Victoria Ling 🌱 🎓 🪐📚

I've not read anything else quite like it, and like you say, even the physicality of this particular copy is full of character. Wonderful story.

But both things can be true

University staff did do their very best, but students didn’t get the full experience they paid for

COVID students paid £9,250 a year for locked campuses & Zoom lectures, the experience was diminished

They deserve a partial rebate -- it’s basic fairness

“And where the peace and rest?”

“In stagnation, where they sought it. They are free to remain stagnant - unchanged. He who is self-satisfied remains the self with which he is satisfied. He who is afraid to change remains unchanged.”

- Douglas Massie “Mr Ciggers Goes To Heaven” (1931)

#Booksky

Are there any plans for another series of “Welcome To Our Village..”?

“Stagnation is absolutely the correct word to use for the peace and rest you desire,” replied the judge with beaming imperturbability. “Can you not see it all around you here? Look upon these people who fear to look upon themselves.”

- Douglas Massie "Mr Ciggers Goes To Heaven" (1931)

Absolutely, it's in the small print. Might even be law.

“I remember - and - you know how memory strays back, though sometimes it’s more like a goat tethered to a peg on a common.”

- "Crew" Walter de la Mare (1927)

#ClassicGhostStories #Booksky

Cover image of the Twisted Road written by Simon Kewin, artwork by Alex Storer. The cover depicts a metallic space station in the shape of a large möbius strip, in orbit around the planet Mars. Various lights are shining through portholes in the station and a docking bay is visible and well-lit. Approaching the station is a small spaceship. At the top of the image are the words THE MÖBIUS SEQUENCE 1 in white. Below that in larger white type is the title THE TWISTED ROAD. Towards the bottom of the page is the author’s name SIMON KEWIN in golden letters.

In conjunction with our friends at The Fantasy Hive, we are delighted to reveal the cover for The Twisted Road, book 1 in The Möbius Sequence, an extraordinary science fiction trilogy by Simon Kewin. Set on the battered, yet operational, Möbius station orbiting Mars, it is a SF mystery story.

Einstein said God doesn’t play dice with the universe but I reckon the Roman ones played D&D.

Below: Crystal die, Roman (1st-2nd century). Image: British Museum.

#Archaeology #DnD

Tony Benn warned me about Mandelson 40 years ago Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t convicted last week or last year, but 18 years ago, writes Jeremy Corbyn. Parliament needs to look itself in the mirror – and ask itself how it has become embroiled in a ghastly...

The Peter Mandelson scandal is what happens when a government abandons its moral compass.

Parliament needs to look itself in the mirror — and ask itself how it became embroiled in a web of lies, abuse and corruption.

My piece for The Independent.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/peter...

A match made in slightly dysfunctional heaven. Perfect.

Authors: If one of your books were made into tv/film, which book would it be and who are the ideal actors?
(I’d bagsy the cast of Ghosts for King Street Run.)
#Booksky #Authors #Booklover

Absolutely.

Billionaire non-tax payer goes to another country to not pay tax.

Arthur Quiller-Couch is best known for the monumental "Oxford Book of English Verse" (1900) but he also wrote several collections of masterful ghost stories (published chiefly under his pseudonym "Q").
#Booksky

£240m. With no tender. Palantir.

I wrote to Wes Streeting last week demanding answers.

Every day without any transparency deepens the scandal.

Palantir out.

I’m delighted to spread the word! Walter de la Mare was a favourite of H.P. Lovecraft. Typical of ghost stories from that era, Mare’s work was tinged with philosophy, wit and, needless to say, beautifully written.

Better known as an author of children's books, Walter de la Mare also wrote some beautiful (and witty) ghost stories.

“Matter seldom advertises the precariousness imputed to it by the physicist. But now, every object around me seemed to be proclaiming its own transitoriness.”

- A Recluse (1927)

This is the man whose company Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm represents.

Keir Starmer visited its HQ last year, at the request of Mandelson, shortly before it was handed a £240m Government contract

Epstein donated generously to elite universities like Harvard & MIT

He used philanthropy to launder his reputation & to buy access, protection, silence

Elite universities were not naïve victims of deception

They were willing participants who accepted money & then looked away

It's over here too

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world The most disturbing revelation so far

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world now. That's what we can't face. It's our world. Where sexual desire for children is protected, victims receive no justice & the President of what used to be called the free world is Jeff's friend. This is Jeff's World now.
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open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

The genocide in Gaza never ended — and Britain is still complicit.

Seeing authors' photos of their desks filled with complex plot notes and diagrams.

Me: I've no idea what the spaceship looks like until I get in it. Not the foggiest where they're going until we get there. Don't even mention plot holes; I'm letting the characters figure them out.
#Booksky

“Perhaps the reason why second-class men attain the highest, most coveted world positions is, that the greatest are commonly unmoved by ambition or love of applause.”

- The Curse of Intellect, Colin Clout (Frank Challice Constable), 1895

“As for Montrésor - it was the simplest and happiest of things. It shared its quiet, eighteenth century charm with its every door-plate and moulding. One fell in love with it at first sight, as with an open, charming face.”

- Walter De La Mare "The Recluse" (1927)

#ClassicGhostStories #Booksky

ARTE

Help us make hope normal again.

Join the Green Party now.

Very faint planetary nebula Abell 7 is about 1,800 light-years distant. It lies just south of Orion in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation Lepus, The Hare. Posing with scattered Milky Way stars, its generally simple spherical shape about 8 light-years in diameter is revealed in this deep telescopic image. The beautiful and complex shapes seen within the cosmic cloud are visually enhanced by the use of long exposures and narrowband filters that capture emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Otherwise Abell 7 would be much too faint to be appreciated by eye. A planetary nebula represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience 5 billion years hence, as the nebula's central, once sun-like star shrugs off its outer layers. Abell 7 itself is estimated to be 20,000 years old. But its central star, seen here as a fading white dwarf, is some 10 billion years old.

🔭 Planetary Nebula Abell 7

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26012...

Can quantum measurements change the past?

Daniel and Kelly talk about the problem of time in quantum mechanics and how the past might depend on the future.

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...