Shane Thomas
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tokenbg.myatproto.social
Shane Thomas
@tokenbg.myatproto.social
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South London
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tokenbg.myatproto.social
😅🫡
Screenshot of text: Fortunately, I'm enough of a Londoner to be able to carry off that "Don't even think of talking to me" look that saves so much time in big cities, when I opt to employ it! One of them tries - "You look like a friendly person", she beams. "I can assure you I'm not', is my grouchy reply - so I retire into a nearby pub and ponder the irony of having recently written about how alcohol-sodden our culture is while ordering a pint at 11.35 in the morning.
February 16, 2026 at 11:00 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Kinda feels like Bunny is throwing shade at Gareth Taylor here 🤭
February 12, 2026 at 11:47 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
One that’s totally self-inflicted. You can’t dine out on your past (cough, Stephen Lawrence, cough) when your current actions make it look like you’re embarrassed of them.
Screenshot of text: The irony is that it is the mayor who is a more natural political ally of Starmer than Mandelson, who often treated the Labour leader with haughty disdain ('I'm afraid he's come badly unstuck," Mandelson told my colleague Anoosh Chakelian in 2021). Starmer, remember, was never part of the Blairite guild, his first friends in Westminster politics were soft-left figures such as Ed Miliband and Sadiq Khan who shared his scepticism of late New Labour. After entering parliament in 2015 he backed Burnham's leadership campaign rather than that of Liz Kendall. Screenshot of text: And so it is that Starmer is more closely linked with a man who pleaded "I do not want to live by salary alone" than with one who donates 15 per cent of his salary to a homeless charity each month. For a Prime Minister who aspired to lead a "government of service", that is a tragic place to be.
February 10, 2026 at 12:28 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
February 9, 2026 at 9:24 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
The housebuilding revolution is essentially a timebomb.
Screenshot of text: At the Labour Yimby fundraiser, attendees spoke repeatedly about the second staircase requirement introduced following the Grenfell disaster as a big barrier to housebuilding.
February 9, 2026 at 1:50 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Just to say, this is a plot point from Years and Years.
Screenshot of text: It is day 143 of the rains. Although barely a month of the new year has passed, it has been raining in Ireland for almost 17 weeks in 2026. At least that's how it feels. I can't remember the last time the sun came out. 50 shades of grey is no longer some kind of smutty book, but the reality in which we exist. If this keeps up, there will be new shades that even a fancy paint shop hasn't come up with yet. Not your Dulux or Crown or any of that nonsense, but the ones who call themselves something like 'Garter and Farthing' or something like that.
February 6, 2026 at 2:46 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: What some critics of "identity politics," like Jilani, often want to direct us toward is a politics that does not consider race as a salient factor in US life at all—despite acknowledging the racist terror brought about by the current right-wing regime. Screenshot of text: To ignore race—or gender, or sexuality— while attempting to build working class solidarity is to say that there are some concerns of working class people that do not matter. Screenshot of text: Unfortunately, from critics like Jilani, the messaging around working class solidarity seems to always trend toward 'accept more racism" rather than "be less racist." Non-white people are expected to organize alongside and excuse white racists because of our shared interests in defeating capitalism, with no assurances our particular concerns around white supremacy addressed. And in the absence of a working class coalition that reckons with this issue, those elites who have captured identity politics are able to step in and siphon off more support for their inept agenda because it does at least acknowledge the salience of race. Screenshot of text: What Táíwò suggests as an antidote to this is a "constructive political culture" that would "focus on outcome over process—the pursuit of specific goals or end results rather than avoiding complicity in injustice or promoting purely moral or aesthetic principles." Matters of representation are not wholly inconsequential, but they are not the ends-the specific goals must remain significant material change in the lives of all working class people. But those goals can not be so narrowly defined as to exclude any issue that is not a purely economic one, even if the expense is the loss of support among those who refuse to see beyond their own racism, heterosexism, and queerphobia. We must demand the world we want.
February 6, 2026 at 12:23 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Early clubhouse leader for best thing I’ve read this year. Put me in mind of a great Tumblr (yes, Tumblr) from Egbert Martina about the pleasures of racism.
