YES

I have a theory that between the use of AI - shrinks your brain, and latest obsession with Ozempic/Manjaro - shrinks the body, some people are working towards total shrinkage until they completely erase themselves. Why would you want to do that?

Rowan Atkinson, as Blackadder, especially the second, is really quite HOT! I have forgotten. Whereas as Me Bean, he's quite unappealing.

Mel Brooks is 100 years old today. I'm so delighted. One of my absolute favourites from Blazing Saddles, which I watched at a far too young an age to understand. youtu.be/Uai7M4RpoLU?...

This makes me think about a Tiktok video in which someone claims that younger generation doesn't like characters who don't align with their morality. This makes me sad. #booksky

Using the Bechdel test as some kind of measure of feminism is problematic. It is a good and important checking point for sure, but it's not a black and white situation.

Oh yeah, that book is full of words. Like, a lot of them.

I'm reading Allen Moore's The Great When. It's very wordy, which is a funny thing to say about a book. It was a bit hard going to get into, but I'm enjoying it now. #booksky 💙📚

Just finished Hogfather, because I'm an absolute maverick who reads Christmas books during a heatwave. Dammit, Pratchett made me cry again, mum. #booksky #Discworld 💙📚🪐📚 #fantasy

My weird cats do not like the fan's wind (or wind, really). Whenever they have to go through the path of the wind, they do a weird army crawl, as if they're trying to pass through enemy fire. They also always choose the hottest room in the house to spend most of the day.

Happy Solstice

Steven Spielberg has a very romantic idea about the cinema experience as a bringing together of people. I used to believe that as well. However, as someone who works in a successful independent cinema, I can tell you this has not been the reality for a very long time. Maybe it never was like that.

In every Wong Kar Wai film I have ushered, which is a lot of Wong Kar Wai films, at least 20% of of the audience is late, Veryan 5 mins to half an hour after the film starts.

Considering the size of TikTok as a platform there doesn’t seem to be much variety of opinion there, does there? Maybe they should get out of their echo chamber.

Companies now actively and openly make sure you have to replace things and buy new ones. For example, Apple won't update old devices. Someone read the Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness and thought, 'Great! Let's make really shitty boots, so people have to replace them even more often.'

I cannot read the full article as it's behind a pay wall, but the idea that an author is doomed to obscurity because they are difficult to adapt to the screen irk and depresses me. Terry Pratchett's literature is so inherent to the written word. It's part of what makes his books unique. 📚 💙

After the list by professionals, the Guardian published a readers list. Still, no children or youth books to be seen anywhere. Still questionable choices that I wouldn't have put on any list whatsoever. I've read 25 books from the readers list. #booksky 💙📚 www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

I'm getting a tap installed in the garden today, finally! and I can honestly say I'm more excited about this than most things. 😄

I regret to bear the news that Mr. Blobby is *not* on the Life in the UK Test. Not in the revision guide, not in the online practice tests; he doesn't turn up at the UKVCAS office where you've booked the real deal and he certainly doesn't write the results email. It's a fucking disgrace.

Thunder is an excellent backdrop for reading.

Curious to know if any Pratchett fans were familiar with the Golem legend before reading Feet of Clay and the rest. I wonder how well known the Golem legend is in general. That is Golem and NOT Gollum, altogether quite a different creature. 💙📚 #Discworld #booksky

It's good to know that 27% of this country's voters are racist c**ts who will happily watch Reform repeat all of Trump's viciousness, law breaking, corruption, and thin-skinned attempts to silence opposition. Although to be fair the British press has mostly gone voluntarily over to the c**t side.

I'm not very focused today. My procrastination has led to my finding out the difference between Harrringay, in short that's the neighbourhood, and the older form, and Haringey, the Borough, the more modern form.

Lately, in the last month or so, I've been mostly writing by hand. Every time I get up or stop for a moment, I instinctively try to 'save' my work. It's an involuntary muscle memory, and it's amusing. Or maybe it's sad.

Ben Elton is doing all the podcasts round, promoting something I presume, and I'm enjoying it.

