next song on my randomiser: "It Was Acceptable In The 80s". Indeed, yes. Well done oracle of iTunes.
I write novels (eg The Power, new novel is The Future), I make games (eg Zombies, Run!), unorthodox Jew. not-getting-into-pointless-arguments-on-the-internet is an act of revolution. However complex you think things are, they're more complex than that
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next song on my randomiser: "It Was Acceptable In The 80s". Indeed, yes. Well done oracle of iTunes.
I presumed they'd put her there to shut her up about all the stuff she knows? Eventually they'll send in someone with a syringe full of morphine to the scalp and then the details of the bungled Bolivian mission will disappear with her memories.
oh I like this one! ohhhhh the narrator of Shania Twain's song Don't Be Stupid is in an ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP OF COERCIVE CONTROL he even gets suspicious when she *paints her nails* the song isn't going to work, babe. run.
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right! this is basically what I was imagining! a nice comfy one-bed assisted living flat.
just a second: is Bartleby the Scrivener a sketch comedy?
it's an underdog/top-dog thing. you're a loveable underdog if you're a plucky pensioner trying to solve a crime. once you clearly have deep roots in SIS and by the look of it ÂŁ20m in the bank then I would like to see you have the grace and embarrassment (and poss shell-shock) of Peter Wimsey.
to say nothing of how it plays when INCREDIBLY RICH white ladies with: a) a background in secret service or b) a daughter who runs a hedge fund decide it's perfectly OK to make a scene in a police station so they can... unapologetically take up the Black female police officer's time?
listen I don't disagree that we all need to pay our Slayer Tax. but just *confronting* the idea that *money is needed* rather than an effortless "oh yeah people just live in massive houses and there's always food in the fridge and no visible means of support" was good.
thank you! I read it (and, er, didn't finish it) in 2020 so my memory is very very vague!
also Hacks! I have no problem with a character being clearly very very rich if you also see *how they made the money* and it is a character point that spending that time making that money does indeed leave you less time for other things. life is tradeoffs, Deborah Vance made her choices.
(see also High Potential, by Buffy writer Drew Goddard. in which the very very clever hero is also working class and needs *a job*.)
yeah. a decision I strongly respect in Buffy is that after her mum died she had to go and get a job. and it absolutely sucked. and Anya is *good with money* and everyone is like "oh wow, OK, yes that is a skill". and Giles asks for *back pay* from the Watchers Council.
I mean he says he wrote it having visited one of these places? I believe it probably exists, I just really imagined something more like the care home in Finchley my granny was in and at that point it was at least heartwarming. This is just... oh it's about Very Entitled People Being Entitled.
I think it feels somehow *particularly bad* to me because it's elderly people? And I'd love to be able to pay for that type of thing for my dad? I feel it a lot less strongly for myself, when it's "oh a person lives in a much bigger house than me in an expensive area of London".
from probably too much googling on this: nope.
anyway I've turned it off and gone back to High Potential which is cute and funny and is not making me massively sad about all of the elderly people in the UK who are not housed in stately homes by their extremely famous former professional athlete sons
it is properly eye-popping in the movie. they live in enormous apartments in a stately home, their days are spent eg doing life-drawing classes. their kids are MEGA RICH eg hedge fund managers. you know, I'm doing *very fine* but this all just made me sad that I can't pay for it for my dad.
like I was imagining the kind of perfectly fine care home my granny spent her last years in. but the movie makes it clear that no, they have A LOT OF MONEY. which all makes the "no a property developer can't turn this into more homes" plot less um sympathetic?
someone has just liked this (hi!) from two years ago precisely as I was about to tweet the following: Thursday Murders Club. the problem with making a thing into a movie is that it is obvious when you see it that all these characters are *incredibly rich* with retirement plans I can't hope for
Here is a useful report on the many different kinds of inequality and poor outcomes experienced by the approx 500,000 Irish Traveler, Roma and Gypsy people in the UK publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/...
I think itâs not that no oneâs talking about it, but that no one knows what to do about it. Typically in the UK life outcomes are not purely white > non-white. The worst health outcomes are for white Gypsy, Romany, Irish Traveler, Bangladeshi and Pakistani ppl www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-...
in what sense do they "discard" their training data? I am genuinely interested. my understanding is that they sometimes eg reproduce entire sentences from the New York Times or an image from Nabokov ("democracy of ghosts" in Altman's promoted AI short story was lifted from Pnin)
Is the general point in the letter: that humans learn by discarding previous training wheels but LLMs donât do that incorrect?
Always delighted to learn more, if you have something to point me towards!
