Deleting English literature degrees would actually be a really interesting case study in whether the UK can destroy its own understanding of its own culture on an almost micro level. Worry not, sceptred isle, heir to Shakespeare, Byron, the Shelleys and Tolkien, you dont need to know who those are.

ok

Summary of comments: (1) Last study I saw showed USA reading rates *increasing* in kid & retired groups, declining only in working age adults (2) France also has smart phones, video games, COVID etc. (3) Agreed audiobooks are great for commutes, but labor causes the commutes It’s a labor issue.

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

"You're a promptophile, you're a slop badger, you're a parrot perv, you're a small LLM regarder, you're a bot botherer, you're the Crazy World of Sam Altman, you're a ChatGPT bottler, you're a grok rocketeer..." "...Yes, well, it's just another form of racism"

We're all actors, asking that nebulous, all-seeing and unseeing mass of eyeballs, known as "The Audience," to PLEASE CLAP

This is why I was all pro-Mastodon when the X-odus happened. Mastodon felt actually open and Bluesky felt like a Twitter clone. But the onboarding and app experience was better here, so here is where people went.

AT Proto has become a sort of ideological vaporware; a way for Jay Graber et al to run a social media platform while claiming they don't run a social media platform. This is just another iteration of the Silicon Valley monoproduct: power without accountability. azhdarchid.com/delusions-of...

i just think he's neat

Given the choice between centralised social media - colony organisms with arbitrary state-like power - and some guy with a Raspberry Pi in his basement, prepared to spew bile and/or delete his instance over the slightest transgression... as ridiculous as it is to say, I'm going with the guy

insane how MOTHERFUCKING GERSON BOOM showed up with a truth nuke vis-à-vis pre-war lore

I paid £16.75 for #Silksong, and it took me one step closer to Nirvana. CW: VERY very minor allusion to lategame content that could still be spoilery I Think I Get Silksong Now brologue.net/2025/09/16/p... Please ❤ 🔁 if you like what you read!

that song really is silking✨🐜 #silksong #hornet

I can look past a lot of Silksong's difficulty, but losing all my shell shards after dying to a boss too many times is perhaps the most detestable gameplay loop I've experienced in a long time. I *want* to use tools, yet they're bound to a resource obtained only through drudgery and grind. Curious!

#WritersCoffeeClub 2/9: Describe your aesthetic. At the moment: fantasy with a slight urban edge and satire; an assortment of preindustrial settings, but the odd contemporary trapping thrown here and there (e.g. the unironic use of "failson").

Conditional Whisky (And Its Portents)

>first draft is a repetitive mess they don't tell you the path to getting better makes you feel like you're so much worse

A first draft. The story's beats are down but by damn there's so much to trim. They (an authorial 'they,' the They Wot Tell Lies for Money) say editing's where you make the magic happen, and I hope they're right.

www.theverge.com/news/757538/... Very soon, posters/journos with 'legitimate concerns' about AI are going to meet my eyeballs. They will tell me that we need to be 'careful' in our 'much-need conversation' about why this is the Internet Archive's fault. In the nicest of ways: choke on jobbies.

Some of the pixel art over Beaconsfield on wplace.live. Not much compared to the planetary magnitude of Deltarune art, but it's enough. For now. #Discworld

So I wanted to do a followup of my review of The Unaccountability Machine by applying my knowledge to a little-known tower defense game called Mindustry: mindustrygame.github.io And I will! Tragically, however, I've been sucked into the BTD6 vortex, so I'll have to cover it too.

Coulda been worded better, but I got the meaning down, didn't I?

Squirrels! Cybernetics! A man with a beard! Neoliberalism! Such things will you and I will find on the path that leads to Tragedy's overwhelming question: "WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?" Dan Davies’ ‘The Unaccountability Machine brologue.net/2025/07/26/4... Please ❤ 🔁 if you like what you read!

#WritersCoffeeClub 24/7. Have you ever written stream of consciousness? I'm writing a WIP like that right now. Finally swallowing the hard, dry, sugar-free bitter pill: the first draft sucks ass. But so long as you've got the meaning down, the words don't matter.

