Confirmed bachelor. Writing about queer & disability representation. Only watching anything for the queer-coded villains. Opinions my own.
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Bonus is that anyone who walks in UK knows that the rudest, loudest people out there are the boomer rambling groups - constantly walking 4-abreast to shove other walkers off the path - so I'd really enjoy a film where this is resolved via Black Shuck/ Heathcliff's malevolent ghost.
I don't like found-footage horror - partly because it's 99% YOUTHS, and youths are annoying to my eyes & ears. But I might be in the market for old people filming their walk of the Pennine Way and you just glimpse a ghost accidentally between tea rooms & interesting clouds & tutting about litter.
I almost added that exact point! I definitely remember that!
Years of dealing with racists has taught me that all racists are also misogynists, so when they say “protect our women and girls”, they are only speaking half the sentence out loud. The full sentence is “protect our women and girls because they are OUR prey”.
Someone online pointed out: where were these 'protectors' when young white men wth cars were constantly loitering outside school gates when I was a teen in the 90s? Now when I see white men on facebook frothing rabid about 'Pakistani grooming gangs', I put 2+2 together.
This is terrifying. It's impossible to overstate what an immense threat to our human rights this Labour government poses.
If you can’t see how attacking this could have hugely dangerous implications for every single person living in the UK irrespective of citizenship or immigration status, I do not know what to tell you.
Ok, hear me out. A Lord of the Rings re-make, but with these two taking the One Ring to Mordor:
Tbf when I saw Sydney Sweeney, I was triggered by how this gen z girl somehow has the face of a St Giles Rookery baby-farmer. "Them little 'uns are wiv the angels now, Gawd bless 'um!'
You're surely too tall, anyway
I think about this policy of dehumanisation when I read of schools withholding toilet access nowadays.
That has to be the first question one asks an a&e nurse, surely
Oh there was so much more. Headhunter tattoos. A fond recollection I won't repeat on here cos kids will say homophobic/ gay stereotype - but very interesting re tolerance in 1960s working class. Also, Rudolf Hess. Teachers long retired now!
Young people today don't get to derail the lesson by asking 'sir, tell us about your National Service', and hear an auld scouser with love & hate knuckle tatts reminisce about the time he buried a hippy alive in a flowerbed 'but we planted the flowers back: it was the sixties.'
If we want to prepare them for work and life in a future we can’t yet foresee, we need to get them comfortable with engaging complex questions for which there aren’t pat, universal “correct” answers.
If we really want to prepare students to engage with the changed landscape of day-after-tomorrow, teaching them rote what’s and how’s about today is a losing proposition. A) they’re already learning today’s tech through trial-and-error, and B) it’s going to evaporate before they graduate.
I am openly absolutely fucking useless academic 99% of the time, so on the 1% occasions where I am brilliant, I'll enjoy everyone glaring at me with seething murderous rage like Salieri at Mozart.
I quite enjoyed this anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...
You're so lucky - you got to see that dance routine for the first time 😍
Bluesky right now ...
i don’t like the idea of the president missing. he could be anywhere. i am suddenly aware how little i appreciated opening my shower curtain knowing the president would not be standing there
I apologise - will delete, as I've misunderstood.
Another thing that reawoke my appreciation was people on here talking about Tolkien's WWI experience. Now I can see it!
I absolutely agree. Although at 8 I thought it was an adult book. Then as a teen decided it was childish. Then as an adult was angry that this language nerd clearly doesn't understand how a novel works... Now middle-aged and love that nerd's dedication to his elaborate, decades-long fantasy project.
I dont know why I'm 'liking' this post. I do not like it. I am going to lie awake tonight fretting over how and why all of this has happened.
I've scrawled it on my current book chapter draft thinking I AM GENIUS THIS IS LIKE WHEN KEANU SAW THE MATRIX. But I'll probably wake up tomorrow and realise it's nuts.
Yes Dr Squires in 1893 said that letting tuberculosis run riot is the stupidest eugenics idea! Unless you want 1/3 of population chronically sick with TB (estimated in England 1835). The more I read, though, the more I sense eugenicists DROOLING at the idea of overseeing an orgy of human suffering.
In fact he tried this really explicitly with Little Father Time 'boys of this sort springing up nowadays' thing, but I am the only one who goes along with it (and argued for it publicly, because I am not ashamed)
/ and I was going wait. What? WHO. THE FUCK. IS DAWN. Anyway I suspect Hardy just asserted this type of woman is everywhere and you all know her, and somehow everyone went yes of course, Buffy's lil sis Sue Bridehead, who has been here all along.
Having a wild thought about how Thomas Hardy said 'Sue Bridehead is a new type of woman that exists everywhere nowadays' and 1890s critics went oh yes I know these women And I'm remembering the episode of Buffy where her sister was being a whiny kid and everyone was going ha ha that's our Dawnie/
Reply with an image from your comfort movie 🎥🖤 (yes, watched again this this evening). I've been watching you - especially you - prancing like a tit. YOU WANT WORKING ON, BOY.
