The Sanremo Festival is supposed to be a moment of joy for Italians and Italianophiles worldwide. Some silly fun in dark February. That they transformed it into this boring melange of harmlessness is so 2025-2026.

After watching and loving Slow Horses (I’m late to the party, I know), I’m catching up on the Smiley novels I hadn’t read yet, and they’re wonderful. Also, for Italians: the Slough House team are basically Alan Ford and the TNT group. They even have a female Bob Rock.

Just seen that “AI is punk” take and… gosh. Was not aware that “counter-culture” in 2026 meant participating in a trillion dollar industry pushed by the world’s most valuable companies and the world’s most powerful nation.

The film of Wuthering Heights is what happens when you take the edge off a story and round it up nicely with Instagram filters. As I was saying a few days ago - this is writing by numbers. Of course AIs are going to do stuff like this better than humans in no time.

Also see @jasonsanford.bsky.social 's post here, about AI scamsters threatening to review bomb if their kind offer of a "book club feature" isn't taken up. I do wonder if this suggests that they're not actually getting many takers, but I guess review bombing at scale is something AI would be

Too many books feel as if they’ve been written by an algorithm. If that’s how we write, and if that’s the kind of writing that gets promoted, of course an AI can do a better job than writers & publishers. Our first line of defence is neither tech or law. It is writing and promoting better books.

Book club scams are now threatening authors who don't fall for their BS. In December, I received an email from Herry Sharp, so-called CEO of "Super Book Lover Curator" praising my novella We Who Hunt Alexanders. Totally AI-generated and a scam so I didn't respond. Now Herry is threatening me. 1/

This actually happened to me once. Playing Arkham Horror, which is not short even when played straight. Six hours and counting into the game, we realised that we got the rules wrong, and the way we were playing it made it basically endless. Quite on brand for Arkham Horror all in all.

And to be honest, there’s something to it. I*claim* to be Italian, but I’m actually Messapian. We don’t even eat chicken at all. We eat RAW HORSE MEAT. And gelato.

“Those who let Wonder pass unseen,” Wendy recites, gravely, “shall soon hear Death’s clock strike thirteen.” With @sophiamcdougall.bsky.social and @leeharris.net

✨ Pan by Francesco Dimitri, translated by Sophia McDougall, art by Hokyoung Kim, design by Katie Klimowicz ✨ Premier by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. ✨ This Crimson Ruin by @rebeccathornewrites, art by Amphi

“I’m mad I can’t understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics because they’re not in English” my brother millions of metalheads around the world have been happily listening to incomprehensible Finnish shrieks and Japanese death grunts since we were teens, you’re just boring and racist

One thing the Epstein files make clear is that we are all peasants cosplaying as gentry. Liberal democracy is over. We are indentured servants, right here, right now. The sooner we realise this, the sooner we have a chance to build something new.

UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too! *Your* right to anonymous web browsing is at risk! https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408

‘Those who let Wonder pass unseen Shall soon hear Death’s clock strike thirteen.’ Tell them he’s coming back. www.amazon.com/Pan-Francesc...

I have an index to measure humanity’s self-esteem at any given time that I call ‘the Batman index’. It is based on the premise that Batman is the human superhero by definition. He has no powers, no magic, only the human attributes of brains, brawl, and money. The Batman Index works like this:

Me too!

If armed forces killing their own citizens in daylight, on video, will not be a turning point, then it means the turning point already happened, and we missed it.

“If there was ever a tipping point in the dark age of fascism that engulfs America, it should be the cold-blooded murder of a young woman driving home from dropping her kid off at school.” (Repost with correct image)

Haven't posted a great deal about what's happening in Minnesota because I'm trying to keep in the deadline zone rather than spinning out for three days in a rage, but obviously that was murder and equally obviously our fascist government is spinning hard to pretend it was anyone's fault but theirs.

‘People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.’ This is a good day to think of Alan Moore, is it?

