Many years ago my sister and I both quit a Reilly at the same spot, and to this day we make frequent jokes about killer whales circling the circular pool. The repetition was extraordinary!

Romancing the Gothic organises free talks every Saturday all through the year!

Our talks are open to all, happen at two different times (usually) so people can join us from different time zones, and are free (though donations welcome to support the programme)

This year's programme below!

Update #2: Quicksilver, a detector for AI-generated music.

Most folks today are not aware that AI-generated music (entire songs generated by AI models) are growing rapidly. Today, there are more AI-generated songs than human-created songs arriving each week on platforms like Spotify.

I just listened to the Audiobook of Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith, which was a short and wonderful treat. Will soon re-listen to How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy, which is also a treat. I recommend both :)

So sorry to hear it was a difficult day at work. Is it usually like that, or was this unusual? I hope you get to spend some time in your studio to recalibrate and find joy.

Coming back here to enjoy this painting again 🖤
I hope you have a great place to hang it up!

Excuse this interjection by a random stranger! From what I understand, blocked accounts can’t see what we do, but if they followed us, they’ll still count towards our follower number. This was true a while ago; I’m unsure whether it has changed recently. Would be great if we could remove followers.

H681.4.2
How deep is the sea?
At first,
knee-deep;
further
on,
waist-deep,
neck-deep;

and beyond
that over the head.

Was it AI generated?!

I love the Beach Boys painting so, so much 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

Carl and the Passions.

Lift ‘n’ Peel

144 records and CDs by… The Fall x 14 David Byrne x 9 Iggy Pop x 8 John Cale x 10 George Harrison x 5 Ringo Starr x 19 Talking Heads x 2 The Beatles x 3 John Lennon/Yoko Ono x 5 Richard Thompson Paul McCartney/Wings x 11 Bob Dylan x 5 Sly (and the family) Stone x 5 David Bowie x 13 Curtis Mayfield x 13 Bryan Ferry x 6 The Who Roxy Music Pixies x 2 Tristram Cary Pavement Beck x 3 and Love x 3

In March I finished a few pieces of art:

The Beach Boys in 1972, based on photos that I overlaid onto each other.

Two illustrations that are due to be used later this year so I won’t put them on here yet.

A little acrylic painting of a Lift ‘n’ Peel bottle seal.

144 more little records and CDs.

Acrylic on board painting of the Beach Boys. Pictured left to right: Carl Wilson, Blondie Chaplin, Mike Love, Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine and Ricky Fataar.

I've just finished this painting of the Beach Boys, based on three photos taken in 1972 that I made transparent and overlaid onto each other.

I think the original photos capture the individual characters in an interesting way and I wanted to show something of that.

Acrylic on board, painting in progress of the Beach Boys in 1972. Based on several photos from the same time.

I’m going to try to finish this Beach Boys 1972 painting this week if I can.

Based on three overlaid photos.

I think Carl and Blondie are nearly finished. Next: Mike!

An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants To everyone at Grammarly, I am writing a book right now, a really challenging endeavor that no doubt someone in Silicon Valley will think it’s fine to steal the day it’s published. I’ve been a profes...

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

‘TURN SOFT AND LOVELY ANY TIME YOU HAVE A CHANCE’ on the side of a cinema sign in New York, people passing on the street below.

Turn Soft And Lovely
Anytime You Have A Chance.

• Jenny Holzer - Truism.
The 42nd St Art Project, 1993

📷 Don Sheway.

article is pure clickbait but it got me too—it's so difficult to resist the gift of righteous outrage lol. the weirdest thing is how the article seems to understand point of view even less than the people it's mocking allegedly do, e.g. identifying third person entirely with omniscient narrators

Naught but a leap to the left
And thanne a clockwyse tread;
Put thyne handes on thyne hippes,
And be thy knees yn-gatheréd:
Lo, it ys the pelvique thruste
That maketh mirthe down to rayne -

Let us do the Tyme Warpe agayne!

The loser award goes to: Libby! For their AI use!

The Wine preferences in the left-hand menu of Lutris.

The "Advanced" toggle in the Wine preferences for Lutris.

The "Enable DPI Scaling" toggle in the Wine preferences in Lutris.

For anyone using #Scrivener on #Linux via #Lutris (ie, #Wine), you have noticed that the recent upgrade to 0.5.22 *broke* your installation.

I have learned of a fix for the DPI problem, which is one of the three issues.

DPI is now stuck at 96, which is unreadable on […]

[Original post on mas.to]

It was wonderful -- thank you so very much! 🥂

The problem with the whole 'post a woman author you've read 5 books by' is how many women don't get a second book, let alone five.

Anyway, carry on.

Thank you for having a moral backbone! So glad I found you.

I think this is finished!

My painting is based on one of the last photos taken of Lennon and McCartney together.

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...

I really like it -- there's something so fascinating about overlays like this, wanting to peer through one to see what's underneath. Looking forward to seeing what it inspires next :)

Carl and the Passions! Yes!!
I love that ghosted double-image.

(This reminds me I haven’t watched Two-Lane Blacktop in far too long…)

Have you seen the “anatomy of the bun” diagram that has (correctly and scientifically) labelled many important bun parts, including the primary tickle antennae, the wiggly sniffer, and the smooch region? The deluxe bunneh scarf you refer to is the snuggle pouch 🐇

Coral background with faint heart illustrations. A glossy male Blackbird with a bright yellow bill faces left. Large title reads: “Birds as bad exes*” Smaller text reads: “*Yes, you read that right.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, from us to you. Tag your exes. Xoxox

Storygraph train their LLM with user data and do not clarify which data that is, nor offer a way to opt our data out of training.

Pagebound are completely, proudly, and outspokenly genAI-free. They’re still building their thing, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they take it.

This is very interesting! As a writer, the advice I hear most often is to read a lot, and widely. It's rather telling when a "creator" doesn't sample their field. When they don't revel in their medium. When they are not drenching their hems at the tideline in temptation of a rushing wave.