Perfect! Instant follow!

Still my proudest moment, to be fair

Please recommend me a podcast that isn’t middle-class white comedians talking to other middle-class white comedians. And/or people talking about their favourite food.

China has banned companies from making AI companion services out of concern that they damage humans' abilities to relate to each other www.yahoo.com/news/world/a...

I’ve only ever wanted to be a character in Hookland

Weirdly - because I really really *love* Gravity’s Rainbow, and V, and The Crying of Lot 49, and also *like* a lot of the later Pynchon almost as much - I’ve always avoided this one. And the film didn’t help. At all. But this has made me commit to finally reading it. Thanks Jonathan!

Quite heartened by the outpouring of love for lovely Sam Neill today. Will just add that as well as all the amazing film and tv performances and his wonderful social media presence, he also made some really quite good wines #TwoPaddocks

Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum September Song, composer Kurt Weill

440 people died every day during the last heatwave and there are huge wildfires all over the country.

How many AI models does it take to change a lightbulb? That's a great question, which shows that you care about illumination! You don't just want to see - you want to be seen. Unfortunately no such thing as a lightbulb has ever existed or will ever exist.

Happy birthday to Lyudmila Pavlichenko (born July 12, 1916), Soviet sniper in World War II, with 309 confirmed kills. A true role model for today.

Beware the very readable - and shareable - Substack essay

"Historically, abandoning Google Search would have been commercial suicide, according to SEO consultant Lily Ray. It is simply too valuable...But the gradual erosion of search traffic in recent years has, paradoxically, given publishers more agency to consider walking away from the platform."

Just came across a note I made a while back which says “weird and short and full of strange meaning” and I don’t know if I was referring to my writing or to *myself*…

Get on this, friends

I feel so unmoored without the World Cup tonight.

People who spiral out overusing LLM chatbots are really just experiencing the kind of brain-damaging stream of unconditional validation that’s always been the norm for the hyper-wealthy, which explains a lot.

*World Cup

Saw this ad for a goat on Facebook. It’s perhaps the greatest advert I’ve ever read. It’s just superb.

Random reading

What’s that you say, Chas and Dave? A pint? At this time? I suppose it is Friday…

give it him you cowards

Done. Nobel Prize for Literature, you say? I couldn’t possibly comment.

The use of free indirect speech in any contemporary novel

Aw mate, live for 5,000 years then the f’kn plague gets you.

Wonderful

Andy Burnham says you should read my stories, even if they’re not set in Manchester

Now that you’re all finally agreeing with me that contemporary “realist” novels are a waste of your time, may I recommend this banger instead…

In terms of the aesthetics of atmosphere, genius loci or even just 'vibes, man' I genuinely believe that one of the reasons Liverpool feels the way it does is that no cunt buys The Sun.

Nowt wrong with me. You bunch of weirdos, however…

Could still go either way tbh

My Dad’s (posthumously) multi-award-winning model railway coal drop. Cup winner! Now gone to a new home and part of someone else’s layout. God bless railway modellers

This was meant as a joke but I just came across another one of those books and it’s still true

At last at last!

No place for “Better Off Dead”??? Otherwise: wonderful stuff!

Currently/almost finished writing something pretty amazing. Or possibly shit. But at least it’s one or the other and not some unambitious middlebrow rubbish. I hope. One thing’s for sure: it’s full of made-up stuff communicated via words arranged into sentences!

It's swelteringly hot and there's a World Cup on, so why not read, enjoy and share my new short story 'USA, ONE-NIL' (it's hot and there's a World Cup in there too). richarddsmyth.com/2026/06/25/s...

Packaging that requires fingernails to open is essentially a hate crime against autistic people. As are books written in free indirect speech.

A beautiful takedown of a bit of homophobic Telegraph pearl wringing that's as unhinged as the headline suggests. A highlight:

Or we could just, y’know, make social media companies responsible for what’s published on their platforms…

Better banning the over 60s from Facebook

Social services mandated to go to the door of every teenager using Bluesky to check if they’re ok.

this might be the best headline i’ve ever read

Somebody told me the other day “I hope I’m as productive as you when I’m your age”. Know I know how the Stalingrad Tractor Factory felt.

Well, you people were no help at all. The opinion columnists were right: Bluesky has fallen!

Obviously there are far more important things going on but where can a person get hold a used copy of Apaches by Oakley Hall for less than £40 these days???

Luckily the government can defend itself from far-right accusations of “2-tier” policing, by pointing to a long record of actual police racism

R.I.P. Anthony Head. 🖤