I would say a lovely thing about doing it at this age is that I have no expectations. I just enjoying every part of the process. I went into it thinking âIâm going to have SCALES to do! Like a person learning the piano! Scales!!â
what a nice morning to block this person
Very very good letter in the FT magazine this morning pinpointing what humans definitely do when we âlearnâ and why machine LLM âlearningâ isnât that. (And also why LLMs take up so much more energy than we do for thinking.)
anyway I can highly, highly recommend: - Sew Torn - Misericordia - Freaky Tales none of which I had heard anyone talking about, I just watched them because they had high RT ratings and seemed like they might be my kind of thing. all absolute bangers, warmly commended to you.
having done film-award judging for the first time last year, I am a full convert to "don't try to figure out what the movie is, just watch the movie". the goal is to get to know what's going on in movies. you can always stop if you're not enjoying it.
can I recommend to you how to have a really great time? go and look at the best movie of any given year list on Rotten Tomatoes. don't read too much about the movies, just the couple of lines there. if it sounds like you might like it, watch it. editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-n...
Oh really?! That sounds great!
Not only did I read the Virgin New Adventures, I have subsequently befriended Rebecca Levene (sheâs a very good friend, and just occasionally I still think âomg Rebecca Levene! Virgin New Adventures editor!!!â)
funny, I thought Andor - like Watchmen - was about stories. how the stories we like to tell, the ones that really push our buttons, the stories about the Big Hero doing One Amazing Thing to solve our problems are damaging fantasies that stop us understanding the world.
I have not written two books about it, but I think it's a book about how terrifyingly fallible all leaders are, how appalling it is to put (let's say) atomic power into the hands of one 'great man', how much humans crave to believe in an infallible Daddy and how much he does not exist.
ah I really loved Andor, and really did not want more muppets and space battles. I don't think there's a totally hard-and-fast rule other than "it works if it's *really really good* and not if it's not good, make things that are good"
yes that stuff for sure has to move as you get older or something has really gone wrong.
I watched The Sound of Music every day (yes) when I was seven. And yes, now I perceive it mostly as a story about Captain Von Trapp, about what it take to face down Nazism and as an adult after loss and tragedy to continue to allow yourself to be moved by love and kindness.
I dunno, I watched Logopolis with my mum when I was a child and we both enjoyed it just fine. It's not "can adults enjoy it?" it's "have children stopped enjoying it?"
ah I see, you're talking about recognition of your place in the lifecourse. don't keep seeing yourself as a child when you are 54. yeah. also don't get super-competitive with an eight-year old at a game.
sorry. it was fairly OK when it was just two adults meeting at different points. until they decided they were going to put the baby into his arms. that was an absolutely awful creepy horrible decision. in general a good rule for life is: don't fuck someone you - as an adult - once held as a baby.
ooh yes
I find it quite reassuring how much of myself - my enthusiasms, interests, even my intellectual methods - is recognisably the same as I was at 12.
I sat down when I was about 10 or 11 and took one apart and then made my own with ribbon and cardboard to figure out exactly how it worked. I just found it *so pleasing*. similarly: much of my games narrative knowledge comes from mapping out & reverse-engineering Fighting Fantasy gamebooks
interesting, say more? I think there are some things I like in surprisingly pretty much the same way. eg: (randomly looking round the room) a Jacob's Ladder toy can still give me that same feeling of delight at the illusion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob's...
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there's some great stuff in New Who, I think, but yeah The Doctor is asexual. he just is. he's a lovely asexual man who knows a lot of things and wants to share his childlike wonder at the universe and also help people when he can. otherwise it gets real creepy real fast.
Do they... do they think dinosaurs are not real? And it's like being super into dragons?
it's literally all process at this age. it's great. I'm not going to become a person who can just like play the piano at soirees while singing Noel Coward songs. I'm just going to be someone who sits down and does my scales with a big grin on my face, and gets to work on the next short piece.
35% of people think that DINOSAURS are mostly for kids? Like, no, when you are a grownup you must focus on the boring elements of history and not the bit with the big roaring monsters? I love basically all these things except model trains and theme parks. I could probably get into model trains.
wow! more people need to talk about this! it's a big transition, but you know it's great how it leaves you able to understand both adults and children in such a real experiential way.
The Doctor never needed a sexuality, sorry, and he specifically didn't need the sexuality where he holds a baby he's one day going to fuck and makes a weird gurning 'sorry about this!' face at that baby's parents. That was the day it stopped being 'for children' and it wasn't a good choice.
I don't feel weird about enjoying things made for children. I grew up as a child myself in fact, and that means I'll always have some things in common with children. But. I do think Doctor Who got itself into deep water when it stopped being mostly 'a children's show that adults can also enjoy'.
