The Prophet Cassandra

@prophetcassandra.bsky.social

321 Followers 509 Following

Talks occasionally. Trans. Socialist. Politics. Film (Paul Schrader Expert). Photography. 29. London. She/Her.

Still from Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds (2025)
Bridge over a small river in a forest.
David Miliband looking serious (2026)
Detectives: ‘White male’ could be responsible Detectives believe a white male may have been responsible for Ann Widdecombe’s death. The death of the former Tory minister is being treated as a murder investigation, police have said. Det Ch Insp Ilona Rosson said: “Our murder enquiry is in its early stages but moving at a significant pace. We are deploying all of the necessary resources to find out exactly what has happened and to locate the person responsible who we believe to be a white male. “I would appeal to anyone who may have information about this incident, however insignificant it may seem, to come forward and speak with us. “We are particularly keen to hear from anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the vicinity of Haytor Vale, Haytor, or anyone with CCTV, doorbell or dashcam footage which could assist with our investigation.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/10/police-investigating-ann-widdecombe-death/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_tw_post#1783695412150
Ann Widdecombe ‘found covered in blood’ Ann Widdecombe was reportedly found covered in blood at her home in Devon after sustaining a serious head wound, according to The Sun. The details emerged after Devon and Cornwall Police announced they were investigating the circumstances into her death. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/10/police-investigating-ann-widdecombe-death/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_tw_post#1783693737969
Greetings 1968 Title Card
1 - it's a well animated action set piece that goes all out with music stuff 2 - that is framed by sci fi bullshit that lets you do good character work because it's all a memory of Birdperson that Rick and Birdperson's memory of a younger Rick is watching and commenting on, so you have the interplay of Memory Rick being super hyped and excited about it all (much like how this has been hyped up for the audience during the episode) and thinking how cool everything is and Rick Rick just wanting to move on because 3 - The battle doesnt matter. The important part of that scene is after the battle when in the memory the old Rick tries to get Birdperson to join him to go on adventures and gets rejected, and then watching the Memory Rick and the Rick Rick respond to that which tells you both how Rick felt when it happened and how that feeling has evolved over time.
These days, most celebrities speak to fans directly on various social media platforms. But Swift, in particular, has developed a specific strategy of friendship that goes beyond simple connection or contact. Her presence online is less “here’s special access for you to watch my life” and more “trust me, see me as a friend, and then become a part of my life.” When Swift, as fans report after meet and greets, appears to have remembered their first names and some measure of their online persona; buys them personalized gifts; and indulges in their inside jokes, she is partaking in the realm of online friendship and emotional investment that explodes through pop culture sites like Tumblr. With The Swift Life, fans of Taylor who have proven to be unfailingly active and supportive online can be successfully ushered into a platform controlled by Swift, through which she profits. https://web.archive.org/web/20171120110220/http://www.bitchmedia.org/article/the-swift-life-monetizes-faux-friendship
The menus were not printed until 2003, so we cannot be sure of the all-time record for the most expensive lunch. It may have been achieved when Spivey met the 79-year-old poet Gavin Ewart at the Café Royal in October 1995. The exact cost is lost somewhere in the bowels of the FT accounts department. But the bill was somewhat overshadowed by the aftermath. The main item on the agenda was alcohol, not food. Ewart began with several negronis (gin, vermouth, Campari), which is not an amateur’s drink, and carried on from there. “We departed the Café Royal in a moderately straight line,” Spivey said in the article. He put Ewart on a bus home then lurched off himself. The following day he received a call from Mrs Ewart. “There are two things you need to know,” she said. “The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in a long time. The second – and you are not to feel bad about this – is that he died this morning.”
"When I started using dynamite,"
Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this...
Duck You Sucker opening card
Discord Post responding to the above poll at the time "woooooooooooo fuck yeah one party labour seat you can kiss goodbye to PR now fuckers 1997 Part II" (this may have been me)
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky Yet another government source weighs in - this is a big pile on reflecting the chaos in government right now. “Andy is going to have the same problem with Shabana that Keir has. She and her operation are totally out of control, and think rules only apply to others, not themselves. I give it six months.” Feels like this story is a tipping point https://x.com/SamCoatesSky/status/2070213932208582916
Simon Hannah A Party with a Communist in it A History of Andy Burnham
...but no one will set foot in this hell...
Garth Marenghi. A Poor Writer.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson was on BBC Radio 5 Live with some advice for Andy Burnham: “Be brave Andy, be brave.” Johnson’s idea of being brave is for Burnham to “go to the country”. “It’ll be a very bold thing to do,” Johnson said. “It might set a precedent that others in the future will have to follow, but it will help restore trust in politics, and that is Andy’s big plus. He can’t do that and say, oh, but I’m going to do what every other previous leader who waltzed into Downing Street without any consultation with the public... “…Because if he doesn’t go to the country, he has got to follow the mandate and the manifesto of Keir Starmer and he’s criticised big chunks of that.” The former home secretary applauded Burnham for standing in Makerfield, calling it “bold stuff”. “You have to continue that boldness,” Johnson said.
https://x.com/nondescriptred/status/2046920794433835172
Things That Never Were viewed in the UK https://campaigntrailshowcase.com/campaign-trail/?modName=1969-1972
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/
9. We will introduce identity cards and electronic registration of all who cross our borders. We have cut radically the numbers of failed asylum seekers. By the end of 2005, and for the first time in Britain, we will remove more each month than apply and so restore faith in a system that we know has been abused.
