JE Smyth
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jesmyth.co.uk
JE Smyth
@jesmyth.co.uk
2.9K followers 700 following 530 posts
Writer, critic, historian |📕Mary C. McCall Jr.|📘Nobody’s Girl Friday | ed.📗I Lost My Girlish Laughter | 📚Fred Zinnemann | Mum to Z & Z, 7 🐕, + Mortimer🐰 | Ban AI
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Graham Greene and Paul Scofield with Phyllis Calvert, 1959.

‘Perhaps when you’re my age you’ll know the heart is an untrustworthy beast. The mind too, but it doesn’t talk about love.’
Reposted by JE Smyth
Congratulations to Maggie Hennefeld, author of DEATH BY LAUGHTER, and J. E. Smyth, author of MARY C. MCCALL JR, whose books are finalists for the Wall Award! tinyurl.com/2cx75s5f @hennefem.bsky.social @jesmyth.co.uk @columbiaup.bsky.social
Take a look, Sir Gary Oldman: Here’s an example of an actor who didn’t bend the knee to a sleazy establishment honour system.
Albert Finney by Cecil Beaton (1961).
Graham Greene and Paul Scofield with Phyllis Calvert, 1959.

‘Perhaps when you’re my age you’ll know the heart is an untrustworthy beast. The mind too, but it doesn’t talk about love.’
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I realize many people don’t quite get that not every single professor in every single university teaches computer science and might actually be trained in and invested in teaching other things, like let’s say, history? Or poetry.
Or sociology.
It is not our job to teach students how to use AI.
If you don’t teach your students how to use AI, you’re doing them a huge disservice because they won’t have jobs in the future.
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Mine too 🤣🤣🤣
My favorite Peter Sellers scene.
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The St. John Cathedral Oak, Lafayette, Louisiana

A Southern Live Oak of epic proportions

Photo: The St. John Cathedral
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What do you do when your media org is captured? You start your own.

Introducing....The Nerve!!! @thenerve-news.bsky.social

We're all-female, journalist-owned & launching next week.

Please help us build a truly independent, progressive new media!👊👊👊
Former Observer big-hitters inc @carolecadwalla.bsky.social launch new title The Nerve with redundancy payouts

After Observer sale: "We decided to launch a title that the journalists themselves would own, that would be truly independent"
pressgazette.co.uk/news/former-...
Former Observer big-hitters launch new title with redundancy payouts
Five former Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr have launched their own culture publication using their redundancy money.
pressgazette.co.uk
Alice in Wonderland going to her tea party…But getting paid for it.
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The thing regular people don’t often grasp about ‘academic freedom’ is that if you don’t allow experts to research & teach in their fields of expertise, guided by their professional judgment & decades of training, you have effectively given up on the concept of knowledge & shut down your university
Universities are moving rapidly to comply with laws that don't exist.
“I’m emotionally shellshocked right now,” said one professor in the Texas Tech system. “What does it say about academic freedom? It says we don’t have it.” The professor spoke by phone from the inside of a car to avoid being overheard by colleagues.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...
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"All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions."

-- W.B. Yeats
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Albert Finney by Cecil Beaton (1961).
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We celebrate the late Barbara Walters, who was #BOTD in 1929. The trailblazing TV journalist will be remembered for her firsts: first female co-host of TODAY & first female co-host of an evening news program. She paved the way & shaped the future for women broadcasters.
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Reposted by JE Smyth
Just published: my new book "Forgotten Times" (Amberley Publishing). 180 photographs taken by me in the 1950s and 1960s on the streets of the UK, Ireland and the outer islands and depicting a world largely unknown to the present day. #up2509
Producer, director and co-founder of the Actors Studio Cheryl Crawford (1902-86) #BOTD with Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams. #legends #herstory
Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon in Sicily, 1963. 💔
With one image, explain the difference between a Frenchman and an Englishman….👇
He used it for a doorstop at home. 😁
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Brown hare backlit by early morning sun anxiously watching signatures on the petition heading for 30,000. I'm sure you've signed the petition to protect hares from shooting in the breeding season, but any more family and friends to sign? petition.parliament.uk/petitions/72...
#UKwildlife #mammals
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Reference librarian Eddie Kristan said lenders at the library where he works have been asking him to find books that don’t exist without realizing they were hallucinated by AI.

🔗 www.404media.co/librarians-a...
Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books
It’s a trippy time to have a library card.
www.404media.co
You’ve convinced me to go back to a typewriter.