Screenshot of text: The conversation about the power of images always tends to center around whether an image can be so striking that it brings people to awareness and action, like the picture of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian boy photographed lying face down and lifeless near the Jurkish resort of Bodrum in September 2015. Over time, I think we've stopped believing that showing and witnessing violence has as much power as we used to think, especially now that we are besieged by images and videos all the time so that a video of children being killed by sniper fire, or a legal observer being executed by an ICE officer, lives side by side with AI slop and influencer day in the life content videos. One autoplays after the other is done. It all becomes part of the same surreal spectacle. Screenshot of text: And because of the deluge of images, especially when it is of violence done to a particular group, rather than becoming striking in an • enduring way, it becomes merely sentimental. The audience watches it, feels bad for a moment, and then moves on. Worse, they simply confine the group who is usually represented in those images and videos as people who those kinds of things happen to. Nothing out of the ordinary. Another child in Gaza is killed. Another migrant is beaten and torn from their community. Another black person is killed by police. Those images, rather than forcing a person to confront the injustice, reinforces the idea that these are things that happen to those kinds of people. Screenshot of text: Yet, we still feel that it's important to record and show the images and videos of these violences at home and abroad, as a kind of record with the hope that at least one of those images or videos will awaken the conscience of the general population. What is underdiscussed is that beyond the power of the image, whether it can serve to radicalize someone into taking action to put a stop to the injustice behind the image, is the fact that there are many people who aren't passive to those images but who actively search them out because they enjoy seeing these victims and vulnerable people humiliated. When the Trump administration posts a video of migrants walking in chains and calls it ASMR, they know that their audience will listen to it for pleasure. Screenshot of text: I think one of the reasons that we don't often confront the pleasure that people take from the humiliation and murder of these vulnerable people is that we don't want to confront what it says about human beings and humanity. Which isn't anything that the actions and history of human beings hasn't already said a million times over. We need to believe that human beings are good by nature, and maybe some are misguided or have a thwarted sense of right and wrong but ultimately they don't cause or see the pain of others as something that is enjoyable.
February 5, 2026 at 1:31 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
@beardedgenius.bsky.social From your pod the other week, you’re totally right about Arsenal and the makeup of its fandom. You could argue they’re the closest thing England has to a “Black” club (either them or Palace).
February 5, 2026 at 11:30 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Often stories about Vince McMahon let you into the billionaires mindset. They essentially want a world, designed to their specific bespoke desires.
February 4, 2026 at 5:46 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: As women, we are told relentlessly, in so many different ways, that youth and beauty and thinness are currency. It is how we communicate our value to the world. As we age, that currency becomes less powerful and then, we simply fade from relevance, left, hopefully, in peace to enjoy our dotage. If you don't meet the standards of conventional attraction, your currency is less powerful. And when you are fat, when you inhabit an unruly body, you have no currency at all. I didn't always know this but once Ilearned, I was a perfect student. Screenshot of text: What I really mean is that I always hoped to be treated with care, with tenderness. I hoped people might recognize I could be as delicate as I am strong. I hoped people might truly see me. But fatness renders women genderless or, at least, that has been my experience of fatness. Fatness renders women not only invisible but also inconvenient, always in the way, always taking up too much space. People will stare too hard, make their snide little comments, sigh with impatience when I am walking too slowly, make it clear in one way or another that for them, my body is a problem, and a serious one at that. Screenshot of text: wasn't really yearning to be treated like a woman. I was yearning to be treated like a human being. For the first time in my life, 1 am experiencing unconditional kindness, genuinely reciprocated passion, truly gentle touch. It was so startling, in the early going, as to almost be uncomfortable. Screenshot of text: Sometimes, it still is but 1 am more than willing to tolerate the discomfort. It's not that I experienced violence at the hands of previous lovers. They were simply careless. I allowed them to be. They did not understand me as someone to be handled with care, someone worthy of being handled with care. I did not understand myself as someone to be handled with care.
February 4, 2026 at 4:07 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: The Trump administration took the most corrupt, poorly trained, and impulsive law-enforcement agencies in the country, gave them masks, and turned them against American cities. Screenshot of text: Suffice it to say that two Hispanic Americans killing a white person trying to prevent them from harassing or deporting other Hispanic people, on the orders of Stephen Miller-a Jewish American whose ancestors fled pogroms in Eastern Europe —is a uniquely grotesque expression of the American melting pot in action. Screenshot of text: When violating the Constitution on a daily basis a mask helps, because people who are assured that they won't face consequences for abusing power almost inevitably do so. One wonders if this is actually the government's purpose in masking them. When you are asking men to essentially make war on their fellow citizens—to force lightly dressed people out into the frigid Minneapolis winter, detain elementary schoolers, follow good Samaritans as they deliver food to hiding families, and drag, tackle, beat, tase, or even shoot American citizens—you may find telling them that they can keep their identity hidden useful, The masks may work less to protect federal agents from danger than to to make it easier for them to do unspeakable things.
