If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!
Terrible headline (this is NOT what the new research - link below - shows!), terrible AI image! Argh!
Here’s the actual research:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Where do I start?! 1/4
Note for non-Brits: this is the reaction of the Conservative Party leader here to a by-election where the Greens came out of nowhere and won a safe Labour seat.
Her candidate lost his deposit (got less than 2% of the vote).
She's so far out of her tree the squirrels are sending out search parties.
There's a lot of buzz about Christian revival among young adults in the UK & US. Perceptions of revival are fueled by results from opt-in online surveys. However, these surveys may be misleading. Surveys from random samples of the population don't show any clear evidence of revival.
My new post:
Turns out the Appleby report was a complete lie.
goodlawproject.org/new-data-sho...
tweet: “as English speakers we have to sort out the 'had had' situation. it's frankly embarrassing to the language” Merriam-Webster Quote Tweet: “But, it’s not wrong that that occurs.”
There, there…
“The global publishing platform Substack is generating revenue from newsletters that promote virulent Nazi ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism, a Guardian investigation has found…” www.theguardian.com/media/2026/f...
A heraldic-style portrait of the Year of the Curious Squid. The squid looks somewhat startled, and has a green body with blue tentacles and a blue stripe along its mantle
I choose to take this as a positive omen.
(As named and drawn by Paul Kidby, illustrator of Discworld.)
This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write."
A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption.
B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.
If you live in Bristol, love horror and want to support local businesses, please consider doing some of your Christmas shopping at The Haunted Bookshop in Stokes Crofts.
You may have seen Monika at some of our events and her shop is a wonderful sanctuary for those looking to find their people.
😍We are rejoining Erasmus. Official announcement tomorrow😍
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:
- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)
🧵 1/2
An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...
It has just been brought to my attention that the greatest ever video in this genre is, in fact, cat jump fail vs Sail by AWOLNATION...
After everything that has happened this year, choosing WHITE as the color of year is REALLY QUITE A CHOICE, PANTONE.
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/
Bristol folk! Come help me celebrate the launch of my latest novel ITCH! in Stanfords
@stanfordstravel.bsky.social this Thursday!
I'm being hosted by my dear friend, screenwriter and playwright Becca Wilcox. It'll be brilliant fun 🖤🐜
A few tickets left here:
bristol.stanfords.co.uk/2025/08/21/g...
Unsolicited writing advice, no. 999:
It’s not just the story that matters, it’s the person telling it. Your stories are filtered through your experience, your culture, your upbringing, your identity. Don’t be afraid to let it show. Those things matter. You matter.
My hot take is that none of these are structure. These are all recipes that describe structure.
Structure is the Salt, Fat, Acid Heat of writing.
3-Act/Hero's Journey etc are recipes.
You can make great meals without using a recipe if you understand the principles of structure.
I *suspect* that the pressure to have flawed characters and 'conflict' comes from a Greek/Aristotlian framework of understanding theatre.
Studying a wide variety of materials, modes, and types of stories, I think it's broader to hold to a dilemma based framework...
Discworld: A disc-shaped world atop 4 elephants atop a giant turtle flying through space.
I enjoy a well-thought-out, rule-based magic system in fiction as much as anyone, BUT I also think that we should give more props to what Terry Pratchett did in the Discworld books, where it was less about rules and more about vibes and, more importantly, what fit a given story the best.
🧵
Newcastle says no to fascism.
The far right brought a hundred or so with them, bussed from far and wide. This city turned out 1000s, from local communities, estates and streets. Geordies of all backgrounds coming together and outnumbering the purveyors of hate by some distance.
Newcastle united.
‘I was writing at my lowest ebb’: Scottish author Len Pennie on domestic abuse and the power of poetry
We want the media and politicians to recognise there's a large number of women who are supportive of the trans+ community. We call on them to report truthfully about the sources of violence against women and to address the systems that perpetuate harm. notinourname.org.uk/petition/not...
For those who pay attention to UK politics, the Liberal Democrats and #LDConf
A bunch of TERFs tried first thing this morning to impose a transphobic policy on our internal elections (they wanted to exclude trans women from the gender balance criteria)
They failed, spectacularly.
And this morning the Shed is a tiny coach, made from a single walnut-shell, and drawn by a team of bumble-bees…
Chart showing the vast majority of 18-24 are liberal-left
New polling in the Telegraph. Despite all the talk from Musk and Robinson about young people turning to Reform, it’s just the usual pack of lies.
Read on for the Telegraph’s headline accompanying the piece.
We’re in the business of keeping independent bookstores in business 🤍📚
And exactly the right time and place in L-space.