Hardy's Jude the Obscure, if you're not too specific about the ethnicity of the travelling communities you're looking at. Decades since I read it, but surely Morpurgo's Mr Nobody's Eyes. A boy befriends a chimp in dreary post-ww2 London.
“What if the Brontës met a vampire?” I was asked this question last week and I think I have the answer! Some silliness for you your Friday. #c19th #vampires #brontës #WutheringHeights #Friday
This cartoon has triggered a miraculous epiphany. I tutted & disagreed... and then suddenly the novel Emily Brontë: Vampire Slayer was born fully-formed like Athena from my head 😱 (Ok I definitely agree about Anne, though. That's going to make the story funnier)
Totally forgot this absolutely fantastic “god forbid a man has hobbies” leaflet in the pub last week.
Oh that's smart. My mum was just told to straighten mine by hand, and I'm sure walking on wonky feet is why I got osteoarthritis in my toe so young
Yes - I always felt that when Skynet becomes self aware it won't be by anything humans programmed, and the people who made it to enslave will be the least able/ willing to recognise it. The fact that tech bros who apparently despise thought & art are insisting 'it's alive' is a clue that it isn't.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/were... I think she agrees that no, LLM is not a step to true AI. It's not even on the same ladder.
Tbf the author of Murderbot has spoken well about this!
Human impulse to hurt robots is extremely ugly. After the Murderbot finale I had to rewatch Alien Prometheus/ Covenant to feel better. But seriously I think people's WILDLY violent reaction to annoying helpless 'not really a person' things is 🚩We all can or will be in that category at some point.
Will spend the rest of my life considering how we were rushed into "going paperless" for the good of the environment only for the next generation of digital tools to become far worse for the environment.
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But I dunno about non stick
I use bicarbonate of soda & hot/boiling water for a lot of things
Marketing departments showing what they think a university is. We really have to start reminding people that what makes a university is teaching & research, as they seem to use the deprioritisation as a way to make staff low-priority... #UKHE
I may have sung Folsom Prison Blues at one point
I suspect 'return to the office' noise from bosses is part of a bigger capitalist thing of wasting all our social energy at work to stop us having community outside. Extreme case cos autistic, but when I was off sick I could see family & friends. Even part-time work drains me to zero. Nothing left.
Similarly, the AI boom has forced teachers who actually care about student learning to radically reconfigure their classes in order to disincentivize students from using the cheating machines they now have easy access to and which systemically undermine student learning. No one asked for this.
The more things I've made, the less I've been interested in publicly criticizing the things that other people make, because once you make a few things you start to understand what a miracle it is that anything gets made at all
When our Christianity makes the ultra wealthy and powerful feel safe and supported and the poor and powerless feel unsafe and unsupported, that is when we can be sure we are following someone other than Jesus.
My dad said this happened to him on the night I was born (obviously he was waiting back at home. In our haunted house...). A cold ghostly hand gripped his hand.
Why did I not know @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social wrote the screenplay for The Claim???! I just got the dvd out to rewatch for my Mayor of Casterbridge chapter! The frontier resetting is 🔥 . It makes total sense.
I've said it before and I will say it again. The same people that want you to work until you're 75 won't hire you after 50.
Good night, Frog.
Sometimes when my cat meows at me I ask “Is that a fact or just your opinion?” and if he meows again I know it’s a fact but if he goes silent I know the fucker was bullshitting me
The Luddites were skilled workers! They weren’t opposed to “technology,” they were opposed to political-economic systems of domination juiced by new techs! They didn’t want their lives ruined!
If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered.
It took a long time for society to acknowledge & adopt clean water and handwashing in healthcare. Now we’re at another uncomfortable juncture where we need to adopt clean indoor air & adapt to airborne pathogens & masking in healthcare. The few advocating for this face apathy & worse. #COVID
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when Poland joined the EU and there was so much anti-immigrant bigotry being yelled around, I always remember that the Mirror did a big double-page spread on heroic Polish airmen who joined the RAF in WW2
This is like in World War Z (the book, not the rubbish film), where they eventually realise they need to ditch fancy weapons cos the best anti-zombie weapon is a shovel.
I guess similarly, in my country, a great conservation innovation has been... go back to using heritage breed livestock to manage sensitive habitats. Or reintroduce the beavers that were hunted to extinction 400 years ago. I have never seen a weed wrench! Sounds exciting!
But you have to know enough about what to expect to notice if something is odd. Coming in like 'I have no concept of what "fiction" is, but this text called "a novel" features made-up characters in made-up scenarios of which I do not approve!!!' is not insight. And yet... so much. So confidently.
yes same! So many passages I would just skim past, but a student will spot them and say no, this bit is important.
I've always insisted my students can bring fresh insights to texts I studied for decades, because they're fresh minds! Then online I see 'insights' that are so strident & 'radical' because the person... doesn't seem to know what a narrator is. Or what fiction is. And doesn't know they don't know...
aw! I just want it to be happy.
Is the alien ok, though? I hope people are being kind to it this time.
You know how much faculty stress could be avoided by just consulting faculty first before forcing unwanted and expensive technology on them? So much. There is literally no upside to pouring money into tech faculty will have to work hard to avoid (dreaded "smart"boards in my uni).
