Matthew Sweet

Mistresses podcast tells stories of lust, power, duplicity and scandal — review Rare female-centred series relishes the tales of courtesans, concubines and lovers through the ages

It's Monday so here's my @FT pod column on Mistresses, a riotously funny new series on history's famous concubines and lovers hosted by Dr Kate Lister and Jameela Jamil. www.ft.com/content/0220...

Sound of Cinema - Walter Murch - BBC Sounds Matthew Sweet speaks to film editor, sound designer and film director Walter Murch

@drmatthewsweet.bsky.social talks to film editor, sound designer and director Walter Murch about working on Apocalypse Now, the Godfather films, The Conversation, Barton Fink and Return to Oz..

The replies to this post, even on here, even moreso on X, are so depressing to me. We live in a world where cities have never been safer and a minority of people are denying themselves a lot of delightful experiences because they’ve gone mad online.

Our guest today is a true legend: Walter Murch - no one has done more to shape the sound of modern cinema. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

July 2018, Bristol docks.

Yes. A Jeremy Hardy joke about a “teenage mooncalf” springs to mind. And Graham Moffat in the Will Hay films.

Aargh

I watched as an antient hippie saluted the appearance of the cosmic foetus in 2001 A SPace Odyssey

In the presence of Mike Hodges too!

Open air screening of Flash Gordon. Timothy Dalton & Brian Blessed vow to join forces to fight Ming. Ulsterman in state of considerable refreshment jumps to his feet and shouts NO SURRENDER

Sceptics call AI a stochastic parrot. But perhaps it’s less impressive than that

Politically - Reflections: Series 3 - Steve Baker - BBC Sounds The adventures of an arch Brexiteer: James Naughtie talks to former MP Steve Baker.

There’s quite a big twist at the end of this. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Declare war now

Black text on white egg-shaped backgound: Every egg stolen means one bird less to destroy the pests that ruin our crops.

'Spare the eggs- Spare the crops.'
Poster issued by the National Council for Animal Welfare Design by H. H. Bartram; Great Britain; 1949.
Ref E.587-1949, V & A Museum.

My uncle Jesse turned up 5 years later at the International Lenin School

Amazing.

The Yorkshire TV logo, with the words: WILL NOT EXPLAIN the rules of 3-2-1 (Apologies for not being able to credit the genius who came up with this - I’ve had it hanging around on my phone for ages and didn’t note down who originally made it.)

Happy Yorkshire Day.

Jack Davenport in The Assassin - full Brian Croucher mode, no?

Wakefield's fraud is also a very good example of how crusading journalism can be actively harmful when it starts from a false premise. Private Eye, in particular, played a *massive* role in promoting it.

BARTERING of course.

Thursday night on Channel Four - @drfernriddell.bsky.social and @robrinder.bsky.social investigate. (I think I am on it as the voice of scepticism.) Fern's new book is revelatory!

The BBC banned this horrifying tale of a nuclear attack on Kent This 1965 pseudo-documentary, once deemed too shocking to screen, is airing on BBC Four

Wrote about broken Britain. Paywalled but try battering with tinned luncheon meat or a bucket of rats. www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/the-war...

I didn’t spot the byline! Very small world

Yes it was - I remember reading it at the time

Im writing a biography of Barbara - it will have all the details…

Georgette hated Barbara. Hated her.

I am retweeting this because Georgette Heyer found the expression “to make a cake of oneself” in a Regency letter she bought at auction and considered suing Barbara Cartland for using it.

Study finds AI tools made open source software developers 19 percent slower Coders spent more time prompting and reviewing AI generations than they saved on coding.

a randomised controlled trial - in which developers *expected* that AI would make them code faster - found that AI tools actually made software developers work 19% slower.

arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/s...

Perhaps they fought fiercely

The image shows the 17th century painting “Landscape with Windmills near Haarlem” by the Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael.

Disgusted to see this beautiful landscape ruined by wind turbines.