I like Pope Leo's use of language with regards to AI, calling for it to be disarmed. It is poignant and accurate.

Despite the respite today, my cave, where I write, is still too hot to work in, so I've relocated temporarily to the nice and cool living room. I feel like I need a whole new system for writing in the living room.

Tim Key isn't here, so I'm rudely bringing you his poem.

An excellent evening.

Today I learned that Stalker, the Russian word from the Strugatsky Brothers novel Roadside Picnic, and the title of the Tarkovsky film adaptation of the book, is not to do with the English stalking. 💙📚 #booksky #writing

Watched Battle Royale for the first time, finally. I have almost forgotten how much I love Takeshi Kitano. Loved it.

Miriam Margoyes said on the Romesh Ranganathan show that she's most proud of her Charles Dickens work. She's absolutely right. I've only listened to her reading of Bleak House, and it's the best audio I have heard. She reads Dickens with such sensitivity and insight. It's a treasure. 💙📚

I'm really enjoyed listening to Romesh Ranganathan interviewing Ben Elton. I totally feel Elton's frustration and despair of AI and technology, or more accurately the direction in which technology is going.

Last night a colleague of mine convinced another colleague that John Woo's Hard Boiled is about boiling eggs. I eventually took pity on the girl after she came out of the film, confused about where the eggs were in the film, and explained to her that it's a reference to a noir detective genre.

La Haine was a very formative film for me. I watched it when I was in my late teens. It breaks my heart to read that Mathieu Kassovitz turned his back on humanity and chose to make an AI film. It doesn't sit right with La Haine.

Good morning? How's your morning? Don't mind me I'm just crying over a seal who sometimes lived in the Thames called Marmalade. People held a kind of funeral for her this weekend. 💔

I have become a British subject, which is interesting cos I'm also a Belgian subject. What can I say, clearly I'm a hot topic. 🔥

People don't read anymore. Fear not the Guardian is here to save reading with yet another great big list of books. Some are excellent, some are terrible, some are just OK. I'm happy to see more women and a tiny bit more fantasy than usual in those lists. 💙📚 www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

It really annoys me that Kira had no women friends. She's just barely friends with Dax. No women Bajoran friends at all. Whenever she's talking about the resistance, she's always talking about male friends who mentored, inspired, she loved etc. 🙄 #DS9

So interesting.

An excellent day's work at the library now paid for by having to go home at rush hour.

I have had this guy for several years now, often not even sure if he's OK. I never knew he could do this! 😍

I would like to revive my Goodreads reviews. It has been abandoned for so long that it started developing a complex. I'd like to post occasional reviews of books I read recently, but it seems Goodreads is not much for sharing. You can follow me there under my name. Meanwhile... #booksky 💙📚

And on that note, I really can't stand the film Arrival. Thank you. Now you know.

If I see another male directed film about how brilliant motherhood is... well, I'll probably not do much. Maybe I'll scream into a void because it is absolutely infuriating and so boring.

I feel like there's a bit of a misunderstanding regarding the implied rape in Blade Runner the final cut. If it makes you 6 because it is meant to. It is true to the dystopia it is set in; it's true to the character. Harrison Ford is not the good guy. No one is.

Watched Exit 8 last night. It's very effective and highly impressive, especially after reading about how it was made. However, I really didn't need the overall parenting theme, which I felt was superficial and annoying, and diminished the overall impact.

I had to sit in for the beginning of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice film and I was clenching the whole time. It is so cringe.

Two Green party candidates were arrested for alleged antisemitic social media posts. One of them was elected and is standing down. Meanwhile, Reform's Jay Leslie Cooper, who claimed the holocaust was a hoax, now has a seat. We're holding everyone to the same accountability, right? Right? 😪

Ref*rm are upsetting cos it’s the lazy politics of division. For their supporters, they say “you can’t trust outsiders”. And for the rest of us, every time they do well in polling, they say “you can’t trust your neighbours.” Whatever happens, they split us up, and make us dislike one another.