February 3, 2026 at 11:30 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
And a superb HT question from Alex Scott, ensuring the narrative around Bunny isn’t just “pace and power” profiling.
February 1, 2026 at 3:34 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: • Of the major social media platforms in the United States, X and TikTok are now controlled by Trump allies; Facebook and Instagram are controlled by a MAGA-curious Roman Empire fetishist who doesn't care whether his platforms are used as a breeding ground for misinformation. • Of the major news networks in the United States, Fox and CBS are now controlled by right-wing interests. (CBS was acquired last year by David Ellison, the son of the billionaire whose group just bought TikTok.) Of the major newspapers, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are controlled by MAGA-friendly oligarchs. Screenshot of text: But there's a distinct point at which the water becomes too hot for the frog to survive, and that point happens well after the frog thinks the heat is old news. I don't think we're at that point. I do think we're closer than we've ever been. Screenshot of text: Would you put it past this administration to drop an Al-generated gun in the hand of a victim, release the video to every news platform, and then claim the real video is the fake one? Or to change a victim's words-"I'm not mad at you," say-to something more incriminating, then use the doctored audio as justification for their murder? And considering who currently controls the flow of information in America-who tunes the algorithms, sets the terms of the conversation, decides what airs on TV-I'm afraid a lot of people will end up thinking they're trusting their eyes when they're really being fooled. I'm afraid some of the people who see both videos will decide there's no way to tell which one is real, throw up their hands, and go with whatever version of events better suits their feelings. Screenshot of text: I don't want to be a pessimist. I want us to be prepared. The courage and intelligence of regular people in Minnesota over the past few weeks have given me more hope for this country than I've felt in a long time. But when we post that Orwell quote to our feeds, we need to think about its implications if the current arc of misinformation continues on its present course. We need to think about the ways it can be subverted. Otherwise, when I look at the future, I don't see a boot stamping on a human face forever. The memes will continue, after all. I see all of us who want to save American democracy smiling for the camera, flashing two big thumbs up, in a pinned post at the top of the profile page of the official White House X account. "
January 31, 2026 at 4:04 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Not something I thought I’d say but after reading the first paragraph of this, it seems like you and Danny Baker 🤝
January 30, 2026 at 10:35 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Believe that’s the correct term. Also more hijabis (think that’s the correct term) in the crowd than I’ve ever seen at a game. Reminds me of what Fara Williams said when Morocco made the last 16 at the WC
January 28, 2026 at 11:09 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: Instead, what they discovered in the frozen North was something different: a real resistance, broad and organized and overwhelmingly nonviolent, the kind of movement that emerges only under sustained attacks by an oppressive state, Tens of thousands of volunteers —at the very least-are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom. They aren't looking for attention or likes on social media. Unless they are killed by federal agents, as Pretti and Renee Good were, other activists do not even necessarily know their names. Many use a handle or code name out of fear of government retaliation. Their concerns are justified: A number of people working as volunteers or observers told me that they had been trailed home by ICE agents, and some of their communications have already been infiltrated, screenshotted, and posted online, forcing them to use new text chains and code names. One urgent question among observers, as the videos of Pretti's killing spread, was what his handle might have been. Screenshot of text: If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it "neighborism" — a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn't be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that "it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, 'I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don't want to live next to four families of strangers.'" Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America. Screenshot of text: The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force. Screenshot of text: No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors. These agents, and the president who sent hem, are no one's heroes, no one's saviors—just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back
January 27, 2026 at 12:10 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
V much so. Reminds me of this from Antony Lowenstein about what motivates them.
