Kate bush

The new Stranger Things is loopy and sweet

So, the new – and supposedly final – season of Stranger Things has arrived in Netflix, just in time for Thanksgiving. Expectations have been through the roof that this installment will not be a turkey, but the good (stranger?) thing about the series so far is that it has maintained a remarkably high level of quality since it began in 2016. This is by no means a given for an Eighties-inflected fantasy show that is so devoted (the cynics might and have said slavishly) to all things that Steven Spielberg produced in that decade that the bearded one might have sued for plagiarism, were it not for the fact that the homage remains an affectionate and heartfelt, rather than cynical, one.

stranger things

Ron DeSantis’s accidental neo-Nazi rebrand

Rumors began to swirl that the Ron DeSantis team was planning a major reboot last week following plummeting polls and financial woes. But the first ad to emerge from his circles since appears to suggest that the presidential hopeful is a neo-Nazi. Cockburn never would have guessed this was the campaign-saving pivot his team had planned.  On Sunday morning a staffer for the DeSantis campaign retweeted an ad from the Ron DeSantis Fancams Twitter account. https://twitter.com/ltthompso/status/1683126430534598656 It features a “doomer,” a crudely drawn young man who suffers from depression and a crippling cigarette addiction, watching reports of Trump’s vaccine rollout and undelivered border wall promises.

sonnenrad neo-nazi desantis

Stranger Things and the perils of nostalgia

Recently, Kate Bush went to the top of the iTunes charts — yes, such a thing does still exist — with her 1985 single "Running Up That Hill." It’s an excellent song, one of her finest works, but the reason for its somewhat unexpected resurgence in popularity is because it was prominently featured in the fourth and penultimate season of Stranger Things. It's testament to the show’s continued popularity that its consistent, even ruthless channeling of Eighties nostalgia can lead to unexpected knock-on effects.