I’ll have a go at this. But I won’t worry about the Likes part, as that seems presumptuous. you’ll have the opinions whether you like them or not.
Mo 🌸📚@moplayspoke.bsky.social · last wk.1 like = 1 book question 📚💙
Odyssey: pretty great! Shame it’s a No Ambiguity Zone, every scene putting up a big sign saying “this is how this section advances the themes of the movie”
For me personally, the main effect of the football result is that the gig I’m attending on Sunday night will actually have an audience. At one point I did wonder if it would end up with just me, alone in a field with Black Country, New Road.
I built a duplo version of our house for the toddler, and she’s extending it out in so many directions that it’s starting to feel like Lego House of Leaves
Vertigo is on in the background on the hotel tv, and every time I look up there’s the most beautiful composition possible. Films are good!
Aliya Whiteley's Greensmith is *great*. But it's weird to read a novel where at least part of the idea is a Metafictional Satire of the Structures and Themes Underpinning Doctor Who, when that's also what actual Doctor Who has been doing for most of the last 20 years.
Climate change has many catastrophic effects; one of the more minor ones is that has rendered impossible my policy of Never Wearing Shorts
Rough day, so have a poem about the Jar of Moles in the Grant Zoology Museum in London that everyone has regarded as too thoroughly batshit to publish
I like how the line break turns this into iambic tetrameter.
madeline odent@oldenoughtosay.com · 2mo agothere are convenient moorings on the bank outside the Isis pub
I reckon this is 100% the case in Oxford. Was taken aback by the Big Sainsburys being all flagged up, as I hadn't seen them anywhere else, and it felt like I'd accidentally tumbled into some sort of bad rally.
Ed Jefferson@edjefferson.com · 2mo agoMaybe this will change if the team gets through more rounds but it feels like there are actually less England flags around than there would otherwise have been because people don't want to look like mental racists.
The weird thing is that from one perspective the government has done pretty much everything that I'd want a labour government to do. The employment rights bill, the renters rights bill, massive investment in renewable energy, VAT on private schools... This is *exactly* why I joined the party! /1
And speaking of the shadows creeping in to this city, just got a disgusting online ad for the Oxford Mail that was uncritically lauding *Rupert Lowe*, hawking clicks with him looking all besuited and respectable.
Calum Novak-Mitchell@calumnm.bsky.social · 2mo agoShops closing early in my home city today because a fascist thug has been invited to speak by one of its many centuries-old institutions. On a normal day, Oxford feels like a pluralist and forward-thinking place. Always a jolt when you see the shadows creeping in.
Shops closing early in my home city today because a fascist thug has been invited to speak by one of its many centuries-old institutions. On a normal day, Oxford feels like a pluralist and forward-thinking place. Always a jolt when you see the shadows creeping in.
You can really feel the bump when switching from a novel with perfect, graceful precise prose (Joanna Kavenna’s Seven, what a book) to one that is straining so hard for Poetic and Literary Style that the whole thing feels like undigestible sludge.
Tonight on Mythic Bastionland: our first army-v-army battle; a new npc who the players decided “looks like Lance Reddick, acts like George Michael”, instantly turning him into the coolest guy ever; and a planned sea voyage with a small navy in a way the rules absolutely don’t account for. Good game!
The deep spookiness of seeing a real person read out text that was clearly generated by AI. "This has a powerful impact. It's not just a small change - it's a quiet revolution in how we do things". Oh really - that's a real thought you had and wanted to express is it?
Playing ttrpgs at lunchtime at work means you end up sending some weird MS Teams messages
In Helsinki for work, and I appreciate any city that puts gig listings in their Tourist Information shop. That is why I’m currently watching some Finnish Jazz.
20 pages into this book, and I’m jealous of its doomed 1970s central couple, who may have just bought a haunted mansion, but only paid £40k for it.
There's a lot wrong with this statement, mostly I reckon Granta is ignorant about what AI text looks like. It's got *such* a specific voice, and if you're at all attuned to difference in prose style (and I'm going to assume that a Granta editor is) you can spot it a mile off.
Sam Byers@sambyers.bsky.social · 3mo agoGenuine question: what exactly are we all doing.
Happy to get a score of 44 here, though admittedly the whole "having an english degree" thing is an automatic boost to the numbers. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
The 100 best novels of all time
The top 100 novels of all time published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. How many have you read?
theguardian.com
hey john. its your cousin marvin. marvin cage! you know that new sound youve been looking for? well listen to this *hangs up phone*
Ran a lunchtime ttrpg in the office. Six players, only one had played an rpg before, everyone had a good time. It accidentally became the most classically OSR game I've ever played?
The most tempting thing about this game is that it sounds like an Asterix simulator.
Quinns@itsquinns.bsky.social · 3mo agoOh shit oh golly it's the finale of Quinns Quest Season 2 I could have reviewed other, bigger-name fantasy TTRPGs that would have gotten me more traffic. Instead, I chose to review the one that you should actually know about www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH5-...
Arturo UI at the RSC: proof you can get away with didacticism as long as the play is extremely good. My wife and I were trying to work out if we've ever seen Mark Gatiss be as good in anything else as he is here... and I think not, but only because he's never given anything as chewy as this to do.
@lukegearing.bsky.social seem to remember you writing that you run/ran a one-hour lunchtime game at your work - any advice on how to Make Those Good? I'm starting one up next week in my office
A genuinely unsettling tourist trap on Bank Holiday Monday.
I dreamed last night that a psychopathic five year old had been employed in my office, and was planning to wreck all of our careers. "Why has she been employed?" I cried, "she can't even read!"