now gods, stand up for bastards

It's the Royal Academy of Art Young Artist's Summer Show. One of my favourite exhibitions of the year. Like. Not only are the older kids insanely talented, the younger ones' artist statements will just punch you right in the face.

Jeffrey is my cat and he feels like my heart

These are all so good!!! please look at them

I think my favorite is this one

I'm an avid manga reader, so I figured I'd try predicting future bl drama adaptations! These aren't necessarily my absolute faves, but they fit recent trends and patterns and don't require big filming budgets. Titles and propaganda below!

Sonna ni iu nara daite yaru ('fine, I'll bang you if you so insist') It's only a matter of time before this gets adapted, it's that popular. Shinobu is a plain and unremarkable office guy during the day, but at night he is the gay world's hottest man slut. He doesn't like Hikaru, the popular guy at work, but through a series of events they end up as fuck buddies. Both catch feelings, but Hikaru doesn't know Shinobu's real identity, and Shinobu can't blow his cover. There are some killer lines such as the one in the title that I think will make Japanese viewers swoon like anata no koto nara yoyuu de dakemasu in 40 made ni shitai koto. The manga currently has four volumes and a new chapter was released today, but the first volume also works as a one-shot, potentially making it easier to adapt. On the other hand, the author likes to draw bulky men, while most actors seen in bl these days represent a softer beauty standard.

Afterglow To his displeasure, an elite doctor on the road to fame gets sent to a remote location in rural Kyuushuu. Disappointed with his circumstances, he develops a drinking problem, until one day during his drunken escapades he gets saved by a local yakuza, and things get steamy. This topped so many rankings and awards a couple of years ago, and the success of Anata wo korosu tabi show's there's plenty of demand for yakuza bl. The manga currently only has one volume.

Omae no hou kara kisu shite kure yo ('you kiss me first') They were roommates. And coworkers. The setting is quite simple, but this is one of the most popular works of the past couple of years in the genre, and this kind of stories tend to get adapted pretty frequently. It's sweet, well-written and safe with one volume out so far.

Ai da nante iwanai kara ('I won't call it love') Old friends no longer on speaking terms reunite at a funeral. Both are in unhappy relationships, and there's past baggage between them. If you've been following me for a while, you may have noticed I have a weakness for funerals and second chances in fiction haha. It's a nice adult slowburn that I like. There are currently two volumes.

Rosutaimu ni hanamuke wo ('parting gifts in stoppage time') This one's a personal favourite! The romance is quite unusual in that the story starts with a breakup and follows the couple finding their way back to each other. It's really good. There was recently a second volume, but the first volume stands well on its own.

Kamereon wa tenohira ni koi wo suru ('chameleon falls in love with a palm of hand') A university bl about acting and sign language. The main character dreams of becoming an actor but constantly gets his dreams crushed by failed auditions. He then meets a deaf student at his university who introduces him to sign language, and through sign language his talent of emoting blossoms. There is always a need for kind stories, and the manga enjoys steady popularity with four volumes out so far.

Kogarete kogashite ('burning and longing', title is a word play on cooking) One a salaryman, the other a chef, a couple of childhood friends reunite and get together to share meals. I'm surprised this one hasn't been adapted yet considering how popular and safe the food genre is. The manga currently sits at 3 volumes.

Blue blue blue This is me manifesting rather than predicting haha. This manga is a bit older than the others (it's from 2018), but it's one of my all-time faves, so I refuse give up on hope. A guy gets a summer job at a traditional onsen inn to buy a present for his boyfriend, but his boyfriend is an asshole. Over the course of the summer, he finds solace in a coworker. This would be the perfect summer drama!! The onsen setting might make it a bit harder to film but I can always hope. Kimi wa natsu no naka is also quite old but wasn't picked up until this year. The manga has one volume and a shorter sequel.

Tonari no metaraasan ('the metalhead next door') A broke student strikes an unusual friendship with the mysterious metalhead next door who keeps cooking meals for him, but afraid of rejection, he finds it hard to come out to him. The author's palpable love for metal makes this a refreshing entry in the genre. It's the author of 40 made ni shitai koto, and while the reviews for that one were mixed in English speaking spaces, it was a major hit in Japan with mainstream appeal rarely seen in bl. I wouldn't be surprised to see networks approaching the author again in the hopes of recreating that success. The manga sits at one volume.

Tumblr only allows so many pictures, but if you're interested, I can post another round of predictions later! The number of bl comics published each year in Japan is so massive that looking at end of the year rankings I'm ????? about most of the works, and often I've never even heard of the works getting adapted, but every once in a while networks manage to pick something from my library - this season it's Kimi wa natsu no naka, and I'm quite surprised it took them this long to pick it since it's been around for a while and the author is very established in the genre.

