📚 Books 2026, 8: The Spirit of Science Fiction, by Roberto Bolaño, Translated by Natasha Wimmer: devilgate.org/2026/04/13/finished-read...

📚 Books 2026, 7: Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves: devilgate.org/2026/04/07/finished-read...

If You Hail Mary, Will She Stop to Pick You Up? In my piece on Project Hail Mary, I mentioned having some thoughts on the title. I was talking about the use of ‘Hail Mary’ to mean a last-ditch attempt. All else has failed, we have no other hope left, this is our ‘Hail Mary’. I believe the use of it in that form comes from American sports. Most likely American football. I’ve seen the term ‘a Hail Mary play’. It baffles me how the expression came to be used that way.

If You Hail Mary, Will She Stop to Pick You Up?: https://devilgate.org/2026/04/11/if-you-hail-mary-will/

📚 Books 2026, 6: The Twenty Days of Turin, by Giorgio De Maria, Translated by Ramon Glazov: devilgate.org/2026/04/06/finished-read...

I’ve posted here every day so far this year. That’s unusual for me — unprecedented, in fact. I might take a break now , though. Except… hello.

That use of ‘original Alvin Stardust’: was there more than one Alvin?

Against the Far Right but not Against Antisemitism? There’s a big march planned in London tomorrow, called Together Against the Far Right. It’s organised by the ‘Together Alliance’, which seems to be a big conglomeration of trades unions and other groups. All well and good. The odd thing about it is, at a time when antisemitic attacks are at a high, there are no Jewish groups involved. Or nearly none. Indeed, this article from The Times (archive link) is headlined ‘Celebrities back anti far-right march “freezing out Jewish groups”’:

Against the Far Right but not Against Antisemitism?: devilgate.org/2026/03/27/against-the-f...

I’m currently reading The Twenty Days of Turin A Novel by Giorgio de Maria. 📚

It’s a very odd work, which in part slightly prefigures (because it’s set in the 1970s) some of the negative effects of social networks. But it’s about a lot more than that.

Why Can't We Find Out What the Green Party is Proposing? I’ve been hearing about the Green Party’s conference motion against ‘Zionism’, and how it seemingly is deeply antisemitic, and will effectively have them supporting Hamas. I didn’t want to write about it without reading the actual motion. But that appears not to be possible unless you’re a party member. It’s behind a login requirement. I can’t find anywhere that actually quotes the motion. The Guardian and the BBC don’t seem to have reported on it at all.

Why Can't We Find Out What the Green Party is Proposing?: https://devilgate.org/2026/03/25/why-cant-we-find-out/

Tales from the Bitface Putting this interview with Andy Weir here for future reference. We’re going to see Project Hail Mary next week, and it claims the book and film are ‘built on solid science’. But it’s described as: a story about humanity’s last-ditch attempt to save Earth from “astrophage,” a fictional, star-eating algae that has infected our sun. I also watched the trailer last night, and it seemed incoherent (though trailers often do).

Putting this interview with Andy Weir here for future reference. We’re going to see Project Hail Mary next week, and it claims the book and film are ‘built on solid science’.

But it’s described as:

"a story about humanity’s last... devilgate.org/2026/03/24/putting-this-...

The music app on iOS: what does this icon on the top right do? Or what is it supposed to do, because nothing audible or visible happens when I tap it?

The Meffs at the Roundhouse, March 2026.

SLF at the Roundhouse, March 2026, Full Band.

The First Band I Ever Saw, 46 Years Later: https://devilgate.org/2026/03/23/the-first-band-i-ever/

Tales from the Bitface Ben Werdmuller tells us ‘AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds’: the software really does change the substance of your writing in what I would call objectively bad ways: it makes it less personal and less emotional, and it actively changes its underlying meaning in the process. This takes us back to my recent thoughts on people possibly not even understanding their ‘own’ LLM-generated writing.

Ben Werdmuller tells us ‘AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds’:

"the software really does change the substance of your writing in what I would call objectively bad ways: it makes it less personal and les... devilgate.org/2026/03/22/ben-werdmulle...

Tonight, at London’s historic Roundhouse!

To the Hackney Empire tonight, to see Bridget Christie’s Jacket Potato Pizza, tour which was excellent.

Tales from the Bitface We watched The Man in the Hat 🎥 a few nights ago. An odd, gentle little British/French road movie from 2020. It’s almost silent, at least as far as the main character goes. Others have dialogue, but not a lot. A man goes on the run across France, after seeing what appears to be gangsters disposing of a body. He meets lots of strangers — mostly strange in more than one sense — along the way.

We watched The Man in the Hat 🎥 a few nights ago. An odd, gentle little British/French road movie from 2020. It’s almost silent, at least as far as the main character goes. Others have dialogue, but not a lot. A man goes on the run across Fr... https://devilgate.org/2026/03/19/we-watched-the-man-in/

📚 Books 2026, 5: Red Menace, by Joe Thomas: devilgate.org/2026/03/18/books-red-men...

Tales from the Bitface kottke shares the teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three, and says he is nonplussed by it, ‘both in the traditional and modern senses.’ I was just annoyed by the whispery voiceover. But: what is this ‘modern’ sense of ‘nonplussed’?

