Yesterday I watched spike lee's 'highest 2 lowest', and enjoyed it, even though it was a film very much pitched solely to appeal to spike lee

still waiting for news of my uncle who was captaining one of the boats and was taken by the IDF on Monday.

John Coltrane made an entire album about his love for sour cream

Three things about AI detection 1. It’s not possible to tell for sure whether a passage of text is generated by AI. 2. It’s apparently possible to do better than chance in many real world situations. 3. It may not be possible to do sufficiently better than chance for most obvious applications.

Cardiff university, who have got rid of three libraries in the past five years, are forcing the arts and humanities library to give up its upstairs space to teaching. This means getting rid of physical book stock, and ofc the many uses a library is put to

lowkey think the guardian list is the best you can hope for from a silly genre but here’s 100 novels i like that aren’t on it

piercing insights from nyt. "Westerners aren't used to the ancient chinese art of 'making agreements and then expecting they be followed through on'. A fascinating yet inscrutable culture."

Emerging from an intense period of marking to share the lovely news that I've signed a contract, alongside wonderful co-editors Daniel Hughes and Siriol McAvoy, to edit and publish 'Lynette Roberts: Selected Prose and Radio Broadcasts' with Bloomsbury's Modernist Archives series!

This just isn't true according to pretty comprehensive oecd data from 2024. The US in fact slightly below average of other similar countries in comprehension of both verbal and maths problems, and standards have declined in the past ten years.

DEPRESSED MAN: i have nothing going for me. whats the point of it all THE PHILOSOPHICAL GOURMAND: why dont we discuss this while eating a fine french meal?

Here, from a lovely tribute by Luke Roberts, is a J.H. Prynne opinion I wholeheartedly share www.littlemirrormag.com/luke-roberts...

This is a lacerating criticism of Bifo Berardi's atrocious Gaza book (deservedly so) and ends with such a beautiful tribute to Palestinians: defector.com/franco-berar...

He is not a cartoon

I'm Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, awarded at University of Edinburgh since 1919 and due to be announced this month. But the university is currently withholding 100% of my pay for participating in a marking and assessment boycott. So, at present, there will be no prize.

He should spit fire as well

Scapegoat, cilla, isle of man ferry terminal. Affectionately known in the Merseyside area as the 'three graces'

The Foreign Office unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza and more recently Lebanon - thought to be the largest database of its kind in the world - has been closed because of cuts within the department www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

In another victory for literacy I found proof that Samuel Beckett couldn't read

This is an intriguing thought! And reminds me I've been meaning to share Alfredo Bonanno's highly amusing anticipation of Gen AI in 'From Riot to Insurrection' (1988), with which I suspect JHP would have had a great deal of sympathy

"Within the great aquarium of language the light refracts and can bounce by inclinations not previously observed." —J H Prynne

One of my favourite memories is going for a long walk with JHP in the Palatinate Forest and his MANIFEST delight at encountering a pen full of pygmy goats, for which he instantly gathered food from the herbage by the path 1/2

RIP

'The idea of the end is a neat / but mostly dull falsity, since the / biologic collapse is violence reversed, / like untying a knot' (J.H. Prynne, 'A Gold Ring Called Reluctance')

Not enough death masks these days

Find myself politely holding my tongue as people get super excited over boards of canada, but I find them really bland

Have not only fixed my turntable but now it sounds better than before. People are saying this will add to my renown

the most beautiful music there is wildup.bandcamp.com/album/julius...

Labour have occasionally used this line of Westminster being a place where certain things are known only through dark mysterious channels, but it's painfully obvious that this doesn't work in a social media age. Rule of thumb is that people know more than they'd like about supposedly secret things

One time my kid left a little handmade booklet under her bed and it was called "bad thoughts" (spelled incorrectly) and the only thing written inside was the word "FUC"

‘The Trump administration’s levity doesn’t make the bombs any heavier. The real game is an old one, as American as stolen labour: when life gives you domestic scandals, foment a global crisis.’ @arianneshahvisi.bsky.social on the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...

Biffo’s disgusting fantasies

Got interviewed for NY Magazine, here's the anecdote that made the cut www.curbed.com/article/dogs...

Good tune - youtu.be/VAfng2XlA-8?...

That guardian piece well worth reading. One dark flipside of marketisation is that students aren't just consumers, they're commodities. The neocolonial dynamic of the modern British university is that, through a semi-official scam, global south students are hoovered up for debt.

'In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents – but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate.' 'Once students got their offers, they were passed on to the visa team, and finally delivered to universities as a fully wrapped, fee-paying package.'

A good album - youtu.be/EbQzAftZBmY?...

The Pants! The Calming Pants! Finally! These Pants are key to my survival.

Already rt'd this, but I've just realised the big man's methodology was also 'I want pages there, and I want Marx on them'

I think it's time for a new book thread (1 year on from the old one)

wow the symbolism in this book goes crazy. and you're saying all these symbols make up little words?

FYI today's a great day to start reading this novel. It begins on April 1st — and it's widely considered Melville's most accessible and fun work after Clarel!

Out: 50 variants on 'April is the cruellest month' In: crying aloud on public transport 'Stetson! / You were with me in the ships at Mylae!'

another opening line came to mind: “The danger is in the neatness of identifications.” — the first line of Beckett’s first critical essay (“Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce”)