Remember linkblogging? My most Grampa Simpson opinions are all about how the internet was better when I was young. Maybe the culture has shaped by brain in a way it can’t snap back from, or maybe certain decentralised, idiosyncratic forms of communication were better suited for human requirements.

Either way, this is a 2003 style link post. Enjoy!

• Tony Inglis’ article on the closure of the 13th Note in Glasgow is a good rebuttal of the client journalism we’ve seen elsewhere. Key quote: “Just because a place has played host to wonderful cultural events doesn’t mean it wasn’t riddled with unfairness.”
• I’ve been reading versions of this post my whole life, but a Neil Kulkarni take-down of the disinterested, racist and unspeakably dull story of Britpop, as told by Mssrs Lamacq and Whiley? Like my mum’s lasagne, I will never refuse.
• Shon Faye‘s relationship advice column is a reliable favourite, but this line really stuck out: “You’re so devastated because you’re learning one of the most painful lessons there is to learn: that the presence of love is not the only requirement for a relationship to work.” 
• Feel exhausted before you even start thinking of climate change, deranged centrism and the rise of the far right? Here’s A.R. Moxon on The Dipshit Paradox via the re-branding of twitter as X: “It is tiring, especially in a time of serious challenges and real dangers that we all share, to constantly have to explain obvious things to people who seem not only determined to ignore them, but determined to force us to ignore them as well.”
• If you’re looking for other reflections on Sinéad O’Connor less full of dead wood than your average broadsheet account, this episode of You’re Wrong About from April ’23 addresses the obvious controversies without wasting your time.