Christmas is hard for many. The years roll, the ghosts at the table increase. We’re haunted by the absence of voices, of laughter engines who drank and ate with us. This can be day of remembrance rituals. For what it’s worth, Hooklanders near and far are in my candles today. Be gentle on yourselves.

For better or worse, public figures are judged when they die — their character, contributions, beliefs. It's undeniable that millions have mourned Rob Reiner's tragic death, celebrating his talent and contributions. I suspect when a certain public figure kicks the bucket, sentiments wont be the same

A terrific read reactormag.com/avoid-magic-...

🔥🔥🔥

It's hard to believe, but 2025 means Romanitas has been in print for 20 years. A modern world where the Roman Empire never fell. If that sounds good to you, the ebook's just £0.99 for the anniversary all this month! www.amazon.co.uk/Romanitas-1-...

Yanez su Repubblica!

Oceano Pacifico, diciannovesimo secolo. Yanez de Gomera percorre i mari con il Gabbiano di Lisbona, commerciando in sete damascate e diamanti del Borneo. Ma un giorno la sua nave subisce l’assalto dei pirati. In pochi minuti, Yanez capisce che la battaglia è persa…

Watched Superman over the weekend and the most unrealistic part of the film was the notion that an expose of Lex Luthor by a major media outlet actually harmed his reputation.

Slightly diminish a book The Lord of the Fruit Flies

“You are the violent ones. You who hide behind schools and prisons, you who impose your laws, your morality onto us. Why should we treat you better than you have treated us? You have ripped magic from us, you have polluted sex, you have erased the Enchantment from the world.

This is so key. A real problem of writing genre is you can get tricked into thinking genre-normal is actual-normal and unmoor your characters' responses to it, which renders everything weightless nonsense.

Paola’s thoughts on holidays and how to make them work for you - check it out, on Psychologies’ latest issue! Psychotherapy is a life’s journey. www.psychologies.co.uk/6-ways-to-av...

The better you are at a thing, the more "AI" will be a drag on your time, because it's operating at a lower level of skill than you are, and you have to fix what it does, rather than just do what you already know how to do.

"I DON'T WANT YOUR STUPID MAGIC RULES" has been an item on my "column topics for someday" list for a very long time, so it was very fun to see it cropping up all over my feed this week! Anyway if you like rules I'm happy for you but I'm not reading all that. This one is for the chaos babies.

‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you - maybe they’re right, you know.

The zero-sum mindset is no mystery: on.ft.com/44vZbH9

Good to see, but the ongoing decline in writing incomes is surely the biggest factor in driving out 'working class' writers. As with other creative industries.

Cover reveal! Writing the Magic will be published on 18 September. 13 brand new essays by: Francesco Dimitri, Hannah Kaner, RJ Barker, Kritika H. Rao, Juliet E McKenna, Jen Williams, Jeff Noon, Alex Pheby, James Worrad, Richard W. Strachan, Charlotte Bond, Katherine Langrish & Lucy Holland.

It’s always weird realising that people will pay more for a blank Moleskine notebook than for a novel.

the GenAI trend of the 'studio ghibli style' is especially insidious and malicious because of how outspokenly scathing Miyazaki has been toward the tech. why not CalArts style or Disney style or literally any other style. why ghibli specifically. it's always about contempt for artists, every time

Just finished reading Chapel Perilous, @propanon.bsky.social ‘s bio of RAW, one of my intellectual heroes and main influences. Do check it out. It’s a wonderful book. All hail Discordia, today more than ever.

There goes the neighbourhood.

I'm passing this on as US friends might have missed this post by the always-insightful UK legal commentator David Allen Green. “What is happening in the United States can happen elsewhere," he writes. "It can happen here.“

A beautiful essay by @premeemohamed.com on a beautiful trilogy. I second every word and every comma. Let’s keep our fantasy strange. reactormag.com/the-great-in...