Their memorials are history. Ours are political. Because as always, there are two sexualities - straight, and political. Two genders - male, and political. Two religions - Christian, and political. Two races - white, and political.
I'm not a Christian, but I will hold onto: what you do to the least of these, you do unto me
I use it, but the lack of proper clipboard is a real hindrance for writing/ editing. Word clipboard holds 24 items I think. Libre only 1. Unless there's a proper clipboard I don't know about!
I dont know facts at all! But 🤷
Tbf I think it fits Flint's characterisation that he's into Group Project rather than sex with any gender. It's so much queerer this way! But apparently some guys freaked out about the 'gay twist' in s2, so it's hard to not suspect someone chickened out about showing m/m sex overall.
Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."
by contrast I have the teeth of a skeleton an archaeologist digs up and says this medieval peasant was gnawing coarse grains & gravel
If you can recommend any movies from your area, I'll look them up too!
If I remember the original story is about displacement of working-class communities in slum-clearance after the Blitz? (and going back, industrialisation, Enclosure?). But I bet an English movie would drop that, cos you would not believe how We Do Not Talk About Enclosure here. The root of all evil.
From a writer group post someone sent me: "...the attitude now is so exclusive and unwelcoming for those of us who are either pro-AI or use AI" GOOD JOB, EVERYONE, KEEP MAKING THEM FEEL UNWELCOMED, YOUR SHAME IS WORKING. 🥰
Im thinking of a specific Clive Barker folk-horror kind of story (set in England) which makes a political/historical point. But I *suspect* an English movie adaptation would be twaddle. However, that same story got adapted in US as CANDYMAN. Now you have a movie that is FORCED to say something.
Omg! BORDER (2018). I did not enjoy obligatory Scandi Noir subplot, but the style worked. This film felt so deeply personal to me as late-diagnosed autistic, and I can't even touch upon what it might be saying about Indigenous experience in that region. FRÉWAKA (2025) Irish Gealic fairy horror!
Honestly it feels that way. Even big stuff like Wicker Man and Witchfinder General feels to me too much like 'what if everyone got a bit carried away for a while?'
Yes no doubt! But I am seeing serious history in an Irish movie and a Swedish movie I saw just last week! So I'm annoyed at seeing yet more nonsense movies about a spooky hotel or a weird village, when there is a Swedish fairytale movie about 20thC state eugenics right there.
I keep watching English folk horror and being disappointed over and over. 'what if a village fete was SINISTER??'
Ok I'll delete because it's definitely being misread! I think US folk horror can & does address it, tho I wonder whether obligation to do so makes many US horror movies timid about going back in time. Contrast: English folk horror does use long timespans but IMO seems too often to evade 'history'.
No I mean that so many US horror films/ shows themselves make that assumption. It's really odd. They could go way back. THAT SAID, I'm seeing interesting US folk horror (?) about the racist development of/ abandonment of suburbia where that historical limitation is very smart.
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Do not accept this framing. Our teaching is fine. Education does not require a new fancy tech product to help us meet the needs of the market. Because the market’s current needs are actually that we stop agitating about their vicious business practices and the policies that promote them.
We are about to head into a new academic year, and we are going to be told over and over again that we need to reform our teaching to meet the needs of “the market,” that everything is wrong with what we’re doing, & that the market itself provides educational technologies that will help.
Do not accept the premise that education is to blame for abysmal jobs outcomes. “The fantasy economy's framing of economic inequality… focuses exclusively on education…deflects attention away from decades of public policies and changing business practices that have…contributed to stagnating wages”
My job as a professor is not to create a serviceable worker. My job is to help foster thoughtful citizens or community members. If that sounds fanciful it’s bc corporate interests have spent decades framing how we talk about education so they don’t take the heat for immiserating labor conditions.
In Palm Royale I did not understand anything that was happening or why. It was like a fever dream of monstrous Fanny Cradock drag queens. Also inexplicably Ricky Martin is the pool boy. 10/10.
Murderbot would be OBSESSED with Palm Royale. The costumes & wigs & drama & INTRIGUE is as wild as Sanctuary Moon!
If anyone wants to know what else is going on in England besides austerity & bigots Tonight I could hear jingling outside my house and it was those ffing morris dancers again
Funnily enough, Murderbot is about an autistic killer-robot whose main motivation is 'I just want to watch my shows, for mental health reasons.'
Deadloch and Murderbot both made me laugh out loud! I also recommend Palm Royale on apple for pure escapism
There was a lot of stuff in my timeline today that I enjoyed, but couldn't repost with a clear conscience, because it didn't have alt text. If you're not sure on the whys and hows of alt text, I'm happy to answer questions and share tips. You can even DM me about it if you like.
not exactly a hot take but if you’re like “I need gen ai because art is so hard to learn, I can’t do it” you gotta address your issue of feeling like you have to be good at something to do it. Drawing a picture and having people respect your skills are different things, which do you really want?
University admins need to be more afraid of losing the confidence of their faculty than they are of missing out on the next tech fad
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oh I dont mean you just not liking a story! I mean people who are angry that fiction isn't instructing them on moral conduct like Fordyce's Sermons For Young Ladies