The really old-fashioned way: I literally found an advert for a teacher in a grocery shop near me! I donât think the apps look good. You need someone to be able to eg notice when youâre not holding your hands right.
one of the key insights of life is: your body doesn't care if things are boring. it's *really nice* if body and brain are aligned and it's advisable to have a life you find interesting and enjoyable. but fundamentally your body doesn't care that exercise/eating veg/drinking water are boring.
Ridiculous but true: I was feeling incredibly scattered and overwhelmed and EXHAUSTED. Then I noticed that my wee was darker than normal. And I drank 1.5l of water. And now I feel much, much better.
Stroud Book festival full programme stroudbookfestival.org.uk/events/ announced and @naomialderman.bsky.social is doing event on 8/11
also getting exercise most days makes you feel physically and mentally better, so does eating fruits and vegetables, and the more time you specifically allocate for reading the more books you read. it's all quite annoying.
I am quite seriously thinking about starting a maths degree for fun?
which one do you really fancy? I have fancied the piano for DECADES. thought it was ridiculous to make space in my house for a big thing like that without knowing if I'd like it. But then... a bunch of difficult stuff happened and making room for my happiness didn't feel ridiculous anymore.
5) also: some days for an unknown reason a bit of a piece that I'd found easy is suddenly almost impossible! and it's fine, because the next day or the day after it'll be back. or I get to understand it in a new way by re-learning it. like something about it hadn't quite bedded in before.
this is one of the most amazing things. you do it more and you get better at it. slowly, sure. but you do.
4) I know we all know this but also: god it is wonderful to have something in life that you don't have to be good at, that you'll never be that good at, that you do purely because you love it. There is no pressure on it. It doesn't matter if I take six months to master a short piece.
I have a very good teacher who is prioritising stuff I like - probably also easier at this advanced age to say specifically what you enjoy. I am VERY early on. I can play 2.5 things: Autumn Leaves, a Bach Minuet and Mozart's Turkish March quite slowly (but growing in confidence). Plus two scales.
just understanding how much goes into creating just one tiny piece of music is... sorry, it's really moving? Humans over centuries putting this effort into beauty. 3) it is basically like social media - you move your hands over a keyboard. But at the end you feel nice and not horrible.
2) goodness it makes you appreciate music of all sorts so much more. I unironically love Pachelbel's Canon, I don't care if it's cheesy it's beautiful. I watched this today and thought: with a LOT of practice I could get to do this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HygV... but like: someone WROTE that?
and then you just do it again and again and again and from day to day there's some little improvement and you start to understand the music from the inside a bit. Oh yes, it steps *down* here and there's that *jump* here and then you do one little bit right and it sounds good.
I took up learning the piano this year - having never learned to play an instrument or even read music, though I can sing - and I just cannot tell you how good it is. 1) it is AMAZING how you get better at each piece. they start off a mess of notes & having to move your hands to where? where?
I still cannot hold in my mind the distinction between Sam Harris and Dan Harris.
This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively âwe legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happenedâ
FLOUR was originally FLOWER. The same word as the one we use for blooms etc. How come? Well, the idea comes from the notion of what's best or finest. The flower is the finest bit of the plant. The flour is the finest bit of the ground grain. They are the same word. Totally blew my mind!
I installed ESUIT AD Blocker for Facebook which for ages just blocked the ads but I think now Facebook's changed something and I can't see any Facebook posts at all, only DMs. I feel I've been waiting for this functionality for 20 years.
my Facebook ad blocker is now blocking all posts on the timeline, but not the messenger window. seems perfect, no notes.
![[social media post, text only] I still think my favorite thing that's ever happened to me on the internet is the time a guy said](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:f4iesqtkfladdoarowlki64t/bafkreiellukjgpr2z7aeanta5ozjxtlnbvls2atyuzre2pzpnb4u4e3mxy@jpeg "Click to view full size")
I just want the good stuff. I want to be able to define the good stuff for myself and for my phone to be on my side in getting what I want not constantly trying to trip me into compulsive loops of self-loathing to get me to buy more stuff. I want the objects I own to support the way I want to live.
thinking about this, while I understand the concept of getting a dumb phone, what I really want is a phone that *will* allow me access to the internet but only eg: - Wikipedia - archive.org - the BBC, the FT and NPR - every library I belong to and all of their online services including JStor
Shakespeare reorganised: SFF: Hamlet, Macbeth, Midsummer Nightâs Dream, The Tempest Literary: King Lear, Henry IV parts 1&2 Horror: Titus Andronicus Crime: Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar Ethnic interest: Othello, Merchant of Venice
It is interesting that eg Shakespeare is divided into tragedy, comedy, history, other. Not eg âdoes it have a ghost in it? Does it have a magic spell?â I would like a bookshop divided into âhappy endingâ, âsad endingâ, âtrue kindaâ, âoddâ.