Hey, UK folks! Waterstones is having a 3-day pre-order sale that includes the UK paperback of Enshittification (which drops on Sept 1). Use SUMMER26 to get 25% off.

One of 2026's better tech-related coinages is "dickover," John Gruber's term for

a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user with an unwanted, unnecessary, mandatory interaction; e.g. asking the user to accept “cookies”, subscribe to a newsletter, install the website’s mobile app, agree to terms of service, or anything else that the user couldn’t give two shits about.

https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

These are bad everywhere, but they are especially terrible in the UK and EU, where websites practice a form of malicious compliance to the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. Under the GDPR, websites are required to secure your affirmative consent to process your data. The obvious way that websites should respond to this is by not collecting your data unless there's a damned good reason for it, but the actual response is to repeatedly shove cookie-consent dialogs in your face before letting you use the site.

These are absolutely unnecessary. Your browser can be configured to transmit a "global privacy control signal" by default that tells websites you don't consent to be spied on while you look at their pages:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-privacy-control

But many websites punish you by throwing up a "Global Privacy Control detected" dickover that forces you to click through to affirm their confirmation of your confirmation that you don't want to be spied on.

If you don't have the GPC set, websites will demand that you tell them whether you want to be spied on – and they'll do it again, every time you visit them. The website operators falsely claim that they have to do this under the terms of the GDPR (or other laws, like California's CCPA). This is a lie. Every privacy law contains an exception that allows websites to store data about you for a "legitimate interest," and that obviously includes setting a cookie that says, "don't ever spy on this user."

What's a legit interest? Well, I can tell you what it isn't. Facebook claimed that they had to spy on you, even if you opted out by laboriously clicking through one of their dickovers or by transmitting a GPC signal to their servers, because you had also clicked through their terms of service, which say, "Facebook is going to spy on you with every hour that god sends, from asshole to appetite, abandon hope all ye who enter here" (a direct quote). Facebook claims that this is a contract with you, whereby the company has promised to spy on you, and if they stop, they would be violating the contract, which might make you mad, so they are legally required to eavesdrop on every conversation you have and follow you everywhere you go:

https://www.cliffordchance.com/content/dam/cliffordchance/briefings/2023/07/european-court-of-justice-in-facebook-ruling-clarifies-interplay-between-eu-competition-law-and-data-protections-enforcement.pdf

This is bullshit, and the European Court of Justice affirmed it. But despite the fact that surveillance advertising companies are happy to stretch the definition of "legitimate interest" to cover "spying on you because our ToS say we will," these same companies insist that "legitimate purpose" can't possibly include "remembering the fact that you told us not to spy on you the last time you were here," and so every time you click through to one of many popular websites, you get a dickover, and the only way to make it stop is to "consent" to being spied upon.

But it doesn't have to be this way. While the right answer to this kind of rampant lawlessness is stonking fines and even the corporate death penalty for repeat offenders, internet users have a myriad of options available to them for banishing dickovers to the scrapheap of history. These measures aren't difficult to avail yourself of, and using them will make your life infinitely better, so I'm going to tell you about some of them.

Before I start, one note: these measures only work on browsers, not apps. An app is a webpage wrapped in the right kind of IP law to make it a felony to change how it works, which is why companies are infinitely horny to get you to use their apps, not their websites:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

What's more, these measures really only work on desktop browsers, because mobile browsers are apps, and are severely limited by law and mobile operating systems, making it hard-to-impossible to customize them so that they'll respect your rights. This is true of all mobile browsers, but it goes triple for iOS (iPhones and iPads):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Finally, this mostly only works on Firefox, and it works worst on Chrome, Google's monopolistic browser. When it comes to customizing your browsing experience to get rid of annoyances like dickovers and ads, Chrome is hands-down the worst choice, and Google is about to make it much, much worse, forcing a change that will kill the most popular blockers. Stop using Chrome, switch to Firefox:

https://protonprivacy.substack.com/p/google-is-finally-killing-ublock

You said you wanted to see me.

Next time you’re watching any news show or political coverage see how many of these you can spot:

Quick rundown of each propaganda technique:

• Glittering Generalities: Using vague, emotionally appealing words (like “freedom” or “justice”) that sound good but lack specific meaning.

• Transfer: Associating a person, idea, or product with something already respected or disliked (like using a flag, religion, or celebrity image) to carry over those feelings.

• Name-Calling: Attaching negative labels to an opponent or idea to create fear or distrust without real evidence.

• Card-Stacking: Presenting only positive information for one side and leaving out or distorting the negatives.

• Testimonial: Having a famous or respected person endorse an idea, product, or cause.

• Plain Folks: Presenting the speaker as an “ordinary” person to seem relatable and trustworthy.

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!