Finished @aptshadow.bsky.social's Pretenders to the Throne of God.
My favourite fantasy series by a margin, always creative, moving and full of heart and empathy.
How to classify it? Weird fiction's Andor?
Not sure. But, misery and wickedness, it's damn good.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pretender...
holding old timer bats so they can still feel like flappy lads is some real heartwarming stuff
Meme triptych of Duke Leto and Paul Atreides Text: We must not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Why not? Because people are fucking idiots, Paul. They're just... incredibly stupid.
Misrepresenting the Refugee Convention. It also says this:
There have been MULTIPLE early leaks of scientific discoveries via DECORATED CAKE. Scientists are good at many things, but shutting up is definitely not one of them.
When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.
Every tech post I see now:
Use Blurp for porting ChatGTP nano splines to Claude and maximise your gash tokens for optimal wang performance efficiency in 35 easy steps.
It's the blue canary night light from the song Birdhouse In Your Soul. It's a transparent blue night light in the shape of a canary.
Did you know that They Might Be Giants sell a Blue Canary Night Light?
This is delightful!
tmbgshop.com/collections/...
Everything old is new again
Same here too - we lay under it for hours. Magical.
HMS Irresistible sinking during the Dardenelles campaign, having proved to everybody's satisfaction that the name might just have been a teeny-tiny bit premature after all.
If I'd rushed into a poorly planned campaign around a notorious maritime choke point that left it closed to friendly shipping I'd carefully lay off the Churchill comparisons, but hey...
Panic! at the Sheepfold
I had no idea one of my favourite books had been filmed, and with probably my favourite actor. Thanks!
Jesus wept.
From the French equivalent of The Onion
Seeking revenge, Dubai parachutes 3000 influencers on Tehran.
"We called London a war zone and moved to Dubai by mistake"
One of the things I have become very tired of hearing from the Labour party, before and after getting into government, is the repeated appeals to being serious and grown up.
The current approach to asylum is neither.
It creates more problems and expense as well as being performative cruel.
Absolutely - it's a fundamental flaw of the architecture that you can't just get around with "more training."
An excerpt from Politics by Aristotle (4th Century BCE) transcribed in Fall of Civilizations by Paul Cooper. But he also warns that the Carthaginian system put too much emphasis on the wealth of the rulers rather than their competence, and expresses concerns that this could lead to corruption. (Paul Cooper) "They think that the rulers should be chosen not only for their merit but also for their wealth, as it is not possible for a poor man to govern well or have leisure for his duties ... It is a bad thing that the greatest offices of the state, the kingship and the generalship, should be for sale. For this law makes wealth more honored than worth, and renders the whole state avaricious; And it is probably that those who purchase their office will learn by degrees to make a profit out of it. (Aristotle)
Gosh this Aristotle guy has fresh ideas. I think he's on to something here.
a photo of JG Ballard
“I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.”
—JG Ballard
Reminds me of this recent UK advert: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQkL...
tweet by the late Dawn Foster from Sep 4th 2020 "Matt Goodwin once emailed me to accuse him of being racist when I called him a “racist whisperer” and I had to explain to him that horse whisperers aren’t horses."
RIP to a real one
Bot Outing. A new game for all the family 😆
There are currently 711 bills under consideration that target trans people.
This is an all out assault that has not abated since the moment Republicans understood they could target trans people with little pushback and much support from moderates and liberals.
Not long now until everyone gets to massively over-interpret a by-election, in line with their prior beliefs! Can't wait. Fun times.
some years back i ran a private multiplayer Europa Universalis 4 game for a cross-party group of MPs. All of whom played it regularly already single-player.
It was gloriously fun, full of unexpected alliances and the odd backstab.
some benevolent cyberpunk for you
Bluesky deserves to enjoy this amazing They Might Be Giants experiment, which I can't really summarize in a skeet
tmbw.net/wiki/Last_Wave
This wheel is to the boy squirrel the way that the football is to Charlie Brown and it still makes me laugh every time he tries to use it only to be immediately spun.
