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Sam Leith

@questingvole.bsky.social

6.4K followers 1.3K following 1K posts

@spectator lit ed. “Clock-white, still friendly to the earth.” https://bit.ly/TheHauntedWood

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · Sep 4

My book is out in paperback TODAY. All about children’s books, which are the best and most important sort. bit.ly/4pdXMNt

The Haunted Wood | Oneworld

'A MARVEL' PHILIP PULLMAN Do you remember the first time you fell in love with a book? The stories we read as children extend far beyond our childhoods; they are a window into our deepest hopes, joys ...

bit.ly

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Miller on the Threshold @iammilliam.bsky.social · 15h

Readers of my first book Tilting at Windmills may be interested to learn that the inner sleeve of @warringtonruncorn.com’s new LP depicts the ‘betong’ category of miniature golf course, as utilised in international minigolf tournaments to this day. Hats off to that dead town planner!

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 1d

Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hosted dinner giving tech bosses access to UK minister

Exclusive: Six tech leaders dined with investment minister, documents reveal, underlining growing influence of ex-PM’s consultancy Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hosted a private dinner earlier this year at which a select group of technology entrepreneurs were given access to a key minister, official documents have revealed. The former prime minister, who is a champion of the tech industry, held the dinner in an upmarket London hotel in his capacity as the head of the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) political consultancy. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 13h

the damn communists at the Cato Institute are at it again

Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 1d

New from me at Cato: I go through the numerous and massive First Amendment and academic-freedom violations of Trump's proffered "compact" with universities and then talk about the mechanism by which it would be enforced, by way of what I describe as a "retroactive push-button guillotine."

Universities Must Defend Their Independence by Rejecting Trump's "Compact"

The Trump administration has proffered a “compact” to universities that would require them to surrender their independence and academic freedom. How many First Amendment violations can we identify in ...

www.cato.org

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 2d

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 2d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

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Joel @snufkinlib.bsky.social · 2d

This is Real Existing Situationist Praxis

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 2d

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest.

There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day.

What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.

It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

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The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 3d

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 3d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 3d

And here’s the also excellent @john-self.bsky.social from our pages

Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming is a long, hard slog

The Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who sounds like a sneeze and reads like a fever, is on a mission to build our collective stamina. His novels have always resisted easy interpretation, with t...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 3d

YES! Good point. Gizzamoment.

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 3d

Nobel to Laszlo Krasznahorkai! Want to know what the fuss is about? Here’s the excellent @harikunzru.bsky.social writing about him in the Spectator a few years back

The trapper and the trapped

The Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai has only lately become known to Anglophone audiences, through the masterly translations of George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet. Work written and published in ...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 3d

Couldn’t be happier that the Nobel has gone to Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Back in 2012 I tried to astroturf a movement claiming him as the Next Big Thjng but it didn’t take off because he’s too difficult www.theguardian.com/books/2012/j...

Why is New York's literary crowd suddenly in thrall to Hungarian fiction? | Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru: The highly educated aspiring writers of New York are looking beyond the English-speaking world for their reading fixes. It must be a sign of the times

www.theguardian.com

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Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 3d

In @thetimes.com letters page today

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 4d

If you come for my people, you come through me.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

This seems bad. Craven, abject and despicable are all epithets that also spring to mind.

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 4d

New: Apple banned an app that simply archived videos of ICE abuses. Rather than other apps that record ICE official's real-time location, Eyes Up is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." Videos from TikTok etc. Every submission manually reviewed

www.404media.co/apple-banned...

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses

Eyes Up's purpose is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." But it has been swept up in Apple's crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.

www.404media.co

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

For the senders of spam those are what economists call externalities…

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

As a recovering addict I'm very much cautious about things that are simultaneously the disease and the cure

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

The near-zero cost of sending this shit makes this a very unequal arms race.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

Cannot. Case for books, as the antidote to everything that makes Kemi Badenoch Kemi Badenoch, made here:

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 4d

“43 new emails”. 🫩 This since I last checked an hour ago. Of course not more than three are from humans. But they take time for a human to delete. Direction of travel: not good.

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Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

Pleasure. Huge admirer of your work.

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

I reckon

Sam Leith @questingvole.bsky.social · 5d

As usual, Sunder speaks sense. That the Reform people are so weirdly horny for the UAE and similar is a massive tell. I wrote this on the subject a bit back www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 5d

both AI and web3 are Going Just Fine.

K. Thor Jensen @kthorjensen.bsky.social · Sep 6

Oh this one is WILD pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/29/v...

Vibe-coded build system NX gets hacked, steals vibe-coders’ crypto

NX is build software. You write your code on your laptop, you press “build”, it runs NX, and you get a built version you can put onto your web server. If you could hack NX, you could hit a lot of p…

pivot-to-ai.com

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The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · 5d

This is a lie.

There are many criticisms you might sensibly and truthfully make of the Sentencing Council and the Sentencing Guidelines. I’ve been making them for years.

But this is an outright lie. Pure fabrication. A fraud on the public.

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Picket Fire @picketfire.bsky.social · 16d

Picket Fire is a small literary press, but I have no idea how to use Blue Sky or how to find people on here. So if #writers #authors #readers and anyone related to the #writingcommunity or #books community could help by sharing this post, that would be excellent.

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