It was roller-skates in my case, but... I also bombed in skis down the local, very iced-up bobsled run as a kid. Honest to Zeus—and I wasn’t alone. Not sure how any of us are still alive tbh.

Finally broke down and subscribed to LibroFm (cancelled Zuckerberg's Audible nearly 2 years ago). I’ve been getting my audiobooks from my beloved local library, but I mostly listen to classics and they don’t have ALL the Wilkie Collins or Alexandre Dumas or Jules Verne, so…. Huzzah regardless!

Dear #Filmsky, who’re some of your favourite Big Colour directors (e.g. Sirk, Kubrick, Wong KW)? 📽️ Asking for my eyes, because the world is so dun right now.

You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.

Parking my longtime sustained rage to say: Hang in there, friends. Just…hang in there, and massive condolences it’s come to this for a great too many of this planet’s people.

We had fine, or at least were on our way to fine, and people absolutely could not STAND IT, because they were too bored www.science.org/content/arti...

I like logistical stuff or a quick share of something cool bt friends. I do that myself. But when a friend texts “How are you?” or wants a conversational back-and-forth that keeps interrupting my stride in real life, I want to fkn die. Like, can we just pick up the phone? shorturl.at/ZoCOT

I ❤️ astronauts bc (1) I want to know EVERYTHING and feel awed by the pix and science, but (2) I’m also that weirdo who would rather die young(ish) on a ruined Earth than leave it forever no matter how grand the generation-ship—or even venture off this planet for a few days. Just: No. IMPRESSED!

I ❤️ astronauts bc (1) I want to know EVERYTHING and feel awed by the pix and science, but (2) I’m also that weirdo who would rather die young(ish) on a ruined Earth than leave it forever no matter how grand the generation-ship—or even venture off this planet for a few days. Just: No.

I’m going to write a standalone prologue today for a book that doesn’t exist just to irk a certain kind of person. 🎶

Shhh, nobody tell these anti-prologue/epilogue people about frame story structure...

Another point for self-publishing, I guess.

Any editor...or agent...who does this is not someone with whom I wish to work. I've read EVERYTHING myself for 38 years, first as a publisher now as a literary agent. I receive around 40 submissions every week and read them all. If you 'don't have time' or can't be bothered, find a new job.

📢 Fully-funded PhD scholarship: Living with Print in the Eighteenth Century Based at the University of Sydney (supervised by me) and the University of Glasgow (supervised by Matthew Sangster), with time at both institutions. Applications due 21 April More details: www.gla.ac.uk/scholarships...

April Fools’ Day… but this one’s real. 👀🧪 There’s a planet where it rains glass sideways. On HD 189733b, extreme temperatures vaporize silicate materials, which can condense into glass-like particles and get swept sideways by winds over 5,000 mph.

My usual Easter watch still moves me to tears every time. I ate a chocolate bunny whilst being so moved, this year. Wishing the northern hem a fruitful 2026 planting and a robust harvest! No droughts, no floods, no fires. 🐇 🐣 🌷 🍎

This is not, I repeat not, an April Fools Day prank.

PSA fellow bird-lovers: Watched Listers last night and spent half the time cooing “Oh the pickle!” at all the darlings onscreen. This doc is what happens when the guys from the (older, Canadian) FUBAR movie get *really* into birdwatching. Not to be missed. shorturl.at/DGpZN

I recall a poetry prof from another life, who said that you're not a writer if you don't love words, and I don't think you love words if you're letting a computer pick them for you.

Wilkie Collins called it in 1862. 🤷‍♂️ (PS found another Collins novel to read! ❤️)

Life is too short not to read a book that was written well and by an actual human being.

When I was a child my mother bought a hostess trolley. It looked insane in our cramped little house. But she'd spent the cash and insisted we use it all the time, bumping and scratching as we went. It was, in every way, a worse experience than just carrying stuff yourself. This is a post about AI.

Using LibreOffice in a professional capacity for the first time today (editing a 200-page report for a longtime national client that only uses MS Office/track changes) and LOVING IT. Blessed blessed blessed progress. 🎶 Fork you, Microsoft!

I see folks are being smarmy again about the publication of “water is wet” studies in peer-review journals. It’s especially irksome when academics themselves forget that many policies have no hope of changing without good data to throw at legislators. Stop scoffing at the baseline we need.

Thank the gods for Criterion Channel 📽️ capturing movies that totally passed me by, like Puiu’s Aurora. Not sure how I missed this one as a fan of his. Went in blank. Completely engrossed. It’s like the best "slow tv” Romania-style + a smidge of very early Haneke. Shook in the best way. #filmsky

Oh fuck absolutely off.

