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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 11d

Some quick googling has just confirmed that’s the joint-second worst score in #strictly history (there’s been one other 10 and an 8; the rest of the catastrophes have been 11s or 12s).

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 11d

It’s the first dance of the series and it…sucks. #strictly

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · 17d

Ave atque vale…

Photo of a Burmese cat accidentally giving a Roman salute.

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Reposted by Gareth Prior

𝒊𝒂𝒎𝒃 ~ 𝒑𝒐𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒚 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒅 @iambapoet.com · 26d

Fewer than two days now till wave twenty-three of @iambapoet.com arrives on screens large and small.

There's also only a week left until YOU can audition for your place in the journal in either 2026 or 2027.

Find out what you need to do, and be ready to submit next week. 🤞🏻

iambapoet.com/audition

Audition for poetry journal iamb in Sept 2025

Audition to be part of quarterly poetry journal iamb between the 20th and 27th of September 2025.

www.iambapoet.com

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 31

If there’s a shag on stage in Act I, it had better go off by Act III…

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 31

(and a separate compound-noun for the realisation that you’ve left an egregious typo in the middle of your post about it)

Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 31

If it doesn’t already, German should have a l compound-noun for the satisfaction that a middle-aged British man feels in a central Paris restaurant when the bill arrives and he realises his flurry of semi-idiomatic French has headed off the post-Brexit Dance of the Service Charge…

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 31

I’ve always been a sucker for a casual memento mori while crossing an international border.

Photograph of a Eurostar onboard café cup with the slogan ‘I am compostable’.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 31

Got bumped onto the earlier Eurostar at Gare du Nord just as it was about to depart (excellent) then had the hilarious experience of (1) the nice woman at the gate saying we didn’t need to run, then (2) the guys on the platform saying: ‘Run!’.

[P.S. we made it]

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 30

(Correction: 15th century)

Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 30

The ticket inspector on the Rome-Milan train just got excited at this and started talking to us about medieval manuscripts. I love this whole region...

A copy of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 29

To be fair, there are easier ways of laundering money in this town…

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 28

(Still a thing)

Same pasta dish as above, but now 1/3rd eaten.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 28

Second iteration of a new invention: “Tagliatelle alla Laura in Trastevere” (slow-cooked aubergine; garlic; Gorgonzola piccante; tuna; basil).

It’s a thing.

Photograph of an aubergine pasta dish framed by a glass of Greco and a side salad.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Yes to all of this — I keep coming back to William Gibson’s Neuromancer — a truly sentient AI (which I believe to be an impossibility, but whatever) wouldn’t be a friend — it would be a voluntary pact with a demon.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

My problem with the article — and with many other conversations on related topics recently — is the docility with which we’ve side-stepped the question of what it means to be sentient, or to suffer, or to experience the world in all its imperfections.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Ah — I think we’re agreeing. Strongly.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Out of interest, why?

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Everyone involved in this needs to read David Bentley Hart’s __All Things Are Full of Gods__.

Twice.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times

As first AI-led rights advocacy group is founded, industry is divided on whether models are, or can be, sentient

www.theguardian.com

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Roman pigeons rocking the moody album-cover vibe…

Three pigeons perched on Chiesa Di San Callisto in Trastevere, emoting.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 26

Early morning run…

View of St Peter’s square with the papal balcony centre and the dome of the cathedral above.

Castel Sant’Angelo seen from the Sant’Angelo bridge

Sculpture of an angel on the Sant’Angelo bridge

View of the Forum from behind the Piazza del Campidoglio

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 25

“But I was lost in a dark wood,” he said comedically.

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 24

‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead…’

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

‘A dangerous moment’: the emboldening of Britain’s far right

In a summer of anti-migrant rallies, flags and nationalistic rhetoric, observers warn there is a lack of government voices pushing back

www.theguardian.com

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 23

Trastevere

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Gareth Prior @garethprior.bsky.social · Aug 21

In my third year as an undergraduate, I shared a bathroom overlooking the dome of the Radcliffe Camera and assumed that this was the most ridiculous position of unearned privilege in which I would ever have cause to wash my hands. As usual, I was wrong.

View of the Duomo in Florence over rooftops.

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