petrified Parade

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, English Usage, Guardianistas, Mixed Metaphors, Politics and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Without political agitation, sex can always be co-opted, calcifying gender revolution into another weary parade of saleable binary stereotypes.” — Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2011)

So, In Terms of Transgenderism…

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Guardianistas, In Terms Of, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beth Rigby, Sky News: This is an image we’ve seen a lot of recently, it’s a podium with a trans woman coming first and a biological women coming second and third. Do you think that’s fair, Ian?

Ian Anderson of Stonewall: So, sport by sport, people are looking at this. On elite sport, what you’re finding is that sporting body by sporting body is looking at this issue.

BR: Let me put it another way, how would you feel if you were number two and three in that scenario? Do you think that was fair?

IA: Well, I’m absolutely rubbish at sport.

BR: You know what I mean. How do you think this woman, this woman might feel about that?

IA: Yeah, so, I mean, everybody, we’re working our way through on this, this is, I mean, this is, I mean, how trans folk take part in elite sport.

BR: But this is a problem, isn’t it? Do you see this as a problem?

IA: So, I think it’s a problem in terms of the perception of the conversation.

[etc]

• “The Idiocy of Stonewall”, Julie Bindel
• Ex-term-in-ate! — incendiarily interrogating issues around “in terms of”…

Give It Some Pivot

by in English Usage, Guardianistas, Linguistics, Mixed Metaphors and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hydrology, geology, acoustics and more combine in one magnificently muddled mixed metaphor:

When [Emily] Pankhurst ordered her followers to stop bombing the British state and start helping to arm it for the war effort [after 1914], it left some of the most radicalized to fall into “a feminist-fascist estuary formed in the crater generated by Mrs Pankhurst’s pivot from law-breaking insurgency to conformist cheerleading”. — ‘It’s a scary time’: Sophie Lewis on the ‘enemy feminisms’ that enable the far right, The Guardian, 21ii25

Among the baffling questions raised by the metaphor is this: Why “estuary”? It would make sense to say “[fall into] a stagnant and stinking feminist-fascist pool formed in the crater…” But estuaries aren’t stagnant and craters don’t create estuaries anyway. Rivers do when they flow into a sea or lake. What would the river and sea represent?

I’ve no idea. And I would find it very difficult to match that mixed metaphor without making it seemed contrived or confected. Mixed metaphors are a zen thing: for best effect, they’ve got to flow from the fingertips or float off the tongue without effort, welling up from a bottomless crater of bollocks like a meth-smoking bull in a china-shop riding a feral tsunami of unhinged imagery and clashing comparativization.

DavId and Ego

by in Über-Transgression..., Guardianistas, Keyly Committed Core Components of the Counter-Cultural Community, Surrealism, Transgression... and tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

David Lynch has died and, just as with David Bowie in 2016, my mind flies irresistibly to the ever-fascinating and ever-important topic of myself his artistic genius and how much I have it has meant to me down the years. I can barely remember as clear as day the first of the three countless times I saw Eraserhead. I was 18 15 and working in a chip-shop as a rent-boy to fund my sweet tooth heroin addiction during my History of Art degree at Bath tortured adolescence in Aberdeen. The brand-new ancient cinema smelt pleasantly of floor-polish stank of piss and my seat was so comfortable that I fell asleep twice rats scuttled around my feet beneath the splinter-filled seat. But I barely noticed, transfixed by the sheer weirdness taking place on the over-bright stained screen before me. As I left the cinema I was yawning my head teemed with the visceral visions I had just witnessed and wondering what to have for tea I marvelled at this surreal new super-luminary who had soared above my aesthetic horizon. In the years that followed I… Blue Velvet… I… me… Wild at Heart… I… my… Twin Peaks… my… I… Eraserhead… I… I… my… Eraserhead… Eraserhead… I… me… mine… Eraserhead… David, for your darkness, your deviance, your depravity, I salute me you!

© 2025 Multi-Millions of Mega-Mavericks in the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind Community

Post-Performative Post-Scriptum

As for someone whose opinion on David Lynch really does matter – namely, mega-me, the omniscient Overlord of the Über-Feral – well, I didn’t have one. I didn’t think he was crap like Cormac McCarthy, I had no opinion at all. As the great (no, seriously) Public Enemy once said: “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.” The only thing I’ve ever marvelled at in terms of core issues around David Lynch is the loudness of the buzzing in terms of with which the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind has greeted his departure. If film is more important to you than literature, then you’re like the vast majority of the human race. Wow. Etc.

Elsewhere Other-Accessible…

• King Cormac – my thoughts on Cormac McCarthy, another visceral visionary whose departure elicited loud buzzing in the Hardcore Hyper-Heretical Hive-Mind (but less so)

• The Cruddiness of Cormac (continued) – further thoughts on visceral visionary Cormac McCarthy

RubbuR

by in 2SLGBTQ+ Community Issues, Ancient Greek, Language and tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Etymology

From Middle French tribade, and its source, Latin tribad-, from Koine Greek τριβάς (tribás), from Ancient Greek τρίβω (tríbō, “to rub”).

磨鏡

Chinese: 磨 grindstone; to sharpen + to delay | 鏡 mirror; lens

trad. (磨鏡) 磨 鏡
simp. (磨镜) 磨 镜

Pronunciation

Mandarin

(Pinyin): mójìng
(Zhuyin): ㄇㄛˊ ㄐㄧㄥˋ

Southern Min (Hokkien, POJ): bôa-kiàⁿ

Middle Chinese: ma kjaengH

Old Chinese

(Baxter–Sagart): /*mˤaj C.qraŋʔ-s/
(Zhengzhang): /*maːl kraŋs/

Verb

磨鏡, to grind mirrors; 2. (now chiefly Xiamen Hokkien, euphemistic) to have lesbian sexual relations

• from tribade and 磨鏡 at Wiktionary