#MorecambeBay looking beautiful (and feeling lovely on my toes)

“AI makes no demands, requires no moral consideration, and does not attempt to germinate a culture, a cuisine, or a language in your sacred soil”: @doctorow.pluralistic.net on how billionaires are using AI to dispense with inconvenient humans www.thenerve.news/p/cory-docto...

So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

This is an excellent resource:

Very excited to have made it onto the letters page of this week's New Statesman. I think this means I'm a proper grown up now! #MorecambeBay

A bit of boat washed up on the beach in Morecambe yesterday carring barnacles. If you look very closely, you can see it has also become a kind of photograph of seaweeds over time. #MorecambeBay #AlternativePhotography

If you're in the UK, please consider signing and sharing this petition set up by a friend whose husband died last year. He received wonderful hospice care and it made a huge difference to him, her and their two young children. Proper funding is needed. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

If you're in the UK, please consider signing and sharing this petition set up by a friend whose husband died last year. He received wonderful hospice care and it made a huge difference to him, her and their two young children. Proper funding is needed. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/76...

Two of my favourite short story collections of all time by indie presses on #indiepressday #indiepress by @dumb-belles.bsky.social and @clairedean.bsky.social

1/ Spotted a yellow leg flag on a Curlew? Please share the sighting with us, as this could be one of our headstarted birds. 😀 Report via bit.ly/ReportACurlew #Ornithology #WorldCurlewDay

Finding it quite hard to readjust to normal life after a wonderful scholarship week living and writing in a library @gladlib.bsky.social

Peepshows, paper theatres and zoetropes at the Bowes Museum (got to introduce my 19-year-old to some lovely old plastic View-Masters too!)

Lepus leaping. From the Aratea, a 9th-century manuscript on astronomy featuring constellations comprised of words. More here: https://buff.ly/34uIsEa

Ok, with the new book properly underway, I guess I'm going to embrace 'narrative art' as a description for...[waves hand]. www.simongroth.com/marginalia/2...

A wet and windy #MorecambeBaySketchClub at Half Moon Bay

First commute of 2026 (miraculously there are still trains to Barrow today despite them seemingly going nowhere else!) #MorecambeBay

An attempt at drawing the last of the light #Morecambe #Solstice

Lantern parade in the rain #Morecambe

Sketching stone on stone paper at #MorecambeBaySketchClub today

Sand patterns

In the attic at Salts Mill, Bradford

My new short story colllection The Building Inspector is now available from @nightjarpress.bsky.social on nightjarpress.weebly.com

It was an absolute joy to be at the launch of Myriam Frey's (@dustynewrose.bsky.social 's) first collection, 'The Building Inspector', published by the indomitable @nightjarpress.bsky.social

A podcast has just been released of my story 'Feather Girls' read by MyAnna Buring: wordtheatre.org/weekly/

October commute

Barrow looking beautiful on my dinnertime wander yesterday.

At my dayjob in an archive today, workmen started bringing me the retro rubbish they found in the loft, including a 1960s fag packet and a 1990s coke can. There was also a 1980s page 3 (not pictured 😂)

Drawing the seaweed pools on Hest Bank Wharf at today's #MorecambeBaySketchClub

Moved my eldest for university yesterday. He's still in the north but right across at the other side 😭

This is a bit exciting :) Tickets available here: www.brasseriezedel.com/events/wordt...

Sometimes my dayjob brings niche excitements, like how ridiculously happy I was to get a reduction in rat wee staining with minimal moisture migration using low cost, cut-to-size gellan gum gel yesterday.

Thrilled that an old story of mine 'Feather Girls' is being performed at this event!

Pls stop what you are doing and read this entire report on Israel's murder of journalist Anas al-Sharif and five colleagues in Gaza City. "He characterized Israel’s threats as 'Silence or Death,' and he vowed not to be silent." It ends with his final message. www.dropsitenews.com/p/anas-al-sh...

My wonderful parents-in-law. Married 60 years ago in Yorkshire ❤️

Sketched the lovely cool, still-damp seaweed today at #MorecambeBaySketchClub

We’re delighted that @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social is now stocking Nightjars. Little interview about it here deadinkbookshop.com/blogs/requir...

Early morning cloud train to Carlisle

According to a brilliant book I'm reading (The Lichen Museum by A.Laurie Palmer) these little wonders make up about 8% of the biomass of the world. Growing quietly everywhere and nearly always unnoticed.

- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University - 1 in 4 people will be made redundant But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action? Please read 👇 Sign the petition 👇 chng.it/7F52bThYqn

Beach architecture by honeycomb worms

Books.

Out for my lunchbreak walk in Barrow, I found an abandoned shop that's very much alive.

I think it’s worth noting this piece generated the most unsubscribes I’ve seen in a while, and the newsletter version had the lowest open rate in many months. These horrors persist in part because too many people go to great pains to avoid them.

Classic Morecambe Bay weather at #MorecambeBaySketchClub today for our first birthday draw! Thanks for a fantastic year of sketching @debbieyare.bsky.social!

A Flash Gordon sky outside

Exploring Morecambe's sunken boat caves.

No council, or councillor, has the right to "ban" any books. The library service are the only body that makes decisions on stock selection. A councillor, as a member of the public, can *request* books are removed on a title-by-title basis, but the reply should come that under @cilip.bsky.social

“We want our publishers to stand with us.” An open letter against AI from some of your favorite writers to the people who publish them.

Stalactites forming on the ceiling in Carnforth train station