Beyond Black

I discover how good CMAT is via Olivia Rodrigo. Whatever it takes I guess.

Honestly surprised the Slate Culture Gabfest lasted as long as it did.

RIP John Blanche.

Oh no. Big part of my adolescence

Some thoughts on the Granta short story row - and why “we asked Claude if the story was AI written” is IMV more alarming than “the story may have been written with AI”:

The weather's all a bit 'release the ghosts' www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DpP... (also: could that cue be more perfect?)

I’m going to have to find some positive writing on CC, because having just finished it, it was by some margin the worst book I’ve ever read

Got another hot date with the dancer of the Boreal Valley.

Leaving aside AI questions, do we really think endless pages of links is the optimum UX for a complex search query?

Why am I only hearing about this now? This is incredible. Some incredible crossover of prog folk and The War of the Worlds

My nihilist teens despondent they didn't get the banter result.

As ever, what's really interesting are the individual ballots

Terrific piece. I'm all in after 'Pork'

Aldous Harding album: incredible. And the cause of a new Jayson Greene banger. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

The opportunity to clown on both LLMs *and* Dawkins is too good for Bluesky to pass up, the fact that he didn't conclude that Claude has consciousness being neither here nor there.

Tried 20 minutes of The Cage. When did the median drama get so bad?

I accidentally became an executive assistant to the head of publishing at Harcourt Brace, having never worked in an office before. The danger of being able to speak fluent BS in interviews.

The Drama: stop calling it a twist! It's just the plot, unspoiled in the trailer.

Placing on the record my belief that not enough people talk about James Meeks' The People's Act of Love. 19th century Siberia, cannibalism, an extreme sect of Christian castrates, only good stuff.

The notion that the My New Band Believe album is just a quite straightforward acoustic rock record is vastly underselling its radness

Of course we can't use AI to change our favourite books. But if we *could*, I would instantly remove all phonetic renderings of accent ("ee's a lurrvely geezah" etc). And because I am a philistine, modernise all the pronouns in Shakespeare.

Might just a reactionary age thing but like Ian MacDonald, I always think I can detect the slackness round the corner as the Beatle's psychedelic period wears on.

Turnstile situation is so awful, so sad.

Paralysed. Might just have to eeny meeny miny mo it

FFS. The Spotify audiobook of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell suffers in two ways. First, the footnotes are read by a different person. Second, that person is Neil Gaiman.

Perhaps needless to say, the article is more thoughtful than this caricature. www.astralcodexten.com/p/support-yo...

The curse of British progressive politics: we have a Labour party that is preoccupied with winning the support of workers who are retired or dead, a Liberal Democrat party with no interest in defending liberal democracy, and a Green party with no real interest in climate change.

Project Hail Mary *looks* amazing. Love and craft in every frame. Also: bit long.

Finally playing Claire 33. Love that it's starting with an hour cut scene about a man trying to give a rose to an adolescent girl. More French games please.

I, a grown man, am angry at Hoppers.

I may never stop laughing at “actually it’s Tolkien”

Have to admit to myself I'm finding Small Prophets quite hard going. Some of the peripheral characters are just... unwatchable.

Can’t tell you how much I want to pick this guy up and if it ends with my face being mauled off so be it.

Just saw an interview with Conan O'Brien where he says he and his team of writers have been at work on the Oscars for months, discarding 95% of the jokes they come up with. Not saying that's a lesson for the BAFTAs, but... no, sorry, I am saying that.

Thunderbolts*. Triumph of hope over experience.

I just discovered, after 30-odd years and a thorough jazz-pilling: I *love* the LMF solo!

I know it's 90 minutes along, but it's worth every second. Adam Neely looks at the Problem of Suno: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dc...

I can’t be convinced that Idles aren’t some sort of prank. A prank on me personally.

Yes! A new Dina Ögon album, the missing link between Steely Dan and Clannad. open.spotify.com/album/6dOFVR...

Got to say, this works really well - I can listen to the audiobook on a walk in the day, and then pick up at the exact spot in the physical copy at night. Then vice versa the next day.

1974: All The President’s Men praises the Washington Post investigating Nixon 2026: All The President’s Men are the remaining staff at the Washington Post

F* brilliant

Watching Morse from the beginning on a whim, and the directing and acting are wildly uneven. Hope it settles down

Don't want to read too much into a still but hmm

Agree with this, but I've got a bad feeling about Sinners.

As far as I can tell, no-one on Bluesky is watching Industry

what it feels like to post on bluesky

What an odd thing for The Times to interpolate in brackets. The 13-year-old what??

Come on now