Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Joel Morris

@gralefrit.bsky.social

15K followers 520 following 20K posts

Writer & highwayman. Ladybird, Cunk, Wipe, Be Funny Or Die, Framley, Candidate band, Comfort Blanket, Broken Veil etc https://ko-fi.com/gralefrit AGENTS, website, links, bio etc: www.gralefrit.co.uk

ko-fi.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · Nov 9

Hello new followers!

If you want to know anything, it’s all on my website…

www.gralefrit.co.uk

I’m doing lots of stuff on Substack, including podcasts and writing and that.

joelmorris.substack.com

Also: Be Funny Or Die, How Comedy Works and Why It Matters… from all the usual book places.

18 21 180

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 2h

Off to the Independent Podcast Awards tonight, for Broken Veil.

Will let you know how far away our seats are, as is traditional.

8 43

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 4h

An effluencer.

1 1 14

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 4h

I’ll miss it when this place is sold to International Hitler Ltd.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 4h

When I sort the deal for the paperback of Be Funny Or Die, this is the edit I want to do before publication. The idea of Twitter as an active space to perform and consume comedy is the thing that now feels incomprehensible, badly dated, and that’s only a year or so ago now.

Athena Kugblenu @athenakugblenu.bsky.social · 5h

just finished Yellowface and my takeaway is just how irrelevant Twitter has become. The way it is used by creatives, commentators and consumers is central to the novel. Now, the idea that an artist would care about Twitter feels dated. Tweets used to make the news. Truth Social gets more press now

4 5 50

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 8h

I originally wrote “1st, 2nd, 3rd” etc before realising that was the wrong joke.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 8h

People discover Tony Hart has “just died”, for some reason, randomly all the time, only to be told he died years ago. It would be weird if that was always on October 15th every year. So it won’t be his death anniversary today every year.

2 1

Reposted by Joel Morris

Count Mysterioso @mysteriosox.bsky.social · 8h

This is a superb piece

Julia Raeside @jnraeside.bsky.social · 11h

Cock-a-hoop to be writing for @thenerve.news and we kick off with a piece about why Celebrity Traitors is era defining television.

The new, star-studded Traitors is era-defining telly - because it knows that celebrity is the ultimate grift

Will anyone ever trust Jonathan Ross again? Will Tom Daley come out in the edit as the ultimate villain? The genius of the celebrity version of The Traitors, argues author and critic Julia Raeside, is...

www.thenerve.news

1 2 10

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 8h

Cos it would be weird if everyone decided he’d died on the same day every year.

2 1

Reposted by Joel Morris

Julia Raeside @jnraeside.bsky.social · 11h

Cock-a-hoop to be writing for @thenerve.news and we kick off with a piece about why Celebrity Traitors is era defining television.

The new, star-studded Traitors is era-defining telly - because it knows that celebrity is the ultimate grift

www.thenerve.news

10 7 42

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 9h

I think we shouldn’t sit in echo chambers and expect a lift. Free speech, bro.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 9h

I’d never been to LA before. I walked, and got the bus. It’s got public transport. But it’s also riddled with social stigma. Not true of London.

1 1

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 9h

Removing entry level jobs for migrant workers, so we don’t have to ever see them, seems to be one of the major incentives in the tech bro world.

They sure love their invisible slaves!

6 28

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 9h

“I’d rather not talk to another human who has different life experiences to me, particularly if they’re foreign. THANKS!”

Cool work, guys. Good look.

3 19

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 9h

When you ask people in LA why they like driverless cabs, they usually snort and say “it’s only as dangerous and awful as using a human cabbie, and you don’t have to talk”.

Every human cabbie I had was called Pedro or Wong, and it struck me that these things are great if you’re an antisocial racist.

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 9h

London’s famous black cabs are about to get some new competition: robotaxis.

Driverless Taxis to Take On London’s Storied Black Cabs

Waymo plans to launch a robotaxi service in the U.K. capital next year.

on.wsj.com

8 6 52

Reposted by Joel Morris

Take the clown statue and get out! WE DON'T HAVE ANY KIDS!!! @brainmage.bsky.social · 9h

"I used AI to generate videos of girls who wanted me" BRING BACK BULLYING! STUFF THESE NERDS IN LOCKERS *IMMEDIATELY*! EVERY SECOND THAT PASSES WITH THEM UNWEDGIED IS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS AND GALLONS OF WATER SQUANDERED!!!

3 51 210

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 10h

Cheers!

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tony Hart. And the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 11th and 15th anniversary of his death.

6 22 150

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

“We’ve wiped the Nigel Kneale. But don’t worry. We’ve still got these beauties…”

1 3

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

You can see these cultural swings sometimes - these lurches back from imagining the impossible and the transcendent, to accepting the status quo as “pragmatic”, usually lorded over by boring hairy men. It’s like Britpop coming after rave. Outer space to inner corporeality.

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

It’s incredible. I then watched This Body Is Mine which has kind of the same godawful twist, even given that wild premkse. I got terrible giggles about how pisspoor it all was. The backlash to “women’s lib” from “thinking” genre writers was quite the thing. You can feel it in the air.

3 1

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

It stands happily alongside Year Of The Sex Olympics. It’s superb. Better than its obvious Edwardian SF film competitor Things To Come, I think even. It’s GREAT.

1 3

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

I love that the makers intended for it to feel Edwardian too, to not dick with it too much, and let the concepts float into 60s concerns (mass media) and therefore all the way to today (social media).

2 2

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

The tech guys know that any successful shoot-for-the-moon business always pivots to arms dealing and pornography when it’s at its height of potential.

The Verge @theverge.com · 1d

Sam Altman says ChatGPT will soon sext with verified adults

ChatGPT is about to get flirty.

buff.ly

3 30

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 11h

Conversely, the effects and design in The Machine Stops are magical. The hovering, spinning vault door made me gasp.

2 2

Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 12h

A few episodes that noticeably have no essay in the accompanying booklet. Sensationally awful.

1 1