Tracey Mathias

#DoTheWriteThing poster for the Society Of Authors campaign, showing authors protesting against the theft of their work by Meta AI

I was horrified to find EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY BOOKS had been plundered without my consent by the Meta AI book thieves. It's a violation & is wrong in every way. Please support us by signing this @societyofauthors.bsky.social petition and get them to #DoTheWriteThing!
www.change.org/p/protect-au...

We Can Make an Impact. Protect authors’ livelihoods from the unlicensed use of their work in AI training

chng.it/5NhyDZZnCb

Please sign and protest Meta's outrageous but somehow not surprising use of illegally pirated works to train its AI. Copyright sounds sort of quaint but essentially it's about the right to fair pay. And this is about the preservation of individual human creativity.

The Monty lit fest programme is here!

Words To Live By Number 197

Congratulations - this is lovely news.

‘Reading is part of my identity’: the woman taking on Goodreads owner Amazon Software engineer and developer Nadia Odunayo created the social media readers’ platform StoryGraph and its popularity has rocketed

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/f... - a so-far-still-sticking-to-it new year's resolution this year was to keep a better record of what I read and I've been using @thestorygraph.com and enjoying it. So I'm delighted to learn that it is not and hopefully never will be anything to do with amazon...

Hey hey, the lovely @katemallinder.bsky.social has just moved to Bluesky! Writer of brilliant, uplifting young-teen novels. Give her a follow #kidlituk

I have been sort of lurking but not very active but it's a nice place to be

Congratulations xxx

Happy book birthday to me and illustrator Jamie Bauza! Born today: LITTLE RHINO LOST, U.S. edition! Published by Crocodile Books @interlinkbooks.bsky.social The UK edition will be out in March, published by @otterbarrybooks.bsky.social

Thank you! Very pleased to be counted alongside the rest of this great list. #yapolitical

Just walked in bright cold sunshine from Hammersmith to Kew along the @thamespathnt.bsky.social - there was a big rowing comp taking place and we walked to the sound of shouts over the water and oars splashing. The river must always have been this lively once... #thames #amwalking

Ooh we are now on Fallen Kingdom and I'm delighted and relieved to see that she's acquired a pair of sturdy boots.

Jurassic World is on tv and all I can think is 'for the love of god Clare get a pair of trainers.' #wrongshoes #newyearsday #moviebinge

Welsh government responds in Klingon to UFO airport query Klingon was the chosen language for the Welsh government in its response to queries about UFO sightings at Cardiff Airport.

Dome news stories you just have to reblog. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33479808

Ethical Consumer magazine has taken a deep dive into the corporate behaviour of #Amazon & summarised its top reasons to boycott them.

www.ethicalconsumer.org/retailers/te...

🧵

Walked through St Pancras station and I wanted to take a train to anywhere that wasnt my life. My life is truly fine. Just one of those feelings one of those days. #writerslife

The wonderful author - and person I like very much - @celiarees.bsky.social has joined BlueSky. Give her a follow.

When you pose the question to a language model, what you are really asking is, “Given the statistical distribution of words in the vast public corpus of text, what are the words most likely to follow the sequence ‘what country is to the south of Rwanda?’” Even if the system responds with the word “Burundi,” this is a different sort of assertion with a different relationship to reality than the human’s answer, and to say the AI “knows” or “believes” Burundi to be south of Rwanda is a category mistake that will lead to errors and confusion.

This is one of the most well-written explanations of certain kinds of AI errors I’ve seen to date. (The whole article is great too.)

www.theverge.com/c/24300623/a...

Oh yes... vague memories are stirring. The whole H thing never seemed to me a hugely successful plot line (right from its massively implausible opening moment...) but I thought otherwise there was some great writing. Shocking sudden turns and brilliant interview scenes.

I cant even remember who H was now... think the show ran out of steam after 4 series.

A tree at sunrise, purple and pink sky behind the branches.

Sunrise at A Place To Write in North Wales last week - the view from my room early one morning. There were some moments of writerly illumination too...

The quickest way to unhappiness is to compare your writing/poetic journey and "success" with others.

(Also, "success" in quotes because what exactly does that mean--it's so subjective.)

One of my favourites too - both film and book

Hugs xxx

It is very lovely - and the weather has been so beautiful this week - lots of walks between writing sessions!

A big difficulty in writing book 2 is that all the reworkings of book 1 taught me to see how many possible versions are inherent in every scene & chapter. As soon as anything is written I see how it could be different & better & it's hard to leave it be for now and move on #writing #writingbook2

At Bron-y-Graig guesthouse where they host really great writers' retreats

Wow. Here is one to brighten up your morning. The first images of the restored interior of Notre Dame cathedral. Breathtaking. In just five years France did it

Book 2 is incredibly hard. I fight a lot of the same things. It helps to remind myself that book one started this messy and small and unconvincing too.