Will Wiles

I'm going to step away from frontline responsibilities for a time to reflect on ways to improve, you're welcome to join me on that journey

I'm sorry. I've lowered the tone, possibly permanently, for everyone, again

A persistently underrated writer - "The Ophiuchi Hotline" would be in the 20th-century SF top 10 for me.

a pickle from rick and morty with the words i 'm pickle rick Alt: Pickle Rick saying "I'm Pickle Rick!" in the Pickle Rick episode of Rick and Morty. Pickle Rick.

I'm afraid my comment was a lot shallower than that

I've been fortunate enough to gain some new followers recently. Welcome, and also, maybe you would like this, if you like listening to things. There are some great comedians in it. It's a long-running story. But it's only up to episode 3 (this weekend).

It's pickle Richard!

"short-lived stint" ... "turned sour" ... "playful contrarianism and healthy disdain for received wisdom" ...

Obituary guaranteed to somewhere contain the word "altercation"

for some reason the sentence "he later turned his turbulent personal life into a series of scurrilous columns in the Spectator" popped into my head fully formed

Exactly! (Hope to see you this evening!)

I'm a peaceable live-and-let-live sort of fellow but I find there's a certain kind of bureaucratic interaction that turns me into Rorschach in about 20 minutes. (Also please note that I am not blaming the embattled people on the other end of the phone, who are as much victims as anyone.)

I often think about the line (from Kafka) about "no central exchange" in Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, where it can seem to be impossible to get to the heart and resolve things (which I quoted in The Way Inn), but the best book about all this was David Graeber's "Utopia of Rules".

And I don't mean purely *state* bureaucracy which can be pretty well designed and efficient - and strictly *private* services are generally fine as well, but the welter of intermediary public-private stuff - the privatised utilities, housing associations, conveyancers, service contractors...

I am convinced that a lot of the meanness, anger and spite in the British public rests in the miserable uphill bureaucracy that has to be continually navigated - the phone queues and voicemails and online form-filling and do-not-reply-to-this notifications, at once all-powerful and powerless.

Szalay - and I say this with the utmost collegial respect and admiration - often has the look of someone who decided to be a highly esteemed author as a prank, but it's gone too far, everyone is taking it very seriously and it's too late to back out.

But will (most) publishers listen? No!

Thank you everyone who reposted and replied to that bit of festive marketing, I really appreciate it. That little book has been the outstanding high point of a lousy year.

This book of Weird Tales rules and I’d strongly recommend it

I really enjoyed these short stories and can confirm it is perfectly sized for a large sock (whilst reading, I carried my copy around in my jacket pocket)

This is (a) recommended and (b) in stock @bookhaus.bsky.social in Bristol.

from a letter by JRR Tolkien to his son Michael: [here is] the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom! This terrible truth, glimpsed long ago by Sam Butler, sticks out so plainly and is so horrifyingly exhibited in our time, with its even worse menace for the future, that it seems almost a world wide mental disease that only a tiny minority perceive it. Even if people have ever heard the legends (which is getting rarer) they have no inkling of their portent. How could a maker of motorbikes name his product Ixion cycles! Ixion, who was bound for ever in hell on a perpetually revolving wheel! Well, I have got over 2 thousand words onto this little flimsy airletter; and I will forgive the Mordor-gadgets some of their sins, if they will bring it quickly to you

J.R.R. Tolkien, literal Butlerian Jihadist

All the best people are!

Renowned for his flamboyant dress sense, quick temper and unconventional business practices, Mayfair property mogul and restaurateur Julienne Slicer passed away yesterday aged 61. Born Julian Hack in Nuneaton, Slicer dropped out of (etc, etc)

Frank Gehry’s frontier spirit Heavily influenced by his artistic contemporaries, the architect created sculptural forms that pushed the limits of design – and revolutionised the idea of the modern museum, writes Christopher Turner

‘The Guggenheim Bilbao made Gehry, at 68, the most famous architect in the world – the personification of the Starchitect,’ writes Christopher Turner. Or, as a 2005 episode of ‘The Simpsons’ had it, ‘the bestest architect in the world’.

No one sends e-cards any more. Fifteen years ago it was one of the innocent delights of advent to wake up to a bulging inbox of broken javascript animations from lettings agents, hairdressers I won't be using again, and hotels I stayed in once. Now, nothing. O tempora, o mores.

‘The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret’ fantastic new acquisition at the National Gallery in London. Absolutely worth it. Just look at that fella.

"There's nothing wrong with the breed, it's just unfit owners that are the problem. He's a gentle giant, so good around the baby, with the proper -- ASMODEUS, STOP THAT AT ONCE!"

There are some there I was unaware existed!

Thank you Adrian!

Coinage metals - Wikipedia

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