Hearing a lot abt frozen shoulder, but is frozen right-side-of-the-neck a thing? Months of physio and heating pads, and nothing. Desperate enough to start warily eyeing the charlatan white-coat pseudoscience.

Movies you disliked the 1st time but really liked the 2nd time and like to this day: - Season of the Witch - The Red Shoes - Citizen Kane - Lair of the White Worm - To Live and Die in LA 📽️

the human body was not designed to know what the worst person in the world is doing every fifteen minutes

Rewatching Ben-Hur's chariot scene before it leaves Criterion. It’s the cinematic equivalent of cathedral-building re. the human (and equine) effort and skill to map that out and make it happen. I’m gobsmacked every time. Perfect slop antidote; this is the heart and hands that all art deserves. 📽️

“Why are all the antivirus companies supporters of, or aligned with, authoritarian govs or various flavours of oligarchy now?” — A Plaint, by Ranylt Richildis (rhetorical, because the dots connect themselves, but hear my frustration)

Just watched Noé’s LOVE and Denis’ TROUBLE EVERY DAY back to back. I particularly loved the Denis, but I always love her stuff (had put off viewing because of the Gallo factor, but that severe wanker was mesmerizing, dammit). 📽️ Shifting to some low-intensity Moone Boy before bed. 😂

I’m a chronic pessimist, but still I woke quite hopeful today, our annual “ware!" day. Straw-grasping is all we have now. 🤷‍♂️

Making my overnight bread dough for a supper thing tomorrow, and just realized I have 5 kinds of flours rn: unbleached all-purpose, chestnut, semolina, Orkney Islands bere, and a locally milled red fife (the last 2 being gifts folks brought me). I better get more bakin’...

"I hereby announce that I am suing Jason Voorhees for breach of copyright law in his wearing of a hockey mask as a symbol of intimidation and cinematic villainy. What a puny plan." - The Lord Humungus #FridayThe13th

Am I utterly unhinged re. moving from MS Word to LibreOffice as a pro writer and editor? Am I opening up a horrid can of worms that will make my clients and collaborators hate me, or are these olden anxieties no longer valid in this, the Year of Our %$#@, 2026?

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is indeed gorgeous, riveting 🔥. Plus it contains the divine, under-sung Valeria Golino, who always knocks it out of the park (she’s the best thing in The Morning Show, and torched the screen in her brief Drops of God S1 stint).

I’ve been saying for years that poutine made/eaten outside of QC* is just sparkling cheese and gravy on fries,** so I’m feeling rather vindicated. 😂 shorturl.at/wujOC *St. Albert cheese curds the obvious exception. **It’s partly the curds but also the glorious dark QC fries, which have no equal.

Nope nope nope nope nope--or, as a friend used to say, nivver-navver.

Same problem in movies and TV. They want big, fast cash over properties with a lower opener but a steady, long tail

HAPPY FIRST (psychological) DAY OF SRING, fellow Northern Hemmies! We made it to another one, despite *flails* everything.

"How can you oppose war when Khamenei was evil?" Simple. If you killed Donald Trump by nuking Washington DC, I would not mourn Trump but I'd still say you're an evil war criminal who belongs in the Hague. It's really not hard.

Well, that’s creepy: I signed up for 3 free months of Mubi weeks back in part to get access Radu Jude movies, which got me wanting to see the older Romanian New Wave flicks I devoured/reviewed in the aughts—and lookie what Criterion Channel just dredged up for March. I spoke it into existence! 😂📽️

Honestly, it feels like every day is narcissus day...

Pretty sure the Venn diagram of Project Runway contestants who can’t sew and people who think the slop they produce with GenAI is “art” is one big, naked circle.

Write the book you would like to see someone pull from a higgledy piggledy pile in a secondhand shop 63 years after your death and say, "This looks fucking weird. I think I will buy it for Joan."

Best thing I’ve seen in awhile: Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. WOW. Not shocked, given my big Romanian New Wave love affair back in the aughts. 📽️ (Got some more recent Romanian stuff catching up to do, @nmkennedy.bsky.social, clearly. Partly on Mubi nowadays for it.)

PSA to the Shudder crowd (who probably already noticed this): A bunch of Jean Rollin 70s surrealist/fantastique vamp flicks are now there for the streaming. Content warning: boobies boobies boobies all the boobies

I’ve also been comparing AI to asbestos and radium—technology that had a bunch of benefits but then turned out to be deadly. The only difference is we already KNOW AI is killing people and they’re shoving it into everything anyway

Thinking that about 75% of my Fiction of Horror or Science Fiction course lectures would be illegal in Florida now. 🤷‍♀️