Obviously also commercially it is better if you happen to be someone whose chest-bursters all fit in one section of the bookshop. As for me, I am struggling (but not succeeding) to convince myself that the book after the next one should *not* be a murder mystery set in Ancient Greece.
I know I sound a bit faux-naive. I obviously intellectually understand the various genres and how to write criticism on them. But itâs just not like that inside when Iâm working on a book in my experience. Something wants to come out, you find out what it is as after it bursts out of your chest.
And someone else is like âIâm a walking expert. Your style is 3B!â âOK? đ€·đ»ââïžâ I get that people are attached to these labels and thereâs stigma on some of them but not others which is aggravating. It mostly seems like bollocks to me, I like reading good books, all sorts.
Yeah. Itâs just fundamentally a question a novelist is not equipped to answer because itâs a marketing question not a creative question. Itâs like you walked down the road and someone said âhow would you define your walking style?â âI dunno. Walking?â
(I was a bit disappointed that my first two novels were straight realism. Straight realism was never what I most enjoyed reading - although more so now. But you just write the book thatâs in front of you to write.)
The thing is: when youâre writing the novel you canât ask yourself these questions. You just write the novel. Itâs someone elseâs job to tell you where in the bookshop it goes or what prizes itâs eligible for. You just go âI have a weird idea, I think I have to write itâ.
like, I cannot overstate how much you used to have to *go to France* to FIND FRENCH. not to 'perfect your French' or 'understand French in context'. there were books from Grant & Cutler but otherwise: to literally find pieces of text or to hear audio in French, you had to get on a ferry to France.
BRB just going to listen to a PODCAST IN FRENCH. When I was doing French GCSE I had to try to tune my radio into France on the AM band and OCCASIONALLY when the weather was right Iâd get a few comprehensible sentences of news. Instead of video calls for practice we had horrible French exchanges.
Sometimes I feel sad and afraid about living through an information crisis. But also: bloody hell it is exciting how easy it is to learn things now compared to when I was a teenager. Literally searching and reading 15th century manuscripts from home? Satisfying curiosity on ANYTHING? Breathtaking.
Thank you!!
Thank you, I will read!
I am interested by what youâre saying! Do you have a link for me to read about this?
I mean I look at all these beautiful teenagers and I think "oh yeah, I remember being bullied by you when I was a fat kid, and how there wasn't even an internet to find people to talk to".
anyone saying "we should do this quickly" or "we should be shouting about this" no, we need to do this slowly, and boringly. it is good sense and it has to be done in a way that doesn't feel emotionally challenging for a nation that was ripped in half by the stupid referendum.
this is the way. I'm impressed with Starmer's approach on UK-EU regs. exactly right: focus on consumer products that we all understand shouldn't be delayed by border checks (eg meat, cheese), and also very boring unglamorous regulations. *bring prices down* is an excellent message.
She had some man with her - I donât know who he was but Iâm sure NOT Jeffrey Epstein. in retrospect he was doing some âwing-manâ stuff for her with me. âAsk Ghislaine about Sarajevo, she has amazing stories, sheâs basically Indiana Jones.â They were very skilful. I would have gone to a party.
(I asked myself afterwards why on earth she was doing âcross a little boundaryâ grooming on me, a fat lady novelist in my 30s. I can only conclude that she did it with everyone, as a reflex, in case they might come in handy at some point.)
I will say that I think itâs hard to remember subsequently when exactly everyone knew what. Though it looks like it was certainly possible to find out about the allegations in 2013 I really had no idea and didnât find it on a subsequent curiosity Google about her.
She was so much fun at that dinner that I now regard having that much fun with a total stranger as a SIGNIFICANT red flag. She was constantly encouraging me to cross little boundaries with her. How loud could we swear before anyone heard us? Again now feels sinister as fuck.
Iâm not mad about this. I was seated next to Ghislaine Maxwell at a BirdLife international dinner in 2013. I had no idea about any reporting on her and only knew her as Robert Maxwellâs daughter. But then neither BirdLife nor I have the Clintonâs capacity to research people.
on the specific point of social media, I still seem to be agreeing with the thought I had yesterday: that given the extreme ease of posting, I think laws on social media incitement ought to put weight on "did you take your stupid shit down quickly, or did you double down on it?"
I definitely don't disagree with that.