Reach for the stars... New @backlisted.bsky.social, LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stapledon, with @mdeabaitua.bsky.social!

New episode up now. Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon, with guest Matthew De Abaitua in conversation with Andy Miller and Una McCormack. @mdeabaitua.bsky.social @unamccormack.bsky.social @iammilliam.bsky.social www.backlisted.fm/episodes/253...

Great essay.

In today's class we will be looking at:

LinkedIn: The Musical.

Remember 118118? How ridiculous does that service seem now? So of course there's a Fisherian angle to it, which I've penned here tacity.co.uk/2025/07/16/g...

The stresses of the week have turned this social butterfly into a social caterpillar.

This is not our cat. It moved in earlier this week and has made itself very much at home. Our cat Vincent is sulking on top of the wardrobe and won't come down.

"He's a legend in his own LinkedIntime."

I've listen to This Mortal Coil's album Blood about twice a day. I only discovered it about a month ago. It's a pocket universe that I never knew existed.

In my twenties, I did things because they were cool. In my thirties, I did things because they made money. In my forties, I did things to make my mark. In my fifties, I want to do things because they have meaning.

Insightful review concerning class and the question of who speaks in a novel by Niall Harrison on of The Mune by Sue Dawes and The Hampdenshire Wonder by J.D. Beresford

53 Unlike my peers I still drink beers Twice a week, sometimes three So this is on me.

I would like to send love and appreciation to all the libraries, archives, and museums continuing to fight the good fight despite the challenges of our lives. We will be stronger at some point in the future because of these challenges.

Who will be the first American president to jetski across the thawed Arctic to celebrate a joint-drilling deal with Russia?

From new edition of Nemesis the Warlock.

Then the cat went digital.

From the good old days when I took dictation from my cat.

All five of my books were used in the Meta AI training. Including The Destructives, a science fiction novel about AIs derived from irresponsibly assembled toxic data sets.

That time in lockdown when the cat and I made a big score.

I miss Malcolm Bradbury. I miss a culture that had Malcolm Bradbury in it. A world in which people made television programmes about the difficulty in adapting literary novels youtu.be/HcjqNaExUwo?...

But isn't a large language model also a wordcel?

Join me in 2018 as we look forward seven years into the future, asking: what will life be like in 2025? We will be... 3D printing our food!

My essay on Rachel Cusk and the limits of autofiction is in the new issue of the @thelondonmagazine.bsky.social Thanks to the editor @jamiepcameron.bsky.social thelondonmagazine.org/article/essa...

Billionaires are hyperobjects too. Hypersubjects, maybe.

Doing tax return. These bank statements are a terrible indictment of my lifestyle. I feel guilt and nostalgia at times well spent.

In 1983, Barbara Cartland wrote 23 novels. They were all dictated to her by her cat. It sat on a chaise longue while Barbara hunched over the typewriter. No matter how much she wept and pleaded, her cat would not permit Barbara to stop writing, such was the nature of her curse.

The Great Unsubscribe. The Great Unfollow. The Great Unlike.

Social media is cigarettes. In the long run there is little benefit in switching from high-tar Twitter/X to low-tar equivalents.

Amazing and brilliant podcast on THE THIS.

This sums up Ed's thinking across the year on what he terms The Rot Economy, and I think he's absolutely nailing key things. A commenter says he should stick this in a book, and I think they're right.

Memes remind me of the way in which we borrow words from other languages to express complex emotions for which we lack a native vocabulary: schaudenfreude, l'espirit de l'escalier, blinking white guy, drake saying no, drake saying yes.

My friend texted me to ask what I fancy doing tomorrow

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from bullshitting.

In the 00s I accidentally backed my text messages to my gmail. Today I am reading my wife's texts to me back when our three children were little and a handful.

The capitalism of a burning world abandoned consumerism to fish around in the bottom of Maslow's pyramid, re-inserting itself into safety and security and physiological needs. Grift, offshore finance, oil, property, crypto: employees are decorative, managers performative.

On my way to a wintry pint in the Vines in Liverpool with my Dad and sister. I love a Liverpool pub on a dark afternoon.

Academia. Acadoomia.

I wrote a novel called The Climate Artist. I took the concept of geo-engineering and swapped it for the practice of an artist, albeit one still tasked with creating and sustaining a climate. This review of Lem by Simon Ings covers similar reasoning. I finished the novel but the pandemic happened.

In fact, you could simulate an literary culture, in which only these 8000 books exist. With AI-generated Booker Prize ceremonies and virtual blog tours. It is the natural conclusion of current trends: no authors, no readers, just fantasists.

The business plan should be more than just using AI to publish 8000 books. It should also use AI to review those books, generate podcasts about them and even - for premium subscribers - adapt those books into AI-generated films. Each publication accompanied by the simulation of success.

Eavesdropping is not what it used to be. It's mainly people repeating what their phone has told them to say.

The streets of London are haunted by dead business plans.

Ahead of sending out my speculative fiction novel Space People Universal Lover to publishers, here is an AI podcast discussing it. If you are a publisher and like the sound of it then I can add your to our submission list. notebooklm.google.com/notebook/cdd...

@poetclare.bsky.social I just want it on the record that I had a ticket for tonight's Hackney event and had picked out an outfit and everything. Hope you are thriving.

The Railway Station Man is showing on iPlayer. Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie. Incoherent film with some nice scenes in it. But my god, Sutherland's hair. And he never changes his outfit through the months of the film.

This could be us.