It eats and consumes everything we need to live at completely unsustainable rates. The good news is that the weasels pushing this are also making the people with the skill-sets required to create viruses that could infect and disable it unemployed, angry, and looking for something to do.

Substack is like a superficially groovy mind cult that wants to trap you forever. "Stay with us," it says, "and you will be one of the Saved. We will look after you. Of course, you ARE free to leave at any time if that is what you choose*." "* But you're going to get charged a shitload of money."

THREAD! Also: AI sucks.

I’m so glad this happened so I could discover the original thread.

Omg I'm dyyyyyyying!!! 😆

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇 Read this thread 👇👇👇👇

Hilarious and troubling in equal measure

Never let the cynics and naysayers grind you down. You CAN have it all at once.

Tell me we should trust AI to give us the facts. Tell me it's a future we can put our faith in. Come at me. I'm right here, waiting.

Come on, people! It's 2026. We are not still living in the Dark Ages. When is everyone going to finally realise that a loving relationship between a human and a capitalist robot designed to completely blot out their ability to think is a perfectly normal, natural and beautiful thing?

There's a certain kind of person who, when you post something anti-AI, will lecture you on how AI "works". It's like, no, you don't get it. I don't want to know its habits or what it likes to eat. At least, not unless that's going to give me valuable information on how to hunt, trap it and kill it.

After two successive bank holidays, there is much confusion amongst the bins on our road about when they are meant to be attended to. One bin is in a tree. Another bin is crouched behind a hedge, crying. Several other bins have left to seek work overseas.

Some of the old cities remained and were yet to be cordoned off. My favourite was Southampton, where you could walk for hours, alone, save for salt badgers & maritime ghosts. I like how in this photo of it you can discern the remains of Borders Bookstore, the NCP car park and the original Colosseum.

I really enjoyed this excerpt when I stumbled across it. Then I enjoyed @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social's photo threads with their astonishing alt text even more. So now I'm buying his book. A reminder that sharing things we enjoy on social media is actually a good use of it.

If you don't lichen some amazing pics and commentary about bryophytes, you moss move on.

They prepare you to be close to your rat but they never consider the rat might have avoidant attachment.

Bob Hoskins was once surprised by a ghostly nun in a cupboard while working as an electrician in Covent Garden tube station

Highly recommended reading. This is absolutely delightful. I laughed out loud a few times. 🙌

I'm a sucker for a good moss/lichen appreciation thread!

I made this a couple of hours ago and it was delicious.

Building, natural BTW this thread is 🌱 perfection

Said it before. I'll probably say it again if Tom reshares his post or repeats it, anyway this chapter is one of the most interesting and entertaining bits of writing I read all last year.

I've removed the paywall permanently from this piece, which is a chapter from my novel Villager, told entirely in the form of an online village message board. If you like it, you'll probably like the book. If you don't, you won't... www.tom-cox.com/the-village-...

The negative influence of AI on writers, creative folk in general is atrocious. Lousy for wider trust in truth and facts. On the upside, highly recommend @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social beautiful attached 🧵 Pure joy! 😍

A THREAD, which I am calling 'Some Of The Many Reasons Lichen And Moss Are Fucking Brilliant'. 1. They make public seating super comfy. bsky.app/profile/dj-a...

THREAD. A collection of photographs of excellent goats I have met during walks in the British countryside. You will find the captions to each photo in the alt text.

What I hear when I'm in the dentist's chair.

I did, although it's going to take me a while to stop thinking about it. The gentleness and sympathy in the way you wrote about people and friendship and links to the earth and the sea was astonishing and deeply moving.

In just a few hours 3 people on Bluesky have told me this book made them cry & I'm starting to feel a bit bad about it. However, if your passions happen to include bursting into tears & reading about knitting, semi-aquatic creatures & the folklore of the future... uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ever...

It took me a while to get going, but this is one of the loveliest, most poignant, emotional and beautifully written books I've read in a long time. I have sobbed my heart out reading the final third, once I realised how it was going to end. @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social thank you.

Absolutely spot on about so called 'AI'. (But do read Tom's original thread - it's a true delight!)

Moths are excellent pets as they ask for nothing and all you have to do to acquire lots of them is open a window and switch on seven lamps and put a classic early Leonard Cohen LP on at a pleasant volume.

This place really is the best of all worlds, sometimes. And can help, when - like me - you're recovering from a cruel and personally expensive publishing industry disaster, and you write quiet, niche books which are published by an indie publisher. A thread, with a few more thoughts about that...

They say you are never more than six feet away from a rat at any point but I often *feel* more than six feet away from my closest rat, who is very emotionally distant.

My kid refused to do his homework because it involved AI and the miserable bstards at school gave him a detention. I picture he went into it looking like this

I just finished this novel and came to write a review in gratitude but I cannot write one better than this. Dammit, Tom, you made me cry too. Thank you ever so much. 💖 @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

I finished it a couple of weeks ago. I had to set aside some time on a quiet Saturday morning to read the last couple of chapters, both because I didn't want it to end and because I had a sense of how I might feel when it did. "Whimsical and devastating" is exactly right – thank you for it.

I just finished reading this. It is the first time, I think, that I have ever read anything that is both whimsical and devastating. I love it, and I cried a lot at the end. @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

😂😂😂😂

Two hours later, Philippa has morphed into a human.

Yeah, AI is really reliable...👀

This prompted me to do a Google search for my parents' first cat, Jupiter, who my dad named chairman of his advertising agency. I found a NYT article that mentioned the agency & Jupiter himself, and that led to this. bsky.app/profile/jill...

We await news of the blessed event, since PI-S and @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social are now reportedly linked.

I bought Everything Will Swallow You, not from Amazon, directly as a result of seeing this post. A tiny gesture but every little helps, I guess. I look forward to reading it.

Oliver Lopez-Moore III Esquire is a world-renowned lawyer, philanthropist, and sommelier who specializes in immigration law and Napa Valley blends.

Bit of an intro to me, and my writing, for new followers: www.tom-cox.com/about/

OK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE WE GET IT. YOU WOULD RATHER NOT BE UNLUCKY.

Oddly, I also bought Villager yesterday for very similar reasons!

One good thing about my new home in Edinburgh is that there's a lovely independent bookshop on my regular walking route, and it's now the first port of call when I'm looking for a book.

Was looking for a gift for the neighbours cat so did a google to see if Philippa was launching a perfume collection. *did spell the name wrong. ** sorry no alt-text on this.