Mark Vent
@markvent.bsky.social
Problem-solver. Tech-nerd. Comedy-geek. Magic-fan. Book-lover. Rationalist & Atheist. Swansea Jack. You cannot live as I have lived & not end up like this.
This echo chamber nonsense is predicated on the notion that bigotry is a valid perspective. It isn’t. Grow up! Think better!
Hi @washingtonpost.com thanks for telling me I should resubscribe because you promise to hold power to account. Sadly the reason I canceled my sub was because you’ve already broken that promise. Before they even took power. Shame on you. Signed a sometime contributor as well as former subscriber.
“The problem with Fox News: It won’t broaden our horizons.” “The problem with Truth Social: It won’t broaden our horizons.” “The problem with the Manosphere : It won’t broaden our horizons.” Come back to us when you’ve fixed their echo chambers.
Opinion - The problem with Bluesky: It won’t broaden our horizons: In the wake of Donald Trump’s election win, the social-media platform has enjoyed a surge of new users looking for an alternative to Elon Musk’s X. But will it be useful, if it just creates an echo chamber for the left?
Really enjoyed doing this podcast for Dan (QI / No Such Thing As A Fish) Schreiber. My two favourite topics - comedy and the strange - colliding. Got a chance to talk about life, the universe and everything, as well as the book… https://pod.link/1687199754/episode/026995dcbd9ac34886ef2f588fad7e7a
If you have a bookshop near you, make sure to pop in regularly and check that your favourite bookseller has enough water and is being taken for regular walks (Or just buy a book on their website)
Are they calling it “long-awaited” because they think we will forgot that 10 days ago Israel said Hamas’s HQ was in the basement of a hospital in northern Gaza? Cause we did not forget it was like last week ffs.
From Nigel Kneale’s introduction to the 1973 Folio Society edition of ‘Ghost Stories of M.R. James’, illustrated by Charles Keeping. 📚
My heart obviously breaks for the newborns and children killed but this kind of thing, the killing of an old man in cold blood, is no less horrific to me. x.com/muhammadsheh...
Many thanks to #WedLikeAWord (#stevyncolgan #PaulWaters) and guest #ajaychow for their competition in which I won an #MadeByGoogle Pixel Fold - a wonderful podcast, a great guest and a stunning prize!
Everyone who was on USENET, IRC or had a blog looking at Millennials being labeled "First Gen Social Media Users": The fuck did you just say, my dude www.wired.com/story/first-...
First-Gen Social Media Users Have Nowhere to Go
The collective erosion of X, Instagram, and Facebook marks a turning point for millennials, who are outgrowing a constant need to be plugged in.
wired.com
While everyone is thinking about favourite books, I have a question: if you were to choose a book to read out loud to a loved one (adult), which would it be?
Spotify is a data hosting and handling service. They don’t write any songs. Deciding they can’t be arsed to do the fiddly accounting that comes with their business’ USP (access to all recorded music) is them failing to do their only duty: to handle data and account. Of *course* it’s easier not to.
Remember when I worked in bookselling, knowing that most of a shop’s stock never makes a penny, but it being there at all is what makes a bookshop feel well stocked and attracts customers. We never considered just stealing those books from authors to fill the shelves.
It’s the business model perfected by supermarkets and described in the book Tescopoly. Make suppliers give you their stuff for nothing, then still put it on the shelves. How the ingredients in value added meals are sourced: by rejecting them, not paying for them from farmers, but still using them.
If you say "an established good or service, but you can charge less for it because you don't pay people" into a mirror three times $13bn of seed capital will magically appear.
May we urge you to line up our new Hallowe’en episode on M.R. James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary for your flight from the spectral figure endlessly pursuing you? www.backlisted.fm/episodes/199
199. M. R. James - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary — Backlisted
backlisted.fm
Great news! The Ghost Camera by @bobbyllew.bsky.social has just been funded at Unbound. Pre-order your copy: unbound.com/books/the-gh...
GIVEAWAY! I'm going to give TWO lucky people five paperbacks of their choice - worth up to £50! There'll be one winner on here and one on twitter. Simply retweet and follow by 8pm on Sunday 22nd October for your chance to win! Here's what 5 paperbacks looks like, just in case.
So ... it' appears I'm also here, very much wanting to drop there as soon as all those there are here - in the meantime I vacillate, between two stools as it were ... which is a fine trick if you can pull it off, as the actress said to the bishop ...