January 25, 2026 at 1:01 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: English football likes to brand itself as "fast", "intense", and even "physical". There is some truth to that, but if we're being honest, it's not really a cohesive identity anymore. If you watch the Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A, you can see plenty of distinctly German, Spanish or Italian football. Those leagues are dominated by managers native to said countries, who share a certain tactical identity that has been shaped by a national "way of playing". The same can't be said in England. Most managers are hired from abroad, and even the few domestic coaches aren't particularly wed to a philosophy. Other than nationality, there is nothing particularly linking the way Sean Dyche, Eddie Howe and Scott Parker play football. It's a mish-mash. The Premier League's strength has been exactly that. It has outperformed other leagues by importing the best talent and being open to all sorts of different ideas. As strange as it sounds, this isn't as new as you might think. Screenshot of text: I don't want to suggest that Spanish football is exciting and technical while English football is physical and boring, because I don't think that's true. "Positional play" is essentially a Dutch idea reinterpreted as part of a Catalan natonalist project. It's not really that "Spanish". Spain has more than its fair share of reactive managers, focusing more on countering the opposition than developing their own game. Unai Emery is probably the best practitioner of this style right now. I've always felt that the typical Spanish manager is less like Guardiola and more like Rata Benitez. Screenshot of text: Arteta might be the ultimate product of the Premier League. He's a Basque-born former player who learned a mix of Scottish and Catalan ideas about football while in England. It could only happen here. Arteta is the result of a footballing culture more cosmopolitan than elsewhere. English football has been in an identity crisis for a long time now, ever since pundits on TV started complaining about the number of foreign players and managers. But what if this is who we are now? What if Arteta, an immigrant long settled in the country, best represents what the Premier League is about?
January 22, 2026 at 11:34 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: Through detailed explanations of the role that slavery played in every region of early America, you learn that Delaware passed a law prohibiting free Black people from moving to the state. You learn that in 1730, almost half of all white residents of New York personally owned an enslaved person. You learn that by the mid-18th century, enslaved people made up 70 percent of Charleston's population. Screenshot of text: Less than a mile away from the Legacy Museum is the First White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis and his family livedin the breakaway nation's earliest days. This White House receives substantial funding from the state of Alabama, and its mission is codified in Alabama state law: "the preservation of Confederate relics and as a reminder for all time of how pure and great were southern statesmen and southern valor." In 2023, the Associated Press reported that people who visited the museum, including thousands of Alabama schoolchildren, were taught that President Davis had led a "heroic resistance" in the "war for southern independence" and was "held by his Negroes in genuine affection as well as highest esteem." Screenshot of text: I asked Stevenson if he thought the United States should have a public, national museum, in addition to the Smithsonian's NMAAHC, dedicated specifically to slavery, or if it was better to have privately funded institutions like the Legacy Museum focus on that history. He paused and considered the question. 'I'm not sure we're ready for a state-sanctioned truth telling about the history of slavery, " he said. "We can have a state-sanctioned space, but I don't know why we would expect it to be a truth-telling space." He pointed his finger down on the table. "Because the reality is we're not yet at the point where, some would say, it's in the state's interest to be truthful about this history, so it would take a lot to get that truth to come through." Screenshot of text: Touring the Legacy Museum that afternoon, I'd seen a Black family with three children standing in a long hallway that outlined the chronology of Black life in America. The two older siblings ambled from one photo and caption to the next, while the youngest, a boy of about 7 years old, stood with his parents and read the captions out loud as his mother helped him through the words he couldn't pronounce. They came to an image of a young white boy, about the same age as the Black boy, standing beneath the dangling feet of a Black man who had been lynched from a tree. The man's face was cropped out of the photograph. The boy in the museum locked eyes with the boy in the image. I heard his parents tell him that sometimes children attended lynchings as well. The father stroked the top of his son's head, and they walked on.
January 20, 2026 at 12:29 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: It might be champagne final wishes and caviar fever dreams for the globe's elites this morning, as the World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos. In contrast to last year's Teams meet appearance, Trump is set to arrive in person, heading up thedargest ever US delegation to the event, which has as its theme - I kid you not - "The Spirit of Dialogue' Makes sense if, and only if, that spirit is 90% proof, bucket-brewed moonshine.
January 19, 2026 at 1:55 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Screenshot of text: And such a boycott would also need to come from those not directly affected by this latest round of race hate. I don't want to hear a single goddam word from white millionaires living in Western Europe about how football should transcend politics or whatever-the-fuck nonsense they come up with to mask the fact that they consider this bloody game to be more important than the grotesquery that is taking place on the other side of the Atlantic at the moment.
January 16, 2026 at 10:31 AM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
Je me sens le même.
Screenshot of text: My French has reached an unhappy level not good enough to be able to watch French television without subtitles, good enough to be annoyed by bad translations.
January 15, 2026 at 1:08 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
🇦🇺 🇬🇧

🤝
Screenshot of text: Australian rules's self-important demand for constant attention has dampened my enthusiasm for it; I simply don't have room in my life for that much football.
January 14, 2026 at 1:58 PM
tokenbg.myatproto.social
January 12, 2026 at 1:38 PM