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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 18h

It’s lovely to see. But, you would barely see this in Australian media, which is dominated by Murdoch-owned press. One of the two major parties is all but owned by mining magnates and climate denialists, while the other is mouthing platitudes while extending fossil fuel leases. It’s not great here!

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 1d

Another day, another solo game of John Company. The Sykes Family had an impressive run of military victories only to be undone by rebellions. Walsh dominated the Board of Directors and kept the company out of debt, but it was Larkins - who married well, and retired better - who got the victory.

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 5d

But the sheer size of these Baroque Cycle tomes are making it difficult on the morning commute. As such, also picked up Gene Wolfe’s Fifth Head of Cerberus and reading that on my train journeys. Haven’t read Wolfe for 35+ years, let’s see what all the fuss is about hey?

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 5d

Reading update! Finished Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion the other day. It’s a slow start but built tempo as it went on. As I reread the series I do wonder how the pitch to the publisher went. Have started The System of the World (final volume in the series) which I remember quite enjoying.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 6d

Catalogue, inventory or compendium comes to mind, although I am sure you have considered and discarded them all. I also do like Curiosa as it implies something unusual about the catalogue.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · 27d

Today’s view.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 29

Been in bed with the ‘flu for the last couple of days. Good news is that I smashed through Spook Country and my twentieth book of the year, Zero History. I think my issue with SC is that it feels a little unmoored, the overarching story only coming into focus fairly late in the piece.

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 24

Now on Spook Country, the follow-up to Pattern Recognition, but I do find it one of Gibson’s weakest works so slowing down a bit. Also a chapter or two off finishing some non-fiction, which‘ll be a first for this year (something I tend to dive into more but I felt like something different for 2025).

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 24

So I’m on book 19(?) for the year. Output slowed a bit for a while there, but work trips and shorter books for those numbers up. After reading Virtual Light I couldn’t help but plough through the rest of Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, along with both volumes of Le Morte D’Arthur and Pattern Recognition.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 21

Looks fantastic!

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 12

Sydney is a coffee and nominal burger from a Japanese restaurant that was, presumably, once a house. Comfort food, like rereading Pattern Recognition and realising, suddenly, how alien the futuristic present of 2003 has become.

Book. Coffee. Something burger-like but yet, not one.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 9

Maria! Played this one last night, recreating the Wars of Austrian Succession between 1740-1748. You can’t tell from the pictures but gorgeous art, clever mechanisms and tense all the way through.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting France, Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting Bavaria, Austria and Bohemia.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting Saxon and Prussian forces moving into Austria from Silesia and Poland.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Aug 1

I went to respond but it looks like some questions are miniatures only - I like war games but not those ones so much.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 26

Instagram seems to think I’m a bear. Flattered I suppose?

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 25

Put on The Princess Bride for the kids tonight and they loved it. Both of them had seen it before - my daughter watched it maybe four times in two days, at one point - but it’s been a few years and it’s such a damn joy. Perfect dialogue, perfect casting, perfect everything.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 23

I would like to say that I have kept up my ‘read a book every day’ practice but Malory was dense work at times, and I think I skipped a few days here and there. Also picked up a couple of other books and started them. But done now, so will get back into my rhythm.

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 23

Caxton published Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in the last week of 1485, and 540 years later, in the last days of July, I finished it! A tremendous tome, genuinely epic in scope, and I feel better for having read it and for having finished it.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 22

As was I, until I started travelling every few weeks! Small luxuries.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 22

No exciting photos on this trip, best I can give you of Sydney is a poorly cropped G&T in the business lounge.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 19

Hi sister lived in Aachen for a bit and when she came back home to Australia it became part of our tradition. One of the national tv channels (for ‘multicultural television’) would play it every year so there must have been enough expats who loved it.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 7

Updated my profile pic on another social media platform; reader, I aged seven years in a day.

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 6

At the Atheneum in Melbourne tonight, and the light fittings made me think of a neoclassical Minion.

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Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jul 3

I watched it for high school, read it too. Really compelling. I’ve been up there a few times too, although food festivals at the Rock do take some of the mystique away.

Disco Stu @epiphanyengine.bsky.social · Jun 23

In Canberra today. Okay, so my hotel isn’t really giving me the impressive skylines like some of the places I’ve visited recently, but it does have those bright cold mornings that I love.

Reposted by Disco Stu

Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · Jun 17

Nov 30th 1969: Princess Margaret is speaking to David Bowie after the Save-Rave charity concert at London’s Palladium. To Bowie’s right are Dave Cash & Ed Stewart, both Radio One DJs, and singer Clodagh Rodgers.

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