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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 1d

PSA: you can now search the database to see if your work is included in the Anthropic settlement.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 6d

My feeling was: well ok it’s a start.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 6d

Tell it like it is, Victor.

Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 6d

“The murky swirling of the end of a world perceived through the end of a life filled him with dismal reveries on which he brooded in a state of bearable affliction, even contentment.”

In awe of this furious, incandescent, teeming novel of revolution, violence, and decay.

NYRB Classics edition of “Unforgiving Years” by Victor Serge.

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Reposted by Sam Byers

Daniel Trilling @trillingual.bsky.social · 6d

I am not religious, but when people's places of worship are attacked, as when their homes, schools, libraries, etc are attacked it is an attempt to destroy the connections between us. That is what antisemitic violence aims to do.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 11d

Just thinking back to those heady internet days when almost any effort to champion anything besides the most aggressively commercial writing was dismissed as “book snobbery”.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 11d

Penny’s really starting to drop isn’t it.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

In an era of AI slop and mid TV, is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback?

The lowbrow dominates culture and anyone who questions the status quo is dismissed as an elitist killjoy. But with bland algorithmic content on the rise, perhaps we consumers should start taking our a...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Sam Byers

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 17d

Thousands of Londoners have indefinite leave to remain.

They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city.

Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.

Farage vows to scrap indefinite leave to remain, placing thousands at risk of deportation

Reform UK plans to force non-citizens to apply for visas with high salary thresholds and no access to NHS services

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 17d

True - that is also likely a factor. In a sense it’s all related: he keeps feeling out exactly how far he can go, then edging back a bit if he senses he’s gone too far too fast. But the fact he’s got to here already does I think highlight how unconstrained by social acceptability he now feels.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 17d

This unconscionable, truly cruel and terrifying proposal is the work of a man who feels, in my view correctly, that there is nobody really standing in his way.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Farage vows to scrap indefinite leave to remain, placing thousands at risk of deportation

Reform UK plans to force non-citizens to apply for visas with high salary thresholds and no access to NHS services

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · 22d

Been a while since I read him. What a pleasure to be reminded again of his extraordinary talent for evocative detail, his caring attention to lives lived in the shadows of history, that mysterious, sly sleight of hand he brings to all his work. A master.

A copy of Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Sep 9

“If you want to understand what England will look like with a Reform government, just come to our town. Racists and thugs are acting with impunity, intimidating local residents and people of colour, who are living in fear.

This is England 2025.”

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A racist mob menacing refugee children and our town. Read this and see what lies ahead, unless we act now | Anonymous

Last weekend, it fell to ordinary people to oppose the far right and others. The national toxicity has reached us: a kind of hate I haven’t seen since the 1970s

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 29

I love this novel. Powys is long overdue for the proper classics treatment. Really hope Penguin do others too.

John Merrick @johnmerrick.bsky.social · Aug 29

Good to see Penguin Classics reprinted John Cowper Powys's mammoth novel, A Glastonbury Romance, next year!

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 28

Increasingly convinced that there is no-one else experiencing, interrogating, and finding new forms to convey reality in the way that Rachel Cusk now does routinely. It’s as if every moment of existence is being minutely and sometimes painfully dissected. Genuinely remarkable writing.

Chris Power @chrispower.bsky.social · Aug 26

‘M and I both secretly felt that it was the ways in which we had been damaged that had given us our power.’

Loved this. But Parade haters should move along. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 28

We’re in an incredibly weird place. I think out of the surveillance culture and online life has emerged a deeply held suspicion of all aspects of personality.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 28

Our obsession with judgement and a weird kind of interpersonal taxonomy is sending us hurtling towards a fully culture-free society in which no belief, interest or activity is regarded as truly authentic.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 28

Increasingly fascinated by these men who are all at once not reading, reading but reading the wrong things, and reading the right things but for all the wrong reasons.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 26

For The Guardian, I reviewed Samanta Schweblin’s excellent new collection of short stories.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin review – grasping the essence of horror

The Argentinian writer maps a journey through fear, healing and the terrifying permeability of our boundaries

www.theguardian.com

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 25

Yeah the Sunn0)) one benefits from being kind of merrily overblown I think. I find the drift probably the toughest of all of them. I do think it’s amazing but it really has to be a very particular kind of day for that to go on.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 25

A quite remarkable number of people seem to observe our collective descent into madness, hatred, and violence, and think to themselves: the way to resolve this is through additional madness, hatred, and violence.

A tweet by Sky News, with the headline “Is it time for gunboats to help stop the people smugglers?”

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 25

It’s not as suffocating as the albums that follow, so it doesn’t have quite the same “brace yourself” feel. It’s more sort of calmly unsettling. But it has these moments of real beauty too. It’s definitely a solitary listen lol.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 25

Had this on a lot over the past week or so - it’s excellent. Somewhat reminiscent of Ka.

The Quietus @thequietus.com · Aug 25

In a hip pop landscape often defined by surface-level bravado, Gabe ‘Nandez and Preservation summon something rarer: a record that feels like prophecy, ritual, and rebellion all at once

Preservation & Gabe ‘Nandez - Sortilège

buff.ly/TbWF2WP

Preservation & Gabe ‘Nandez - Sortilège album cover. Grainy image of a person wearing a triangular shaped hat.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 23

The speed with which I dashed off to see if this is available on BBC sounds (it is).

Jonathan Gibbs @jonathangibbs.bsky.social · Aug 23

Hearing András Schiff play The Art of the Fugue at #BBCProms this morning was a treat and a privilege. Yes, my eyes were closed for certain periods of time. No, I wasn’t asleep. Yes, I was listening. It’s not even really ‘listening’, even with eyes open. It’s: being in the room with the music.

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Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 23

It seems to me that from the centre right across to the progressive left there must be one single shared goal and sense of purpose: preventing this man from getting into power.

A series of clippings from an interview with Nigel Farage in which he announces plans for “mass deportations”.

Sam Byers @sambyers.bsky.social · Aug 21

Feels increasingly that we are just sleep-walking into the most dangerous possible reality.