Hot Ones for literary authors but instead of wings and sauce it's painfully earnest compliments on their work from Goodreads.

Bede's World! Bede's World! Party time! Venerable!

My brother-in-law is a gaffer and my sister-in-law is a makeup artist — what they see in a film is wild.

Deidre Lynch@drbibliomane.bsky.social · 20h ago

You can/should read Emily Wilson's latest take on the Odyssey, but I'm logging on to convey my hairdresser's reaction. She was AGHAST that Nolan, with his million $ budget, gave Matt Damon ONLY 6 hair extensions. As a result, his hair did not blow around properly, & that ruined the film for her.

The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the craters for volcanoes

Wrote off my car today — hit a patch of bad gravel, lost traction, corrected, slid, corrected, slid, almost had it, then ran out of road — hit an embankment. My first thought was, how will I get to work tomorrow? Precarity leaves such a shadow on the soul.

"What we are hearing from community members and leaders on the ground is that people are now apprehensive or scared to go out, [and] that, on their observation, the drones appear to be used exclusively in the areas of Moree where we have a high proportion of Aboriginal people.”

NSW Police Drone Surveillance Trial in Moree Is Set to Be Rolled Out Statewide

The NSW Police Force is singing the praises of its six-month trial of drone policing in the Moree region, and the authorities are keen to roll out the devices statewide.

sydneycriminallawyers.com.au

The way it's going, we'll have an Emily Wilson biopic by 2029.

🤘🤘🤘

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 4d ago

I cannot rest from discourse. I will see that film again tomorrow. I will drink life to the lees. Again I will enjoy greatly, will suffer greatly, both with those that love me, and in Pleasantville NY. I am become a meme. Film showing: burnsfilmcenter.org/booking/the-...

Bus just went past with an ad for Southern Cross Uni — "in the top 500 universities in the world!" — and I love to think that someone was paid for that.

As technology advances and maintaining a capitalist economy becomes even more absurd, the response from governments and corporations has been to come up with ever more brutal ways to engineer scarcity. We've always had everything we need for a just world, but it's so easy now they have to fight it.

Authors are going to fight for compensation for AI eating their books and the government will respond by outlawing second-hand book sales.

For me it's Edmund Burke — I will always swerve to hit Edmund Burke.

Rafe Meager (they/them)@economeager.bsky.social · 6d ago

people are like "em1ly w1lson went out of her way to be abrasive" but i just don't think that's true. a lot of us are just like this. at one point in his ancient greece lectures donald kagan *just as a random aside* says he thinks rousseau is a "poisoned apple in the history of the human race"

How do you do, fellow humans?

Josh Taylor@joshtaylor.bsky.social · 7d ago

The new premier's reading pile from last year, posted without comment.

AI companies attempting to engineer book scarcity is really giving away the ending.

One thing Emily Wilson's review gets really right is the peculiar politics of Nolan's films — many of which are deeply conservative even as they think they're liberal. I find it really chilling, the way this seems to appeal to so many, aesthetically and emotionally.

This was also a great review.

Elias Greig@eliasgreig.bsky.social · 3w ago

Brilliant from Stephanie Zacharek: "We’ve reached a point where we get so few extravagant, ambitious studio movies that we’re expected to collapse with gratitude whenever we're presented with one. That’s not opening ourselves to what movies can be; it’s succumbing to a kind of hostage taking."

Soft launching the London Review of Films (LRF)

Just read a comment that described Emily Wilson's review of Nolan's Odyssey as "posh" and I am going outside to lie in the gathering dusk and listen to the night birds until the bad thoughts stop.

Particularly funny watching people try to find ways in which Emily Wilson doesn't know what she's talking about, like, yeah, Emily, sure, but have you seen Die Hard?

If that reviewer had seen the Odyssey in IMAX 70mm they’d realise all their complaints were addressed at the top and bottom of the frame

larger implications aside it’s always funny when an LRB piece breaks containment because it’s like a crowd shows up with machetes on your porch and you are. an old Man whittling whistles or making cups out of willow bark

Trojan 1: I'm just saying, I don't find this giant wooden horse a convincing work— it seems kind of hollow. Trojan 2: Ok, sure, but how often in the Bronze Age does a big studio create something with some complexity? Honestly, we should be grateful it exists at all.

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material." Really pleasing demolition of Nolan's Odysseus and Nolanism from @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social in the @lrb.co.uk

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

lrb.co.uk

Listening to an old interview with Ken Loach and found it somehow deeply shaming that we can't seem to do social realism anymore. Even beyond the obvious, urgent social justice angles, it seems to me there's so much value in simply revealing how the systems of our society work.

I'd be keener on the opposite — "this is a prosaic piece, a functional piece, a piece that has a job and gets on with it."

Belinda Rule@belindarule.bsky.social · 2w ago

have never heard 'poetic' as a self-description from a short story writer who seems like they could write publishable contemporary poetry, tbh. it seems to mean 'slow and heavily descriptive to little purpose', which is close to the definition of a failed short story.

The footage is excellent — you can almost hear them going "hur hur hur" as they set up the sunfish to be exploded.

Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing game

Scientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feed

theguardian.com

I keep shouting into the void that we just need safe affordable housing and income security. Mums who escape domestic violence are incredibly resourceful. With safe housing and income security - maybe legal for broken leases etc - we have lived through worse - we can take care of everything else.

Handwritten note this morning on the noticeboard in town: "Seeking affordable rental for mum and baby". The housing crisis, which was engineered by government, is a direct factor in the murder of women and children — when they need to escape a violent partner they have nowhere to go.

Really enjoyed reading this. Mosman is a weird place. Picked up some lights from there a while ago, and I felt like an intruder creeping through the hills in my car, buying secondhand George Nelson lights like a thief who pays for her pillage.

Elias Greig@eliasgreig.bsky.social · last yr.

Writing thread/very modest archive: 1/6, 'The Whale Ghosts', an essay on whales, wealth, and their ghosts in Australia's richest suburb, "founded" by whale magnate and former slaver Archibald Mosman.

The crisis in university governance would be funny if it didn't matter so much: “This is not an earnest consultation, this is a reactionary response [...] a hysterical response. We are at a point of panic now. That panic has resulted in proposals that could see inclusion go backwards.”

ANU accused of ‘hysterical’ response to students using AI to cheat as unis scramble to ‘secure’ assessments

Australia risks ‘shipping’ intellectual capability overseas if educational rigour not restored, experts warn

theguardian.com