Sylvia Leatham

I imagine it probably sounds better in a Cork accent!

But I always print receipt in case I’m accused of theft!

In Aldi the machine shouts “Information needed!” at you if you try to walk away without indicating receipt/no receipt preference. I always panic and say “What now?” out loud.

Was just checking to see if anyone had said this yet! I suppose manbrella is gone too?

* Casts around lamely *

Umbrellad?

Ooh thank you! I will check these out!

Lol, good point! 🤣

Excellent work!

The only time I’m glad I wear glasses!

When Irish isles are smiling… 🎶

Whaaatttt? Ah here! I feel duped and swindled!

Is there any way to guess what that might have looked like? (I'm halfway through your asteroid book so let me know if the answer is in there!)

Aha! Robin, you may have just given me inspiration for how to end my current work-in-progress novel (spoiler alert)!

And if the Ai therapist disagrees with the human one, but the patient prefers the Ai one… Total minefield.

I have heard of a positive use for Ai in healthcare, using it to get patients with different languages booked in to see GPs without having to speak to a human.

What did they dress as?

My school not doing it this year, hallelujah! Although maybe bringing in a book would have been nice.

My idea would be to make it a pyjamas + book day at school.

LLMs are just word-sequence prediction machines so I don’t see how this would be possible. Another call to replace humans for things where we really need humans! Far better would be UBI/incentive that enables more people to become therapists. Lots of people would love this job.

Plus endless, relentless barking at each other from before the music started and throughout the entire gig, including when Raye was talking about some very sensitive issues. No respect. They were falling up the stairs drunk by the end.

I’m going to try never go to the 3Arena again.

It's PUBLICATION DAY for my debut novel, IN THE DESERT!
I've been writing for decades (many) and this is such a hugely big day for me.
Thank you so much to my publisher @cowboyjamboree.bsky.social for believing in this book and to everyone who has helped along the way!
Links to buy in thread 1/

Early morning thought:

‘The Studio’ is just ‘The Muppet Show’ for grownups.

Meant to recommend another Danish film I saw recently - The Promised Land (original title: Bastardun). 18th century farming, found family, land war, and a key role played by potatoes! Plus the always excellent Mads Mikkelsen.

What To Expect When You're Expecting A Book — Jan Carson Here are ten things you might expect to feel in the run up to the launch of your book.

I wrote about managing your expectations in the run up to publishing a book, (very flippantly)
www.jancarson.co.uk/blog/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-a-book

I agree with this. Always have a strong ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ sense that I’m just popping in and out of scenes in a random order.

Agreed. A standout read recently for me was ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’. It’s written in 3rd person but it explains how the narrator is able to describe the thoughts of other characters. I don’t think I’d quite seen that done before. Highly recommended.

It could be because of the artifice of fiction. In real life people do and say random s*** that doesn’t make any sense. To render that on the page would not be satisfying to the reader IMO.

But that said, anytime there is an unusual character in mainstream fiction, people can’t get enough of it.

FYI I deleted my response to this because I replied before I was fully awake. ☕️

Watched the first hour of it tonight! (Watching in segments because we are old!)

Actually borrowed it on dvd from our local library (which is turning out to be a great source of recent movies).

Hands up if you’re already sick of the “Anthropic are the good guys” narrative. 🤮

No! Let them fail. Let them all fail. Don’t help them to be slightly less bad. They are fundamentally rotten. See e.g. the 7 million books they stole to make their product.

Preach!

God that so precisely describes the school I went to and my classmates!

I’m OBSESSED with Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Train Song’. Try it and see if it captivates you!

I read ‘White Bicycles’ and discovered many artists from that.