thinking about the Situationists lately. I imagine them saying: "yes, the existentialists were right, we live in a listless world devoid of intrinsic meaning. But- and hear me out -what if marxism can destroy the ennui & make us always spontaneous and fulfilled?" it's a war against depression, no?
It was time for Dad to go and be reunited with Mum. unexpecteddelirium.substack.com/p/single-par...
Single Parenthood & I: The Passing of Time
53 years of age is a little old to be feeling like an orphan, but it's the natural order of things that this should be the case.
unexpecteddelirium.substack.com
I'm looking forward to when we can finally go a day without a story about Trump.
"so much genre fiction is now flat, dull, and moralistic in the worst ways possible, indistinguishable from machines with the same voice, tropes, aesthetics, and bluntly stated metaphors." - @doriandawes.bsky.social on putting the "genAI" in "Genre" www.patreon.com/doriandawes/...
A Little Chat: Genre Fic in the Age of Slop | Dorian Dawes
There is a scene in Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta that is very different from how it was adapted in the 2005 film. Our eponymo
patreon.com
Take me down to the cyberpunk city where the future's bleak and the prose is gritty
Right. Okay. This requires some backstory. In 1984, a small, low budget film studio in North Carolina produced a parody of Star Wars, called Hyperspace. It was released in the U.K. as ‘Gremloids’. The main character, shown here, was Lord Buckethead.
@sharkastic.bsky.social · 4w agoAs it's schism month, I think you should also explain the Binface / Buckethead schism
lots of new people on my feed because of yesterday's jeremiad... and i feel some duty to give a little bit of a pep talk, because, yeah, i get it, that shit's kinda dire, so buckle up, here's the part where i tell you why it's worth it to deal with all the slings and arrows...
The effective way the clarinet player does a musical call and response to the singer is just mesmerizing. "Tu vuo' fa' l'americano" by Renato Carosone: cover by Hetty and the Jazzato Band, an Anglo-Italian jazz quintet. @Rainmaker1973 #globalmuseum #music #jazz
@twoht.bsky.social I really loved the Gerry Rafferty essay.
a new year is here again & folks want to quit smoking or vaping. someone asked last year & to distract myself from electrolysis i did this: the tobacco journey of a reckless, probably not too bright girl who smoked 1-2 packs a day. nazis! accusations of poisoning! psuedo-medical quasi-comas! 🧵1
'What luxury this new council house was.' New on Substack, my post on the council housing of Winchelsea - some of the finest rural council housing I've come across: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/council-ho...
Council Housing in Winchelsea: ‘the working class are not wanted on the hill’
The new town of Winchelsea lacks the planning aesthetic of its more familiar post-war counterparts – there was little attention paid to neighbourhood and streetscape and it suffers from an unimaginative grid-like layout.
municipaldreams.substack.com
This special review of the Russian documentary "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" should be read by everyone. "Putin did not turn the people into a herd; the herd chose him and made him this kind of ruler. Without the consent of millions, none of this would have happened." (A. Makarevich)
The Good Russian Is Not Coming To Save You
And when you tell them that, they will make you pay for it.
thechrissampson.substack.com
couldn't come up with better PR for transgenders than "underground transgender mafia successfully heisted 12 tonnes of Kitkats"
"You gotta mike the box." the engineer Bill Halverson on the making of "Ain't No Sunshine," 1971 (from a Mix interview in 2012)
![“When Bill Withers showed up,” Halverson says, “he comes walking in with his guitar and a straight-back chair, like a dining room chair, and asks, ‘Where do I set up?’ I showed him right in the middle of the room, and then he left and he came back in with this platform, a kind of wooden box that didn’t have a bottom. It was about four inches tall, and was maybe 3 foot by 4 foot; it was a fairly large platform, and he set it down in the middle of the room. Then he put his chair on it and got his guitar out, and he’s sitting on top of this box. So I miked him and I miked his guitar, and then I was doing other things—getting sounds together.
“But then he calls me over and he points down to the box and says, ‘You gotta mike the box.’ Well, the way I was trained, you serve the artist, whatever the artist needs. So I got a couple other mics and I miked the box, the place down near the floor, next to this platform.
“And now, when you listen to ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ you know that all that tapping that goes on [while Withers sings] ‘I know I know I know’ all through it, actually, that’s him tapping his feet on the box, which is actually more intricate than the guitar on that track. He had evidently rehearsed that in his living room, maybe for years.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vtqkh4q3vlh7rltd4tnaweh2/bafkreig3codqyfxdi2er2sqqri34kumkg2izjo4k7gtxp6pfipsxyx3yxe)
A stash of more than 800 mysterious drawings has been revealed for the first time, rewriting the timeline of Aboriginal art and reconnecting families with long-lost relatives.
Hidden artworks rewrite history
A stash of more than 800 mysterious drawings has been revealed for the first time, rewriting the timeline of Aboriginal art and reconnecting families with long-lost relatives.
abc.net.au
A typically incisive piece by Jonno Revanche in Overland on bad essays, Substack writing, and the general state that we’re in overland.org.au/2025/12/with...
With respect to the poor essay - Overland literary journal
Style is now a feature that we surrender to a digital pattern recognition machine, which attempts to replicate our own but often falls short, feeling convincing enough but too superficial in its notic...
overland.org.au
As one of the BBC’s most extraordinary series returns to iPlayer to mark its fortieth anniversary, Jude Rogers speaks to several key members of the team who made the ecologically minded crime thriller Why #EdgeOfDarkness makes so much sense in 2025 buff.ly/nIF9mdh
Fat City is an excellent novel. It’s never left me, that feeling you’re never gonna make it.
Anyone read ONCE IN A HOUSE ON FIRE by Andrea Ashworth? Anyone wonder what happened to her after publishing her one and only book in 1998? Here you go: manchestermill.co.uk/andrea-ashwo...
Andrea Ashworth wrote a classic of Mancunian literature. Why did she vanish from view?
My search for the author of ‘Once in a House on Fire’ led to the other side of the world - and to a tantalising revelation
manchestermill.co.uk
Important lessons for fucking everyone in this piece. How gutless of Scwartz to not put it in print. Correct link here - overland.org.au/2025/04/ando...
Andor in the genocide - Overland literary journal
To discuss season two of Disney’s Andor without discussing the genocide in Gaza would be both morally and intellectually disingenuous, and cowardly in a way that stains. Tony Gilroy knows this, despit...
overland.org.au
Patrick Marlborough@cormacmccafe.bsky.social · last yr.I was commissioned to review Andor for The Saturday Paper. For reasons I’m sure are more than clear, they will not be publishing what I wrote. But here it is anyway, in YNR. open.substack.com/pub/yeahnah/...
‘We know what is happening, we cannot walk away’: how the Guardian bore witness to horror in former Yugoslavia
‘We know what is happening, we cannot walk away’: how the Guardian bore witness to horror in former Yugoslavia
The long read: During the decade-long conflicts, the major powers dithered as Serb militias carried out their brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Guardian reporters became more passionate and more outspoken in their condemnation, attracting praise and criticism
theguardian.com
“The hourglass had been turned and I could see time trickling down; the grains were falling too fast.”
Losing My Dad in Installments - Electric Literature
Back then, it felt easier to say goodbye to each part of him as they left
buff.ly
