Ooh, I shall have to listen to that. I’ve heard the first seven series, never got to that one. I really love John Finnemore. Have you listened to Cabin Pressure?

Someone on my bus smells like Doritos

The podcast has been so much better lately when they’ve stopped trying to be so strict about keeping them short. It’s much more interesting when they actually have time to talk about the topic, rather than just raising the subject, listing a bunch of relevant strips, then wrapping up the episode

(2 of 2) There’s a deluge of these things now, pretending not only to be from contemporary authors but dead ones as well: James Joyce, Agatha Christie etc. (And bad actors are also posing as publishing executives, btw.)

Please repost to help spread the word!

(1 of 2) WARNING: SCAM EMAILS PRETENDING TO BE FROM ME. They offer very specific feedback on writing in progress/posted or self-published works, then propose an offline conversation. They are coming from this address:

williamgibsonauthor@gmail.com.

These horrible evil bastards are, on top of everything else, very very stupid

Huge fan of the show and would love to read this, but won’t be doing that on Substack. *Please* consider an alternative, such as Ghost.

Running a crowdfunding campaign is a huge and difficult job, and I’m sure there are costs associated with it that run higher than one might expect, but *$26,000*? Come on now

If I’d contributed creative work to any of his previous kickstarters, I’d have questions at this point about how funds from those were distributed

I am trying to be even handed about this, and not just assume the worst because of Meadows’ open racism, but I genuinely struggle to see how $26,000 is a reasonable amount of money for a publisher to take out of a kickstarter total for costs not associated with the actual book it was raised for

He was the closest human I have ever met to a real life manifestation of Hanna Barbera’s Captain Caveman, a kind, warmly good natured and occasionally incomprehensible short stack of unfiltered manliness, and he really loved Hercules (pronounced ‘Erk you lees in his broad Bermondsey cockney accent)

…who moved to the Scottish countryside and immediately became completely obsessed with the birds that visited his garden, in particular a raven he named Hercules. He would go out and chat with it while working on his bike

On a more wholesome note, my sister (39) recently got into (not euphemistic) birdwatching and dragged me round a wetlands centre to prove it. The most surprising person in my life to take that turn, however, was an aging ex/reformed hell’s Angel I used to hang around with in my 20s…

Possibly also relevant is that “bird” is very common English slang for woman (dating back at least 700 years) so it’s not uncommon to hear “birdwatching” or similar used salaciously

I read naturalist as naturist initially and parsed this very differently, spending longer than i should have trying to decipher what “birding” could be a euphemism for

The very last scene- not the (fantastic! Amazing!) big finale scene that everyone focused on when it came out, but the actual end, that the credits roll on- is one of the best noir endings I’ve ever come across in film or literature. St Maude is a good film, but this is a bloody masterpiece imo

Great movie!

I absolutely bloody loved that film.

I really like a lot of Ringer podcasts but their commitment to supporting platforms and franchises at odds with their stated politics is deeply frustrating

And didn’t they do some stupid thing with their last trailer where different versions were showing at different screenings?

I’m sure I remember something about the post credits schwarma scene being added after it had already been out

I honestly thought they’d already done that!

Seems like this would be relevant to many of your interests

Probably, but it’s a truly absurdly damaging thing to make part of the marketing strategy for the new one.

If this is really true, and Doomsday’s story doesn’t work without seeing this new edit of Endgame, then this is a really spectacular commercial suicide. I’m actually kind of in awe of how bad an idea it is.

DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS

I am already plotting my revenge.

Man, I would if I could, but I’m working Saturday

I am very grumpy about this too. Happy for my American friends but why can’t we have it too?

I have never read a Larry Hama comic I didn’t like. I even love his Batman stuff with Tony Daniel, Orca the Whale Woman included