Great album front to back, but the final two tracks, Blackpool Illuminations especially, cap it off masterfully. Early AOTY contender for me, closely followed by Nadine Shah's Filthy Underneath.

Almost all of Swans' and Radiohead's output plays chess with my brains, but Sonic Youth's Diamond Sea manages to ask more and more questions with every listen (and there have been quite a few).

I'm an Eastern European leftie whose peasant ancestors (not all of them, obviously) suffered through famine, unspeakable state-sanctioned violence and extended prison terms during Stalinism and through decades of opression afterwards. The intergenerational trauma is something we're all still struggling with. I cannot bear to hear the "Well, you need to break some eggs in order to make omelette"-type of negationist twaddle and I'm reminded daily of how the authoritarian postwar regimes have made it damn near impossible to resurrect the Left in the region. Don't just fuck tankies, feed them rancid cum only.

No matter how many films and TV series use this song or how many people cover it, it'll never be anything less than stunning and seductive.

One of the greatest covers in history, by LCD Soundsystem.

Swans, Celebrity Lifestyle. Downright addictive.

I also live in a country where WhatsApp is the messaging app almost everybody uses. You won't be able to get all of your relatives, friends and co-workers on Signal, so I'd suggest you start small - get SOME people onboard, make it very clear you're gonna be using WhatsApp for work-related stuff only, see what happens. Besides, Signal has its quirks, too - switching phones and backing up will lead to a lot of frustration and its devs proudly state that "more options is never the answer". It'll sadly remain a niche app for activists and the privacy-inclined, I fear. But if you really care about privacy, you should ditch Telegram ASAP.

Dunno where you stand on all things Apple, but Apple Music is truly stable and has Hi-Fi (lossless). Works on both iOS and Android. Queuing and other specifics might irk you at first - just bear in mind it's different from Spotify in that it favours albums over playlists and algo-generated content. TIDAL's fine and the sound quality rumours you've heard are all true, but still has a bit of ironing out to do. Deezer used to be great, but now it's expensive AF. Just export your library through tunemymusic.com or soundiiz.com first and feel free to explore whatever tickles your fancy.

I got plenty of gripes with Signal (acting like a de facto proprietary app, backing up horrendously difficult, gimping the Android options in order to get to "feature parity" with the less developed iOS app, serious UI/UX missteps - the bubbles colouring debacle, no AMOLED mode etc.). Having said that, I let everybody know it IS my main messaging app - if they want to reach me, that's where I'll be. I do still use WhatsApp (barf!) and Slack, but exclusively for work-related stuff and I force close them the minute I walk out the office (if something blows up, a good, old-fashioned call will do). People who really want to keep in touch will eventually use an encrypted app, even if begrudgingly.

It sooo does. Kid was electric! Superb player and the only one, at the moment, able to really give Djokovic a run for his money.

I'm not gonna lie, I did not enjoy the final at all. It felt clunky, fragmented and, in spite of a few nice shots, low quality. A perfect anticlimax. Ons was clearly scared shitless, all Marketa had to do was get one more ball back.