I forgot about posting. Is it fun

This is your brain on copyright brain

the bards of oasis weave an aural tapestry that forms the national anthem of STRAIGHT PRIDE

20 years ago today, July 14, 2005, I created "Link finds a WTF" on YTMND, later becoming better known today on the Internet after it took on a life of its own as "WTF BOOM!". To commemorate this 20th anniversary, I've remastered my original WTF BOOM! YTMND in 4k. #ytmnd #wtfboom

I *do* have a blog post cooking, but I think, as I keep getting better at writing, the editor inside my head is getting harsher, little by little. Not necessarily a bad thing. No doubt I've many old posts whose wordcounts could be trimmed down by a good 30-40%, if they were written by me today.

To the folks on the bus whose conversation about Tenna I interrupted from down the aisle by shouting, "IT'S TV TIME:" I don't know who you were or where you were going, but I hope this stranger brightened your trip a little. (And no, I don't usually do that... Not that it matters.) #deltarune

"This is another reason I'm unconvinced AI-art is quite the threat some would have us believe. Because if either the resonance of Yellowface or the enthusiasm for The Salt Path story tell us anything, it’s that authorship is not incidental." Another newsletter with a self-indulgent personal opening

I generally steer clear of critiquing Internet Personalities as it substitutes soap opera for politics. But this feel illustrative of a whole type of person. You are actually able to make consumption decisions. Describing the skinner box you're trapping yourself in is moronic not arch and clever.

Peter Shorts is 25% off for the STEAM SUMMER SALE! My older games (including Tres-Bashers) are also on sale! store.steampowered.com/developer/on...

About a year ago I made a post about a little indie title, 'You Are Peter Shorts:' brologue.net/2024/07/10/j... I only learned a couple days ago that @ondydev.com has worked on and released an online multiplayer update... TWO WEEKS ago?? competitive peter shorts is real

bookrastinating.com/user/bm/comm... TL;DR it were good. Something I will add is that few if any of these stories are about challenging the status quo and being edgy, if that's your first impression. The humour in the dialogue of 'Primordial Follies' creased me.

We recently discovered an unopened sushi making kit that had been passed along to us via Jim's aunt and promptly lost in the back of the pantry. It contained several food items and a recipe booklet printed in 1991.

Footnote: if you surprise yourself while you're writing fiction, then whatever you did will probably surprise your readers too. This is a Good Thing. And one of the advantages of being a pantser over a plotter.

Christ, what assholes.

coming straight from YOYY house

bookrastinating.com/user/bm/comm... You'd be surprised how much of the newspaper satire has Moved With the Times in 25 years. Folks aren't interested in news so much as they are olds...

I am 99% certain this account, which has just followed me, is botshit. It's an absolutely abstract kind of real fucking disgusting going on here.

Gingerly sidestepping the usual debates over physical vs. digital, I ask: what is it about my #Bookwyrm's digital backlog that's irked me so? Why don't I feel that way about my physical library? I Don’t Like Backlogs, Actually brologue.net/2025/06/09/b... Please ❤ 🔁 if you like what you read!

If I decide on the spur on the moment that I'm going to be the one to write a whole book on a Unified Theory of What Is Gender, why would I want a computer to be the one to experience that and do that for me so I never have the experience of doing that?

I think it's weak to rely on AI to generate your pages and pages of "unhinged posting". That's supposed to be 100% organic, up all night, from the heart and unstoppable. How could you automate that act? It's supposed to involve you intimately. Your involvement and experience of it is a core part

Folks who are on Goodreads: do you use the platform as a backlog, or a tally? And if a backlog, do you feel that its presence brings you more anxiety than, say, books on your shelf? Writing a post about this atm and would really appreciate your input! #WritingCommunity #booksky

ITS PRIDE MONTH 24-6-01 YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

I've done a video on the wild decision from a staffer at Seattle WorldCon to vet panel participants using ChatGPT. With info on why this was a terrible decision from multiple angles. So terrible the work should have been scrapped the moment it was identified. youtu.be/lFdl3wxF6QM

private equity taking over and immediately creating Discorb, the real life texting micro transaction that everyone will hate, is a little too on the nose