Yes, yes, I’m woefully late to the party, but HOLY SHIT, All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker is the ultimate lying on the beach holiday read…

Cats of Venice

“No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched, and checked while we can still check it? And is it not necessary for this end to destroy the more advanced of the machines which are in use at present…” Samuel Butler

this exists it is called thinking

Patrick Boyle has just been demonetised by YouTube for his Epstein Birthday Book video. #PatrickBoyle

Morning… www.thetimes.com/article/38f3...

I haven’t visited an actual website for months. I’m tired of being kettled into an increasingly smaller collection of platforms and AI slop search results. Can you build your own search engine that just finds web pages on topics you’re looking for? I miss the original AltaVista. #enshittification

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

Cats of Coste

Ferrets of Urbino

Copyright is a front-and-center issue in the ongoing class action against Anthropic. Thankfully, @victoriastrauss.com of SFWA's Writer Beware® was kind enough to outline the basics, myths, & issues for us this week. Writers: Share widely! Some of our best creator-defense lies in everyday education.

Would a simple, ‘Happy Birthday, and Many Happy Returns’ not have sufficed?

Cats of Marjan Hill

Cats of Marjan Hill

Cats of Marjan Hill

Cats of Dubrovnik

Cats of Dubrovnik

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

On Aug 29, a person used a projector to display anti-CCP slogans onto the a building wall of Chongqing University in China. The slogans called for the defeat of "red fascism", and the people to rise up to reclaim their rights and freedoms.

I wonder if, in the near future, owning or promoting this book — especially with its revised preface — will be seen as subversive enough to result in being refused entry into the US. Or will it simply be banned? How will we know when we are nearing that point? open.substack.com/pub/anneappl...

Transport for Wales’s genius new seating arrangement.

I’m glad it’s not just me…

I can save you the effort. Clippy Plagiarism Thirstwater does not suffer. To suffer, you have to be alive, and it's not fucking alive, you daft motherfuckers. If you're so concerned about the suffering of sentients, there's plenty of that going around that you can pour billions into alleviating.

Erm… Open AI should be *paying us* for the centuries worth of novels, plays, poems and essays it has stolen to fuel its LLMs…

Robot meets bollard. Nothing beats the #WorldBollardAssociation

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes' 1/

This is probably dumb, but maybe we could declare independence from the US this time around and see how it goes. Like 1776 in reverse. Or 6771.

Essential reading from Abe Newman and Henry Farrell. #enshittification @abenewman.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/enshit...

@microsoft.com Outlook can’t tell that an email from [email protected] is a fake. Not blocked and not even diverted to the junk folder. This one has been doing the rounds for years.

About dystopia thei were nevir wronge The olde sci fi wryteres; how well thei understood its sudden impositioun; how it doth take place While we are all elated or amusid at technologye growinge or flourishinge or just proceedinge dully along.

Come on, now @heidialexander.bsky.social weownit.org.uk/news/stop-pr...

CRSF 2025 is almost upon us! - I will be chairing an author roundtable with Ai Jiang, Ray Nayler, and Nina Allan on Thursday at 16.20 - I will be running a workshop on reviewing on Friday at 14:00 - I will be interviewing our keynote speaker Jeff VanderMeer (pre-recorded) on Friday at 17.30

"You say you only used AI for placeholder text, but in that text was a response from the AI saying 'here's a revised version'. Here's what I don't understand - why revise placeholder text? You see my problem? It just doesn't make sense to me. Why revise something nobody was meant to see, unless..."

absolute weirdoes

Strong words from Reece Rogers www.wired.com/story/genera...

So glad I woke up to see this. Signed. Immediately and without hesitation. ‘Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers’ To add your name, please read and sign here: lithub.com/against-ai-a...

There’s still time to get your (free) tickets for the Current Research in Speculative Fiction conference in Liverpool and online, with keynote speakers @jasminkirkbride.bsky.social and @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social it’s going to be great! www.eventbrite.com/e/crsf-2025-...

My review of Ray Nayler’s ‘Where the Axe is Buried’ for CRSF Book Club is now online. I’m really looking forward to the conference next week! crsfhome.home.blog/2025/06/27/w...

Thinkinge of askinge Chat GPT a questioun about your plannes, thoughtes, ideas? Trye a tarot deck ynstead. Cheaper, bettir for the environment, bettir resultes, not evil.

I got 60 copyright infringement hits from the Libgen database. So $9,000,000 for me? Even with the dollar currently taking a hit on the exchanges, that's £6,570,000. If the UK government wants to boost the economy, how about getting behind authors to enforce copyright law instead of selling us out?

It’s been a whole month since the peat map of England was launched! It’s still very wrong And it’s still online So I’ve written a open letter to @naturalengland.bsky.social I am starting to worry that massive mistakes are just a thing with the whole organisation. What else is wildly wrong?

So then Elon goes "Kill the Bill!" and Trump goes "Elon has TDS!" so Elon goes "I'm the reason Trump won!" so Trump goes "we waste billions on Elon!" so Elon goes "Epstein!" and a corpulent flunkie goes "Deport Elon!" and Elon goes "Impeach!" And THAT'S why women are too emotional to be President.

#caturday A long time ago now…

Tickets for CRSF 2025 now available!

*Puts a fiver on 'no they won't'*

My debut folk horror audio drama is now available! Enter a world immersed in Shropshire Folklore, ruled by Devil Himself. There's something very strange afoot up the stiperstones! buzzsprout.com/411730/12499890 buzzsprout.com/411730/12600423