Of course a quick digital lookup answers the question in my previous post: the new meaning of ‘nonplussed’ is its exact opposite.

Literally.

kottke shares the teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three, and says he is nonplussed by it, ‘both in the traditional and modern senses.’ I was just annoyed by the whispery voiceover.

But: what is this ‘modern’ sense of ‘nonplussed’?

Tales from the Bitface Hari Seldon as an undercover Sigmund Freud? It’s a long time since I read any of the Foundation trilogy, but this article, describing it as a ‘Jewish Masterpiece’ suggests Freud as partly a model for Seldon: The Foundation trilogy doesn’t really focus on whether or not the galaxy will be saved. What it does, like Freudian psychoanalysis and Jewish textual practice did before it, is focus on how the past can best be mined to solve the problems that spring up in the present.

Hari Seldon as an undercover Sigmund Freud?

It’s a long time since I read any of the Foundation trilogy, but this article, describing it as a ‘Jewish Masterpiece’ suggests Freud as partly a model for Seldon:

"The Foundation trilogy ... devilgate.org/2026/03/16/hari-seldon-a...

Identity Is The Crisis, Can't You See? I recently read Alembic Offerings, by hippieish writer Erik Davies. It included this line, which intrigued me: I cut my teeth in the post-structuralist 1980s, more interested in difference than identity. It reminded me of how I had long been confused by identity politics. That is, for years — possibly decades — when I heard the term ‘identity politics’, I had supposed it to be about individual identity, about how each of us is different.

Identity Is The Crisis, Can't You See?: devilgate.org/2026/03/15/identity-is-t...

Claim Chowdering Gruber's Claim Chowder John Gruber makes a ridiculous assertion, or so it seems to me. In criticising Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI startup Anthropic’s claim that ‘AI, and not software developers, could be writing all of the code in [their] software in a year’, Gruber takes things the other way: It may well be true that 90 percent of the lines of programming code that are written today, Friday 13 March 2026, will have been generated by AI.

Claim Chowdering Gruber's Claim Chowder: devilgate.org/2026/03/14/claim-chowder...

Even taking Trump’s confused reasons for the Iran war at face value, it’s still a total disaster | Jonathan Freedland Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

Good piece by Jonathan Freedland about the disastrous state of the war in Iran. I know I said I felt supportive at the start, and I still want to see the Islamic Republic’s regime fall, and Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis with it. But sadly it isn’t likely this can make that happen.

Tales from the Bitface 🎥 Small Prophets is Mackenzie Crooks new comedy-drama. We watched the first episode tonight. Looks like it’s going to be really good. Interesting similarities to Ricky Gervais’s After Life, in that you’ve got a sad man living alone because he’s lost his partner, and visits his elderly dad in a care home. I think it’s going to be very different, though, both from that and from Crook’s earlier Detectorists. We watched both of those in the last year or two.

🎥 Small Prophets is Mackenzie Crooks new comedy-drama. We watched the first episode tonight. Looks like it’s going to be really good. Interesting similarities to Ricky Gervais’s After Life, in that you’ve got a sad man living al... devilgate.org/2026/03/12/small-prophet...

Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it The company tells Platformer it will let experts opt out of the controversial feature — but how different is it than what every other AI company is doing?

In more ‘AI’ nonsense, Grammarly is giving bad advice and tagging writers’ names to it, without paying the writers or even getting their permission.

I tried Grammarly a few years ago and hated it, but that was long before the LLM boom. This is beyond unethical.

Who Made This? AI, Ownership, and the Crisis of Authorship AI has become a sort side beat for me.

I find it deeply weird and surprising to read of authors claiming as ‘mine’ images they requested, or copied and manipulated using ‘AI’. The kind of claim quoted in the linked piece, that ‘it’s all mine.’ When it plainly isn’t.

Writers, you’d think, ought to understand that words have meanings.

Purity Poetry A great post from Ian Betteridge, called Zen fascists will control you…. Dead Kennedys fans will recognise the title as a quote from ‘California Über Alles’, their single and album track from 1979. Ian builds on it to write a history of the various movements, ideas, cults, that have believed or supposed that humans can be improved or perfected, by diet, exercise, drugs, physical enhancement… Or by following the word of an ’enlightened’ leader, for example.

Purity Poetry: https://devilgate.org/2026/03/10/purity-poetry/

The Olympic Park, the V&A, and Bowie The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is in Kensington in West London. At least, its original and main site is. It has others. The newest (I believe) is in the Olympic Park, over in East London, quite near me. They call it the V&A East Storehouse, and it’s in a building that I think was the broadcast centre in 2012, and afterwards was a shared-use office-for-hire sort of place, I believe.

The Olympic Park, the V&A, and Bowie: devilgate.org/2026/03/09/the-olympic-p...

Glasgow Central: Building collapses at station as fire causes major disruption Dozens of services have since been cancelled and the station will be closed until further notice.

Glasgow Central: Building collapses at station as fire causes major disruption - BBC News

Oh no! Glasgow Central! Also my brother and sister-in-law are here and heading back there tomorrow.

To the Arcola theatre in Dalston this afternoon, for Ukraine Unbroken, a set of five short plays about Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2014.

Powerful, moving, a reminder of a time we lived through and that the people of Ukraine are still living through it.