indie.ninja

Before I knew it, winter had passed.

Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a far right party who are currently in the process of a serious bid to become the UK government. they are just straight up evil.

Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head. he likes to run as a novelty candidate in general and mayoral elections. a big thing he likes to do is run as a candidate against the incumbent prime minister:

(Also pictured: Boris Johnson, Elmo)

Anyway, in brief:

Nigel Farage is currently in the midst of a big scandal about his finances

He has decided to deal with this by 1) making a show of nobly resigning from parliament and then 2) immediately running in the resulting by-election

He has stated that he is letting 'the people' judge his actions and implied that if he wins that will prove that he has been exonerated in the court of public opinion

His goal was presumably to get a big resounding win over the other parties, proving that The People still love him.

the other parties have thus far decided that this is a 'vanity election' and, well, there is one very easy way to ensure that he will not beat any of them, and that is simply not to play.

and as a result the only person who has so far confirmed they are running against him is Count Binface. no matter the outcome this makes Nigel Farage look like, u know, a fucking clown.

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story