Lou Morgan

The Paralympics start today and WE HAVE A HEIST????

That’s brilliant and I must steal it at once

Today I learned that in the late 1840s ‘exploded’ was used as a term for something that had gone out of style and was Over (as in, ‘shiny grey velour sofas are exploded’) and I love this

APPLAUDING WILDLY

#TheTerror

I really don’t like the video of the ship being torpedoed. It’s not particularly graphic, but when you know exactly what a torpedo does to a ship and you know people in the navy, it’s the kind of thing you wish you could unsee.

Everyone in Bath today is wearing the wrong clothes. Tights and boots? Wrong. Shorts? Wrong. Light jacket? Wrong. Full-length padded coat? Wrong. Waterproof? Wrong. Everyone is either too hot or too cold. Nobody knows what to wear. We have come to know only rain: anything else is mystifying.

A friend of writers in the #HouseOfLords - thanks to our Chair Tim Clement-Jones for highlighting the need for an #AI license to better protect the work of creators 🙏

We're keenly awaiting the government's report and economic analysis of #ArtificialIntelligence and #Coypright, due later this month.

This is exciting: I’ll be on a panel talking about the Fight Like A Girl anthologies at Llandeilo Lit Fest in April. I haven’t done any events for AGES so I’m really looking forward to it - especially as it’s on home turf, just down the road from where I grew up 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Imagine if the media got behind efforts to make our country a better place to live. Imagine the pride we would feel if our country was considered one of the happiest places to live. If we were known around the world for equality, the environment, health... rather than misery, racism and transphobia.

Actor David Walmsley (whose work you might have enjoyed in The Terror or Slow Horses) is raising money for two mental health charities and one supporting people in the entertainment & events industry, by running 30 marathons in 30 days - with no rest days.

www.givewheel.com/fundraising/...

It occurs to me that if the government did force UK writers to hand over their work to the big AI companies, that would now among other things mean contributing to the development of US advanced weapon systems.

Greg Davies: Great task, well done. Didn‘t eat a thing.

Persephone: Thank you.

Alex Horne: Ah. Well. Let’s take another look at that pomegranate.

It is truly insane that a Doctor Who *spin-off* created this. Not even the main show. That's how powerful the Whoniverse brand was in 2009.

Not trying to make a wider point here, just, yeah, maybe I am. That powerful!

Michael B. Jordan helping all the female Sinners award winners up the steps to collect their award while Jack O'Connell carries the train of Wunmi's dress; Delroy Lindo going off-script because he can't see the teleprompter. Stunning. Iconic. No notes.

I'm watching the SAG / Actor awards show, and it's striking how different the tone is: so many of the speeches talk about the importance of unions, of peers supporting one another, of art, of empathy and joy. Harrison Ford's lifetime achievement acceptance speech was so beautiful, it made me cry.

In the Museum of Night, sunlight is held in tinted jars, muted, just enough that vampires can stand and stare. Such a dangerous pleasure!

I don't see why it's so unreasonable to ask any company that wants to use someone's work to license it, on an author opt-in basis. The ALCS already collects fees for secondary rights and uses: it's not like it's beyond the realm of possibility to organise something similar.

The ongoing issue of LLM training chipping away at copyright is exhausting. So many writers whose work has been stolen to train these LLMs responded to the government's consultation, and with every single question it was made abundantly clear that our views & rights didn't matter. Just our words.

Whenever Goodsir comes up, I always think of his letter to his aunt listing all the kit he’d had to buy, wondering whether he had enough shirts and socks.

Goodsir!

I’ll just leave this here…

(Btw, if you listen to Susan’s War vol 1, you can double up with Assets of War - written by me and directed by brilliant Lisa Bowerman)

www.bigfinish.com/search_resul...

YouTube video by Netflix Harrison Ford: Life Achievement Award Acceptance Speech | 32nd Annual Actor Awards

Damn Harrison Ford should get an Actors Award for Best Actors Award speech

Welcome to another week of fresh whatthefuck

UK will allow US to use bases to strike Iranian missile sites, says Starmer The prime minister says it remains the case that the UK will

Nope.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

a working man holding up the rich, who are dancing. the man underneat 'i'm just thinking waht would happen if I were to stand up' Plebs league london

Plebs League pamphlet Do Your Own Thinking, 1930s

I saw someone describe her (I have no idea who - maybe it was you!) as being like Baz Luhrmann, and that feels spot on: a distinctive, divisive style which can feel both excessive and empty at the same time. On balance, I think I liked her take on WH more than I didn’t, but it was definitely A Lot.

It’s the most ridiculously joyous film. The shrimp scene in the kitchen makes me cry with laughter every time.

AI’s ‘memorisation’ problem: the novels it can’t forget Research that shows LLMs memorise more training data than previously thought raises questions about copyright infringement

‘The world’s top AI models can be prompted to generate near-verbatim copies of bestselling novels, raising fresh questions about the industry’s claim that its systems do not store copyrighted works.’
www.ft.com/content/e4b7...

While we sit around to find out how bad exactly it all is, a bit of cheer: the best baguette of Paris competition was won by a Sri Lankan who appears to have started as a dish washer in restaurants and eventually trained as a Boulanger.

www.paris.fr/pages/la-mei...