It's been a while and I need to refresh some things starting with some more regular posts on here to replace some of the doomscrolling from elsewhere. Audiobooks I listen to a fair few audiobooks but often it's the same ones again and again to try and get me to sleep when I have about of insomnia. However I take on new ones which I listen to whilst doing chores and gardening so that I've heard them properly. There have been some new accessions into the collection which I can recommend. Both are noir detective type genre fiction but take a very different approach. Nick Harkaway's work is something I almost always enjoy and he has some real strength in depth (ake on Gnomon if you want a real challenge). His book Titanium Noir is a lot of fun with some really great ideas in it. It's more sci-fi than straight detective fiction. I've also been enjoying the Fetch Phillips stories by Aussie actor and author Luke Arnold (you might have seen him as Long John SIlver in ...

Thinking about Notebooks in B6 size. Hmmm, B6, you say? I don't have many of them, and there are lots of accessories I can obsess over? Perfect. This is all you need. Do not obsess over....oh. Don't do this... ...it will shit on you. Music A German Electro Pop Metal band? It seems unlikely, and yet... Stuck in my head The Prodigy make themselves sound like Daleks intent on destroying Middlesex General The Chemical Brothers and Beck, it was obviously going to be an earworm.

With the increasing exodus from the toxic and decaying corpse of Twitter interesting things are popping up elsewhere. I managed to avoid the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, as is my habit. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to miss the ensuing culture war horseshit about which the less is said the better. That sad episode seems to have overshadowed the below which seems unfair. In case any of you missed the metal band Gojira opening the Olympics while playing on a castle with an army of headless Marie Antoinette behind them... streamable.com/4qdjv2?src=p... [image or embed] — Hillary Monahan ( @hillarymonahan.bsky.social ) Jul 30, 2024 at 1:01 AM The castle is called La conciergerie and this is the exact place where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned for her last night before being beheaded. And the song they sang is a revolutionary one involving hanging aristocrats — winyyy⁷ ( @winy.bsky.social ) Jul 30, 2024 at 8:28 AM

 ...then really lean into it. And if you're an odd filmmaker who happens to make odd films and loves fountain pens and  has been commissioned to make an ad for probably the most famous fountain pen maker in the world then you should really lean into it. Like this:

I've been considering buying myself this BBC Maestro course just so that I can listen to Alan Moore. Edit: Auntie has, of course, disabled playback outside of YouTube so now linked there instead.

Don't ignore the spies' role in the creation of the media landscape of the late twentieth century. They used it to contain radical voices and maintain a dominant narrative that suited their strategic agenda. That's the chief lesson in this series, but it takes a while to really arrive and it takes many a digression through the lives of its three main protagonists on the way to it. A worthwhile listen if you have an interest in this era of history and culture. “ Not All Propaganda is Art ”  tells the story of three writers who got caught up in the Cultural Cold War between the years of 1956 and 1960: New Yorker writer and “little magazine” champion Dwight Macdonald, British theater critic and “Angry Young Man” Kenneth Tynan, and legendary Native Son novelist Richard Wright, who at this time was living in exile in France in protest of American racism. All three collaborated with and were targeted by American, British, and French security agencies in Cold War propaganda battle...