Ray Newman

Michael DeForge: horror is a genre that forces us to confront unsettling and upsetting questions about ourselves and the world we live in -for instance, "what if you saw a weird face" or "what if there was a guy standing there"

Ref.

My other half, playing Stardew Valley, not really watching: “Japanese horror films ask upsetting and unsettling questions like: what if a thing had vocal fry?”

A poster for the film with a black-eyed woman, mouth open, reaching out to the camera.

Now watching: ‘Ju-On: The Grudge 2’, dir. Takashi Shimizu, 2003. 🎬🎥

Any discussion of Claude being sentient is just silly. Now, I would say that there’s a case to be made that Teams is proactively malevolent…

I saw The Black Tower for the first time after I'd written Modern Buildings in Wessex and thought, oh, yes, same thing. I've got another story on my to-write list which is an explicit homage to TBT.

A World I Recognise BBC sitcoms Detectorists and This Country do something previously rarely seen on TV: they capture the England in the cracks between cities. Too often fictional portrayals of small towns and village…

On worlds I recognise, from 2018:

precastreinforced.co.uk/2018/03/09/a...

Having been rationing the episodes I've just finished watching ‘Small Prophets’ and I thought it was excellent. A perfect balance of funny/sweet and weird/dark, set in a world of underpasses, cul-de-sacs and retail parks that is very real and recognisable.

No, very helpful, and this is what I'm trying to learn, I think. You can write something down without showing it to anybody else, or without it mattering. It's the experience and the writing that matters in its own right.

The stress thing is interesting. Talking about plans for the weekend yesterday one of my colleagues said: “So, all your hobbies are also work..?” I think I was being told to lighten up a bit, get a PlayStation, that sort of thing.

Yes, I know, these thermal print pictures fade, yes I know, thanks, I know, they fade. But doesn't everything?

A spread from my notebook with black and white thermal photographs of the textures of old Victorian industrial walls and a graffito which shows a sinister figure in a beam of light.

My terrible handwriting listing things I saw being given away for free on middle class. Front walls : Spider-Man car seat, paw patrol jigsaw, that chair everyone has the posh version of a plastic school chair, wet book, tagine, no lid, wooden numbers.

That was good, I think. I got a bit stressed at a couple of points that I wasn't writing in the notebook, but once I got into the groove it really made me stop and look at things. Like the ‘dead hedge’ in Victoria Park for example, and the names of Edwardian houses.

Great postcard and excellent alt text. Thank you!

An interior shot of a brightly lit single storey mall. A large feature light hangs from the ceiling. The photo looks down the shallow vaulted mall and has a church like quality about it as it recedes into the distance.

Southcenter, Seattle

It's a very affordable dream! They cost about 20 quid and each print costs pennies.

A small yellow notebook with stickers on the cover spelling 'walk book', with today's date marked in black. There is also a cute little camera with a silly cartoon face.

I'm trying something a bit different this morning: going for a walk, and taking notes on the walk as I go, in what is essentially a disposable pocket notebook (50p). I've also got my thermal print camera.

The self-loathing of the working class writer I’d have been shy about calling myself a ‘working class writer’ a decade or so ago. Which is ridiculous, with hindsight – because what else am I?

Or, indeed, that they themselves are working class enough:

precastreinforced.co.uk/2024/08/25/t...

One of the biggest problems with working class writing is that working class writers rarely think other working class writers are working class enough.

Oh, god, yes, not the first pickings. And sometimes, roast potatoes.

I really want to make a crime drama where the detectives look like real detectives, i.e. overweight with buzzcuts, bad moustaches, and sensible shoes. Even supposedly realistic cop shows rarely go there. Andy Sipowicz gets close, I suppose, and his British cousin Tosh Lines.

Watched an early 90's cop film last night. When do you think US Homicide detectives stopped wearing sports jackets , drinking tiny styrofoam cups of coffee and looking 35 going on 55 ? #filmsky

The image shows a rectangular Roman dice tower (turricula) made of four copper alloy (bronze) plates with punched cut-out Latin letters and cut-out decorative patterns. At the bottom front is a stepped exit chute with small bronze bells attached to the opening. The tower is a Roman anti-cheating device. It has an open top and is hollow inside except for three staggered, downward-sloping plates, designed to randomize dice as they fall, ensuring unpredictable dice rolls. When the dice rolled out of the exit chute they rang the bells! There is a decorative dolphin either side of the stepped exit chute. The top of the front plate has two decorative pine cone finials. Height 25 cm. There is a single die shown next to the stepped base to illustrate how it was used. The front inscription reads: PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI Translated as: ‘The Picts defeated, the enemy has been destroyed, play in safety’. Around the top of the three remaining sides, a second inscription made with cut out letters reads: ‘UTERI/FELIX/VIVAS’ translated as ‘Use happily; may you live well’. Found at a Roman villa at Froitzheim in Germany in 1985.

Roman anti-cheating gaming accessory!

This Roman ‘turricula’ (dice tower) was used to ensure a fair roll of the dice! 🎲🎲🎲

Dice dropped into the top, tumbled over sloping internal levels, and appeared randomly below.

From Froitzheim, Germany, AD 300-400

📷 LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn

#Archaeology

No, just a hole in the wall for me. But also I was allowed to help myself to the meat paste sandwiches from the buffet.

Recursive Resemblance Patrick R. Crowley on mimesis from the ancient Greeks to Kris Jenner’s facelift

"[An] Italian colleague... observed that one could date a facelift rather like a Roman portrait. A term for this method in classical studies... is Zeitgesicht, or 'period face,' which has found a new parallel in the terms 'Instagram face' or 'iPhone face,'..."

www.artforum.com/features/pat...

Hey folks, any content designers or design systems people who contract, I’m trying to get a picture of the state of the market at the moment. Are you finding roles more or less prevalent than usual right now? And are rates lower, about the same, or higher than what you’re used to? DM me if easier

I never thought I'd read a short story about 'sticking up'.

I go on a silly little walk to… Wanstead Flats On new sun and old shadows

Apologies but I have been at it again - it being, walking about, having thoughts about the walking about.

sillylittlewalk.substack.com/p/i-go-on-a-...

I went to a New Order headlined 1-dayer in 2013, the hottest day that year. The queue for the ice cream van was the longest at any place there & I yakked to the friendly funny chap in front of me (1/2)

A quite ugly original Japanese poster which has the title The Ring in English. There's a ring, and a spooky woman.

Now watching: ‘Ring’, dir. Hideo Nakata, 1998. 🎥🎬

YouTube video by Royal Ballet and Opera Bill Bailey - The Doctor Who theme reimagined as Belgian jazz

Love this.

just heard a guy on youtube say "in the grand scream of things"