A senior Labour MP who had previously described Jones as “about as popular as a fart in a lift” among colleagues, after he carried out sackings in the September reshuffle in a way that left many MPs unhappy, predicted a Jones leadership bid would not do well. “I don’t see where his support base comes from,” they said, suggesting that his expression of interest could be motivated more by the aim of securing a senior post in government. https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/top-pm-aide-darren-jones-sounding-support-leadership-bid
"simmer down pet and eat your pie" Andy whispered into the prime minister's ear "I will pound you harder than you and your London lot have pounded us in the North if you are a good boy and eat all of your peas." he slumped back in his chair, and took a big sip of barley wine while Keir munched away on the mushed pie and peas in his dog bowl
If Andy wins [blank (which is me)] will have a 15 minute long crashout in the politics chat
Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997 by Colm Murphy Paradoxically, the proliferation of independent left-wing think tanks after the late 1980s was also significant in contributing, institutionally, to the marginalisation of economic democracy in the Labour leadership’s vision of ‘modern socialism’. The creation of new sites for policymaking outside Labour, like the Institute for Public Policy Research (founded out of Kinnock’s office), was important for many reasons and did contribute positively to modernisation agendas of the 1990s, as Parts II and III explore. But it also gave an empowered party leadership more freedom to borrow fleshed-out policies from these external institutions, rather than forcing undeveloped ideas to run the gauntlet of factionalised party structures. Indeed, this was the very point. When the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) launched in 1988 it was sold as an ‘entirely independent entity’ so that it had ‘greater intellectual legitimacy’. Paddy Ashdown even inquired about the involvement of the
The Politics of Rage Page 337
Extract from Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012: Designs and Discussions by William J White The fight was long and brutal, but it ended when the mysterious doors burst open and the nephew rushed out, proud but bedraggled, to grab the seneschal by the throat and stab him in the heart. The end. ‘What did you think?’ asked the GM. ‘I have a few questions,’ I told him. ‘Why did you design the adventure so that an NPC got to take down the bad guy instead of us?’ [The GM] told us that he was a big believer in the Big Bad at the end of an adventure, and that we had in fact got the seneschal down to zero hit points. This triggered the nephew’s adventure-ending arrival. Huh. In thinking about this adventure and telling the story to other people, the analysis that I’ve come up with is that [the GM] designed his adventure specifically to conform to the conventions of video game CRPG design. The arrival of the nephew was a cut-scene, triggered by our whittling down of a Big Bad’s hit points … The whole adventure was designed to get us to that one scene.
General “Old” Films Recommendations Classics for a Reason (500k+) The Apartment (1960) - a romantic comedy structured like a swiss watch Sunset Boulevard (1950) - Donald Trump’s favourite movie Cinephile Picks (100k-500k) The Searchers (1956) - A John Ford/John Wayne western that is very concerned with interrogating the racism at the heart of manifest destiny and unravelling the cowboys and indians myth Brief Encounter (1945) - David Lean directed. A Middle Class Housewife begins an affair. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) - 2 hours of drinking and increasingly vicious arguing; a perfect film. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) - This is the most gorgeous film you will probably ever watch in your life. Mikey and Nicky (1976) - A film about old friends. Cruising (1980) - Al Pacino is a cop who has to go undercover in the leather scene to catch a serial killer. LGBT groups at the time hated this movie and they were wrong. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) - A classic of the genre for a reason. Broadcast News (1987) - Magnificent romcom, set in a newsroom that is also kinda about news but not really. Obscure (<100k) The Boys in the Band (1970) - 2 hours of drinking and increasingly vicious arguing among gay archetypes of the late 60s; a perfect film. All That Heaven Allows (1955) - Okay this is the classic Sirk that's in the Criterion Collection for a reason, a melodramatic “women’s film” that's also about the suffocation of 50s suburbia in beautiful technicolour. There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) - Alright if you liked All That Heaven Allows, try this one which, very unusually for Sirk, focuses on this downtrodden husband rather than the typical downtrodden wife/widow. The Passionate Friends (1949) - Another 1940s David Lean directed affair movie which goes in a slightly different direction. Patty Hearst (1988) - There’s a reason it’s my go to recommendation
No one's in charge. Patty Hearst (1988)
Screenshot from Ordinary People (1980) - Well, listen. I talked to Salan-- - Quit talking to people!
My Labour MPs are all Morons
It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches nice - Deng Xiaoping
Black Swan in the foreground building a nest on a floating platform. White swan and baby (grey) swan in the background swimming
Labour 2017 Manifesto A Labour government will reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to ensure they protect Trans people by changing the protected characteristic of ‘gender assignment’ to ‘gender identity’ and remove other outdated language such as ‘transsexual’.
Your grandad was a Christian but apart from his faith, which you explain in the book was fairly private, you didn’t really have any other faith influences, did you? Not in my family. I went to St Peter’s [primary school] in Wapping, which was connected to St Peter’s Church. I loved the smells and bells of Anglicanism. It wasn’t just the singing of the hymns or the smell of the incense, I was listening to what was being said. I very much believed in God and was a committed Christian. When we were given the opportunity to be baptised and confirmed, I wanted to do it. The hardest job was convincing my then-atheist mum and still-atheist dad. In the end, I deployed my grandad. I had a long conversation with him, saying how important my faith was, how I recognised this was a real commitment, but it was one I felt mature enough to make. In the end, Grandad stepped in and I was allowed. I went to a non-denominational Christian secondary school, Westminster City. We didn’t go to church every week but when we had big occasions, like the Christmas concert, we went to St Margaret’s church – which is the parish church of the House of Commons. It’s a wonderful coincidence that the church I attended at school is now the church I attend as a member of parliament.