“And if you need a real shot in the arm to get you laughing and smiling again, just remember that I could trip down a flight of stairs in my own ultra-plush luxury high-rise this very night and shatter my skull right there. Isn’t that great?”

John Carpenter's The Thing is a Christmas movie. So there.

Nice analysis of AI’s current writing style.

It most certainly is. Sorry British public, but you're bang out of order.

Folks, Ragaire is open for submissions for Issue 5! Send us your best poems, short stories and essays! We can't wait to read them!

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one of the biggest mistakes of the past 20 years is the idea that everyone has something interesting to say and should get to say it

Good morning and on this 'Blue Friday.' If you are able, please do buy your books from bricks and mortar bookshops or: Bookshop.org.uk They pay all their taxes and don't waste money on phallic space dreams. @thebookseller.com

Repeat: I will not allow Liverpool FC to ruin my mood on my holiday.

You know what? It might be time to put the Beatles away, at least if this article and what's coming down the pipe is anything to go by. There are other bands. There are other artists. Stop with the nostalgia.

“Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.” 1972/2025

Carl Sagan, writing in 1995, warned that soon America would be ruled by illiterate elites wielding “awesome technological powers,” and that most people, their brains broken by screens, would be unable to resist. We are living in the nightmare that Sagan foresaw.

The diarrhoea is real.

What a day. Two poems in the latest splendid edition of Causeway, and then three poems in the equally splendid Autumn issue of Southlight that I was completely unaware had been accepted. I might put them up in due course. Grab copies, they're great publications. #poetrymagazines

For those asking for background - I was in Sudan twice this year and wrote about it www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

I'll tell you something. You can tell a lot about a person if they're left alone with a sheet of bubble wrap.

Now Spinning: Dead Kennedys, California Uber Alles.

‘That ballroom looks pretty cool though, eh dad?’ ‘Shut up, son’

Having not watched anything in TV land for the longest time, I gotta say Task, with Mark Ruffalo, is fab. It's like a Russell Banks or Larry Brown novel. Tense and violent and often unexpectedly moving.

Tired but buzzing. I won second prize in the Frances Browne Poetry Competition 2025 for my poem, Meteor. I'm a happy chappie!

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today. Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

What's clever about the old Irish carved turnip heads is they capture perfectly the makers' disgust at the commercialisation of Halloween.

Very, very sad to learn of Brian Patten's death today. Gargling With Jelly changed my life when I was 11, and his poems always got to me at various points in life. Thank you.

This joint press conference makes me want to take a baseball bat to the television. Absolutely sickening.

“Poets are the ones who can describe the guts of life. We have to use the language so demandingly, just to minimally preserve what makes us human. And you have to practice.” -- C.D. Wright

Obscurity is not profundity. -- Mona Van Duyn

Sickening footage from Nuneaton tonight, where a Sky News interview with a local businessman was disrupted by racists hurling abuse. Another local said, "Warwickshire Council Council has gone to Reform... It's given certain people a licence to be aggressive and racist."

Why, you might ask, do the BBC and Sky News, casting their editorial guidelines to the wind, keep giving massive airtime to the far right, while shutting out leftwing voices? Don't their bosses understand the likely consequences? Only one explanation now remains. They do. And it is what they want.

Chris & Cosey -- The Gates Of Ancient Cities [Ambient/Synth] (1982) https://redd.it/7xduq0 https://youtu.be/l6p_0TfQMgg

‘Are​ we, as Richard Seymour suggests, “in the early days of a new fascism”? In 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘮, Seymour argues that in trying to understand the new far right, we have been looking in the wrong places.’ @trillingual.bsky.social on far-right populism: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Here's the problem - the right make up a story and the media plaster it everywhere. The left tell a true story and the media ignore it. The right hasn't actually 'hijacked' anything. The right have been given an open door while the left - the majority - are barricaded away.

Someone needs to adopt this 16yo named Hope from the golden valley animal humane.

And it's off to the Drumshanbo Written Word Festival we go. My first poetry workshop. Wish me luck...

#PoetryCommunity 📢 CALL TO SUBMIT from Poetry Ireland Review 🌐 International subs welcome! ✒️ Poetry ⏰ Send after 9-1-2025 ⏰ 💲$50 - $100/piece @hwany.org @sfpoetry.bsky.social @emteepoetry.bsky.social @csecooney.bsky.social @kimwhysallhammond.bsky.social www.poetryireland.ie/writers/subm...

TV news people. It's 'nuclear.' Noo cleer. Not 'nucular.'

"The mere idea of genetic or locational virtue has been, outside of religion, the main source of mayhem and death since the world began." Jim Harrison

Sally Rooney: “I would happily publish this statement in a UK newspaper–but that would now be illegal. The present UK Gov has willingly stripped its own citizens of basic rights & freedoms, including the right to express & read dissenting opinions, in order to protect its relationship with Israel.”

If it looks like a coup, and sounds like a coup, well.....

I enjoyed this with so much intensity, I’ve made it the founding manifesto of my new religion.

In 'A Gift', Culkeen / @cormacculkeen.bsky.social highlights the various gifts that people receive over the course of a day as well as the gifts that we can give others, sometimes unknowingly. Read it here: inksweatandtears.co.uk/cormac-culke... #InkSweatandTears #PoetryCommunity #Submission

song of the summer www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3b6...

I have an ambivalent stance on a lot of his material these days, but what Bill Hicks said here always stuck with me.

It’s Peter Sellers’ 100th birthday. If you’re feeling down today, watch this. I have a feeling it might make you feel a little better. youtu.be/64yianfGvzc?...

Reposting for wider distribution, this reply in reference to the beauty of having extra and unexplained and maybe even inexplicable things and events in our narrative entertainments. Lots of viewers just see these as game bosses to beat and it sucks.

Good evening all! Ragaire Issue 3 is back to buy in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop in Galway! It's full of wonderful stories, essays and poems, there are some copies of the equally cool Issue 2 still available! Buy a copy for your friends! Buy them for an acquaintance or for passing strangers! Do it now!