Will Wiles

It works like a charm on the children, I can tell you that

Why does it keep doing that

It was just going through some stuff

You're right that just waiting for that to happen is a bad strategy though!

I think a bigger problem (for Reform) is that they bob along in the turd-strewn wake of the American right, which will discredit and toxify their various enthusiasms before 2029 rolls around. (We don't hear so much about DOGE any more.)

On the Kennedy Center and the interesting career of its architect, Edward Durell Stone

Nice covers. Max Ernst!

Karolina Wydra as depicting Zosia (and also all of the human hivemind) in "Pluribus"

A snapshot taken by me of a promotional chess set made by a property developer with their buildings as piece. My hand is holding Centre Point, the black queen.

Found the photo! @brunotonelli.bsky.social

It was!

I think I have a photo, I will have a look!

I recall, in those show flats, a chess set with pieces representing the developer's buildings. Hugely desirable, I wanted one a lot.

(Paywalled but considering its unearthly power maybe that's for the best)

Will Wiles - A Bally High Will Wiles: A Bally High - Same Player Shoots Again: A Biography of the Pinball Machine by Andreas Bernard (Translated from German by Valentine A Pakis)

I thought I might prompt people to buy this book - you should, it's very good - but yesterday I learned that an acquaintance had bought *a pinball machine* on the strength of this review, so mind how you go. @litreview.bsky.social literaryreview.co.uk/a-bally-high

The transphobic press have no incentive to give Labour credit for their transphobia and every incentive to push them to go further. Labour gain nothing by caving to them, and yet cave to them they will, out of a potent combination of hatred for trans people and political ineptitude.

In Pluribus, art holds up a mirror to a hollow world The dystopian series asks whether creativity has any value when everyone thinks the same way, writes Will Wiles

‘We often hear trite arguments for the value of art, its power of healing and joy. It’s very refreshing – a joy, in fact – to have the final say fall to a depressed misanthrope.’

Will Wiles roots for the heroine of ‘Pluribus’

My sympathies. Our sale has been going on for 10 months, and the flat has been on the market a lot longer.

I think it might be an unacknowledged driver in house price inflation, because people have to be bribed to participate in the marketplace.

Housebuying/selling in the UK really is the biggest scam. An immense pyramid of maddening bureaucracy, swarmed over by middlemen.

The good thing about working in the arts in 2026 is you said goodbye to your dignity at least a decade ago, so here I am outright asking you to consider voting for THE DEFINITIONS if you liked it and are in a position to.

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live Leslie Nielson Monologue: Serious Actor - Saturday Night Live

I'm not sure this is the one I saw (or if I am wildly misremembering it, which is entirely possible) but he says something very similar in this monologue: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DAz...

Happy centenary to the late Leslie Nielsen. There's a wonderful clip of him saying something along the lines of "you can make people laugh by doing silly things in a serious way, or by doing serious things in a silly way. I discovered you could also do it by doing serious things in a serious way."

I am in the new @litreview.bsky.social , reviewing "Same Player Shoots Again" by Andreas Bernard, a lovely little book that is part memoir, part history of the pinball machine.

Roadside Picnic is essentially about fly-tipping

A hardcover version of Piper at the Gates of Dusk. In a Japanese restaurant, just because.

It exists in the world. Released worldwide in English on April 7th. Something is coming…

So nice of my colleagues to rally round and insist I stay in my job. After all, I have important work to do! Such as opening this heavy, ticking package while my colleagues all watch. No one else will do it! Even though they're 200 yards away I can still see the supportive smiles on their faces.

A cropped screengrab of the Goodreads summary for "The Dead Man's Empire", which shows it has a whopping two reviews, both five stars

The reviews are flooding in and they're unanimous

That's the one

Furioso? I was LIVID