"The labor and delivery market has long been characterized by a significant pain management gap. While existing clinical infrastructure reliably serves one demographic—namely, the birthing person—it systematically neglects another: you, the person who drove her there."

Isn't it so weird how your brain can be quiet for a good while and then idea after idea after idea lands and you have other things to do but you only want to think about books you probably won't write.

Today has been very good already with the Cybertruck sinking and the robot falling over. There is beauty in the modern world after all.

Me: I would really like to learn how to play chess. Husband [considers for a moment]: Oh, your deadline's coming up. Of course you would.

Prepare for the specific thrill you get from reading something properly good. ⬇️

My husband did an honest-to-god Jack Abbott 'I'll pay for it' today and, you know, we have a joint account but it worked on me.

It’s really amazing that so many people choose the airport for their first experience of existing in a public space; seems like a high degree of difficulty for complete novices but what would I know?

9pm: yawning 2:12am: time to become a scholar on uncontacted tribes

Staggeringly accurate.

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I secretly love historical bloopers in novels. The hero of the Regency-set one I'm reading gets out of bed by throwing back his duvet. *chef's kiss*

This picture is very 1996, kids. And it was fun but it was also stupid.

I don’t think think this movie will create a new sexual orientation but whatever your sexual orientation is it will be doubled after you see it

So much of British party politics seems to be arguing about the wallpaper in a house on fire.

Mosaic at Hadrian’s villa, Tivoli, ca. 150

The dog walk was dank and freezing. One of those grey November days you get in late spring.

HBD Ewa!

Strong The Thick of It energy here.

It’s 210 years to the day since the first ‘kiss and tell’ story was released: Lady Caroline Lamb’s wildly melodramatic Glenarvon, whose central figure was based on Lord Byron, who gave the book a slightly different review. He said it was a work in the genre ‘fuck and publish’ 🧵

I bought peonies in bud last week and not one of them has opened properly yet. I'm still hoping they might, but they're squeezed as tight as a baby's fists.

I don’t know what to do with this, Homer.

You know, sometimes I do feel like I’ve done something.

I’m on a train. The women at the table next to me are going through everyone they know and systematically criticising everything about them. Savage stuff.

This is so stupid. No one wants this, do they? They don’t want learning to narrow to STEM subjects. They don’t want a bland world where no one reads or has a sense of the continuity of human endeavour and inspiration. Why is everything becoming bland slop?

JUST READ A BOOK YOU TEDIOUS AI SHAGGERS

If you’ve never seen this you need to settle in and watch it.

Simply delighted by Sir John Soane’s museum today. Delighted.

The cat has lost his tracker again, just in time for me to buy the new upgraded version I didn’t even know about.

Are you a speaker of Irish English? If so, would you share your thoughts on “only” with me for academic research? umfragen.tu-dortmund.de/index.php/42... Thank you very much!!!!🙏🙏🙏

Get yourself a direct character, a soft character, an overthinker character and an underthinker character; give them something they have to work together to achieve that they care about; if it starts to sag, set something on fire or have someone fall down a hole. Done. No LLMs needed.

If @harpercollins.bsky.social offered you an early read of @janecasey.bsky.social's upcoming new thriller, Everything She Didn't Say, what would you answer? Of course you'd scream 'Yes Please!'. Out July 16th, it can be preordered right here: www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-S... #netgalley #booksky

Jokes on you, I can't remember enough of anything I love to populate a top ten list off the top of my head. The second you ask I will forget I ever even watched a tv show or listened to a song

Just adding industrial-scale cooking to my list of ‘things I find unsettling but not bad but I don’t want to know about them’. That is too much broth.

Look how seasonal the dog walk was! In London! I’m ruining these woods for myself by putting them in my next murdery book. I am the enemy of my own enjoyment.

UP THE MAY! In case you missed it, or you want to see it again, here’s a taste of the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of the Tower on May Morning. It was so wonderful to see you all packed onto the High for another beautiful May Morning. #maymorning #oxford #magdalencollege

If this doesn’t make you think of Gaudy Night you need to read it. But read Strong Poison and Have His Carcase first even though HHC is too long: SP is a perfect crime novel and GN is undefinable except as one of the great love stories (to Oxford).

YOU CANNOT GRIND THE BONES OF YOUR ENEMIES INTO DUST TOMORROW IF YOU DO NOT DO YOUR STRETCHES.

*Cyprus hill voice* In Seine from the bus lane

I feel Kate's vagina is trying to communicate with her that they both deserve better than this.

Cursed lunch: meal deal did not register at the checkout and I didn’t notice, I sat on my crisps, and the postman *allegedly* tried to deliver the parcel I was waiting for while I was out.

I really think you should google the origin of a phrase before you put it on your kitchen wall in neon cursive.

trying to play peekaboo with my child but he's a European diplomat: me: where'd daddy go? baby: we must articulate a post-daddy vision of strategic autonomy me: peekaboo! baby: my historic relationship with my father is stable despite recent troubles

Is this not living the dream, though, quite seriously.

Oh my god in the future I could do this with AI? Myself? In a *very competent* story? On my streaming platform?? Have these people ever heard of daydreaming y/n

Side note I remember a terrible job interview I did where I hadn’t heard of Jan P and it wasn’t relatable to explain my older sister read fluently from the age of two so I barely saw a picture book as a child.

The hoops I had to jump through to read a mediocre Substack essay just now. QR codes and verification codes: oh do fuck off. Why do they need to know my phone number? It's marginally easier to do online banking.

I'm reading the Lena Dunham book in a state of full-body cringe, but it's fascinating.

I used to be good at Computer. Now Computer thinks it is good at me. But it actually isn’t??????

THIS IS THE GREATEST NEIL

Oh nooooo this has made me saaaad