Ben Paley

Was transport assigned starboard at birth?

Ahhh, lovely Ian. A good guitarist and a very influential man, not to mention a fan of my dad's 🙂

But not the DLR.

Is there anyone, besides me and my friend Tab, who would see vans owned by the courier service Parceline, and read it as part-sheh-lee-neigh? As though it was kind of pasta? No? Anyone?

We had one of those when I was a kid. It did 11 miles a gallon.

Eleven.

Yes! It almost writes itself 🤣

No, not just you.

Oh my goodness.

Säkert.

I couldn't look in a mirror for... actually maybe that book is responsible for my subsequent lifelong dishevelment.

God I hope so.

I cannot begin to express how much I hate this piece of shit book and its smug sexual predator justifications. And obviously Starship Troopers is just a big dumb fascist romp. However... The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag is a really great and disturbing work of fantasy.

I never saw it on telly but I loved the books.

صباح النور

I need this NOW

Yes that's exactly what I mean 🤖

I think Shirley Jackson is my new Phillip K Dick. I can't imagine that I'll ever exhaust the horrifying subtlety and ambiguity of Hill House, or the distant, relentless unease of her work more generally. Don't fall asleep reading her. Or rather, actually, do.

I hope this didn't come across as glib or flippant. At its best, sci-fi is where we evaluate ideas while they're still on the horizon, and now it feels like the work of those visionary thinkers has been reduced to admiration for Star Wars' stormtroopers.

They love AI, don't they? As if we didn't have decades, very nearly centuries, of science-fiction warning us about this.

Johan Cruijff refused to play in Argentina in 1978, and he's a hero.

Yes. It's great and strange and it's short, so even if you hate it you've only wasted twenty minutes (or something, I haven't timed it). I suspect that nobody who thinks spiderwebs are poems will hate it, though.

Have you read Ursula Le Guin's "The Author of the Acacia Seeds"?

"Heiß dass es läuft oder es kommt bald?"

The outcome continually in balance...

This is a very sensible strategy.

To be fair, it does feel like engaging a foe, sometimes.

I was thinking apricot danish.

It's a great novel. I recommend "Gladiator at Law" by them also, one of my big favourites!

That's the last time I crowdfund a lunar cheese-slicer.

My goodness, THX 1138 turns out to be right up my alley of slow and meaningful science fiction from the 1970s. How has it taken me so long to watch it?

This evening: I will revisit Silent Running.