Seán Padraic Birnie

What strange times, when the commander of RAF Greenham Common is coming out as a liberal supporter of the right to protest

Okay, Bluesky, help me out? Looking for ARC reviewers who are into dark, strange stories featuring twisted games. Maybe you love Bora Chung and want some more cursed bunnies in your life?

It's on NetGalley (two whole months before release!), or PM me for a copy.

Two more, portraits occasioned by the failure of the flash sync

from 2016. Finally bought a NAS to organise far too many files, spread across far too many individual hard drives.

a large format monorail camera on a heavy tripod, lit with studio lights against a black colorama backdrop. An X-rite Color Checker Classic has been placed upside down in front of the camera.

a large format monorail camera on a heavy tripod, lit with studio lights against a black colorama backdrop.

Two pictures from the archives.

Police arrest 474 people at protest over Palestine Action ban in London Met officers and other UK forces form ‘significant presence’ in largest protest since group was proscribed as terrorist organisation

474 people arrested. Solidarity to them all — and there'll now be thousands more — and a curse on this wretched government.

Someone give me money to make this happen

Book cover for Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum, portraying a dark wooden corridor and a creepy figure peering out from a lit room at the far end.

If you’re looking for a short , grotesque little read for the weekend pick up Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum from Undertow. A vile little gothic body horror novella that made me feel like I had things sprouting out of my skin.

Someone with time and resources should put together a reprint anthology of 21st century weird fiction to counteract all the public domain repackaging out there that makes it seem like the mode froze decades and decades ago.

The Last Dragoners of Bowbazaar is a story about Ru. Ru is a boy from nowhere. When he asks his parents where his family is from, they tell him he is descended from nomads. But even nomads must come from somewhere.

Swipe to read the praise for @indrapramitdas.bsky.social’s moving novella!

'All societies maintain what, in Debt, he calls ‘baseline communism’: a free, non-commodified mutuality without which no society can exist. Baseline communism happens wherever ‘no accounts are taken’ and it would be ‘offensive, or simply bizarre’, even to consider taking them...'

This! And encoded in that difference is the whole neoliberal capitalist mindset, because to the people who build these things, those objections are, respectively, (a) irrelevant to profits;(b) a forgettable externality; (c) a healthy marketing environment; and (d) the whole point in the first place

AI filmmaking and storytelling is punk rock. It’s hip hop. It’s counterculture. It’s a new type of creativity. It’s a new medium. It’s hated by the mainstream film and art establishment. It resists ideology. It ignores gate keeping. It’s uncomfortable. It’s scary. It’s viral. It’s accessible. It’s refreshing. It’s welcoming. It’s here.

AI filmmaking is peeing. It’s pooping. It’s throwing up. It’s a new kind of liquid coming out. It’s hated by the establishment. It’s what goes in the toilet. It’s wet. It’s what’s in the bathroom.

"Most objections to AI do not arise through fear of the future, or inability to change. They arise because the people who control these AI platforms are dicks."

Can only imagine. I'm cishet and found it enormously powerful. One I hope to watch again before too long. Really enjoyed World's Fair too. A quick google tells me Schoenbrun has a new film out next year

5) People who say stupid shit like "why can't trans kids wait until they are 18?" obviously have no idea what it is like to undergo the wrong puberty. Watch I Saw the TV Glow for a good approximation of long-term suffocation

Brilliant, wonderful film, one of my favourites from last year.

Two alcoholics at the bus stop just asked if i was police. I said no, one said I looked really familiar from the police. Maybe ex-police, said the other. Or off-duty. I behave myself, he said. Well. Mostly.

A man in a suit looks at the camera

“Poverty, great wealth and democracy are ultimately incompatible elements in any society…either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property or property…will destroy democracy”
Nye Bevan, 1952

Cover for THE BEST WEIRD FICTION OF THE YEAR, VOL. 1. Odilon Redon art of a face in the middle of an areola/sun/aura thing.

Final proofing is being done on this. Pre-orders include the print AND e-book. Said eBook will be delivered early, thus making you the envy of all your friends and enemies.

undertowpublications.com/shop/best-we...

It's very clear now that if Nazi Germany had restricted its extermination campaigns and invasions to West Asia, the entire world would have bent over backward to accommodate their genocide, with an occasional murmur of concern every several months.

For some reason I always associate the Clockwork Orange line ‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ with ‘HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME’, from The Waste Land. Can’t think of one without thinking of the other.

GenAI is the logical next stage in the modern university's ongoing trend to not teach or have anyone learn anything. The answer to the question of "what's next?" after you've already turned courses into massive (often online) classes taught by low-paid adjuncts with no support.

Of course, you get dangerous horseshit in regulated fields. I’m thinking of CBT and graded exercise therapy in my field of unwanted expertise, ME/CFS. Ofc psychiatry has its own extensive horrors. I’m lucky again in that the ADHD diagnosis and titration I received was extremely helpful.

Similar situation in the UK, I think. It isn’t really regulated. I think anyone can call themselves a counsellor. Or a coach. The controlling and coercive partner of someone I used to know set themselves up as some sort of therapist.

I haven’t and not sure I want to… so I’ll probably watch it later. I’ve read a lot on the subject and it just fills me with a really bleak kind of sadness. There are people who need real help turning to this fucking thing, and much of the culture is encouraging it.

Spot on.

ofc I don't think you'll disagree with that, so maybe these are just slightly different permutations in the conceptualisation of the same thing.

I find myself wondering: what would a reparatory politics look like? and how might it overcome the violent counterrevolution it would inevitably provoke?

I certainly agree about a deep integration between these things. I'm not sure I see it as horizontal though. No therapy, no art, no culture on a dead planet.

a group of simpsons characters are standing around a man holding up a green item and asking " hey who likes short shorts " ALT: a group of simpsons characters are standing around a man holding up a green item and asking " hey who likes short shorts "

Short shorts.