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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 2d

I am dealing with a “thorny problem” right now, today. It is hard and scary because IT IS ALWAYS HARD AND SCARY. But it is also where you do your best work. It is where stories go from “meh” to “WOW”. When I fix it - because that is the job - I will be that much closer to something worth reading.

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 2d

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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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 3d

DEI for me, not for thee.

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Did you notice the sex in the Dragonrider books? I must have been dense to miss it

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Being taught to read before school was a huge advantage for me too. But I wanted to learn. My siblings didn't and their lives are much less bookish.

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Excellent choice!

Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Blessed be the parents who never censored their children's reading

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

And Mary Whitehouse was pretty influential then too. This text definitely felt deliberately provocative, even if I knew nothing about precisely why.

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

I never regret any time spent reading.

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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

Simon McGarr @tupped.bsky.social · 3d

Just to be clear, an English degree - learning to critically assess texts - is actually one of the most dangerous for people such as Badenoch.

An educated population, able to bring hundreds of years of context to statements in a dawning age of AI slop and attention-seeking dishonesty is also vital.

The Bear @bearlypolitics.co.uk · 3d

So, the plan is to cut English, the arts, and sociology - the degrees that actually study culture - while on another part of your platform claiming to “defend” British culture.

It’s performance nationalism with a reading age of seven.

Badenoch: Curb students taking 'rip-off' degrees such as English
The performing arts, sociology and anthropology are among the subjects the Conservatives would like to cut

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

What can be more contagious to the mind than the bad book? #SpéirGhorm #BannedBooksWeek

Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

This #BannedBooksWeek I'm remembering all the books I read at the wrong time, when they were "age inappropriate". Some of them shocked and scared me but I don't regret any of them. 🧵

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

And of course, Jilly Cooper's bonkbusters, from Riders onwards. I borrowed my mother's copies as a young teenager. Cooper's novels were so much fun that I cannot imagine anyone being disturbed by reading them. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

I adored the cover of Porterhouse Blue with its inflated condoms sailing through the air. Read all of Tom Sharpe's scurrilous output in my early teens, when buying condoms was extremely difficult. It seemed very risque to me then. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M Auel disturbed me more than any book I've ever encountered. At 12, I was scarred by its lengthy, graphic and repeated descriptions of rape. Was it good or bad for me to read at this age? Can't really say. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Did I notice that dragon riders shagged with each other as their dragons mated? I did not. Probably because I was 10. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Sláine read to me like a Cú Chulainn story with all the gore drawn in. So much naked flesh, so much blood. Read this alongside Dredd and also Asterix, and Tintin. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Was fascinated by the technicolour violence and extravagant cruelty of Judge Dredd from age 10. I remember beautiful artwork of exploding bodies and barely contained tits. It probably warped my mind. Catalogued in Irish libraries as adult fiction #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

Read Sallinger's 'Catcher' when I was 9. Did not feel sympathetic towards its tortured teenage antagonist but it would be difficult for a girl being harassed on the street by teenage boys to feel sorry for any of them. #BannedBooksWeek

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

This #BannedBooksWeek I'm remembering all the books I read at the wrong time, when they were "age inappropriate". Some of them shocked and scared me but I don't regret any of them. 🧵

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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

ACLU of South Carolina @aclusc.bsky.social · 5d

Advocacy Director Courtney Thomas on Beloved by Toni Morrison, one of the most banned and challenged books in the country. #BannedBooksWeek

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Josh Cook @joshthelibromancer.bsky.social · 4d

Just a reminder! If you're buying books in support of #BannedBooksWeek buying from Amazon undercuts the broader project of social justice supporting the right to read is a part of. Get your banned books absolutely anywhere else!

Amazon is the invisible backbone of ICE’s immigration crackdown

Lobbying dollars and a cozy relationship with the government have given the tech giant an outsize influence in the Department of Homeland Security.

www.technologyreview.com

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 3d

These books are medicinal!

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 3d

doomscroll break

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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

Myriah Williams @myriahwilliams.bsky.social · 4d

the “dark” ages vs the “information age”

A rectangle sub-divided into four rectangles in a meme format. The upper left says “medieval” opposite the upper right which consists of a manuscript opening (The Lichfield Gospels, pp. 140-141); the lower left says “‘mid’ evil” opposite the lower right which is a screenshot of the ‘AI Overview’ that appears at the top of many Google searches.

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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman (Horrifying) @josie.zone · 9d

POPE PAUL SIMON I:

🎶If you will be my Charlemagne

I could bless your looooong-lost throooone

And if I call you "Empire"

Empire, when I bless you

I will callllll youuuu "Rooooome"

Call you "Rome"

tranna karenina @einegeniesserin.bsky.social · 9d

on german reunification day's eve day, my thoughts turn as always to what a cursed state it has wrought. but it is not desirable to undo it, either. what we need is the maximum possible degree of uneinheit. we need the #holyromanempire once again

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Reposted by Aoife Bhreatnach

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 9d

a figure walking away.

The Benefits of Walking Away

1. Makes bad things disappear quickly
2. Gives everyone optimal view of your back
3. Answers guestion, "I wonder what would happen if I just walked away"

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Aoife Bhreatnach @aoifeb.bsky.social · 10d

Wondering if I should interrupt my convalescent Kdrama run to watch this. Korean costume drama is all about national storytelling - does this compare?

Marc de Faoite @marcdefaoite.bsky.social · 10d

"In one of the more unintentionally hilarious sequences, Ms Guinness visits a village in “Connacht, Co Mayo”, and is shocked to discover that a famine took place several years earlier and that everyone speaks Irish."
#speirgorm
www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-r...

House of Guinness on Netflix review: Wildly unfaithful retelling is like Succession with shillelaghs

Television: Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders, shows his understanding of Ireland under colonialism is rudimentary at best

www.irishtimes.com

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