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Alex MacLaren

@alexmaclaren.bsky.social

150 followers 430 following 1.5K posts

Reading, cooking, counting my blessings

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · Jan 24

If you care about the meaning of words, the Oxford English Dictionary offers free access to its online version via your local library, something that amazed me when I discovered it and has delighted and reassured me ever since. Libraries are the best. Go here: www.oed.com/information/...

Oxford English Dictionary

The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

www.oed.com

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Reposted by Alex MacLaren

the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 2d

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 3h

I’m not imagining actual Nazism on White’s part - just that strange mild dark line of eugenic philosophy, dating it like a growth ring on a tree

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 4h

I remember reading TH White's 'The Goshawk', and at one uncomfortable point flipping to the frontispiece to check when it was first published.

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Laura Phillips @lauraphillips.bsky.social · 18h

Many congratulations @bbcstever.bsky.social 2025 recipient of the Charles Wheeler Award for outstanding contributions to broadcast journalism. Jason Groves: “As the last person on Earth able to challenge Vladimir Putin publicly in his own language,he has also become a voice for millions of Russians”

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Mary Robinette Kowal @maryrobinettekowal.com · 22h

My hot take is that none of these are structure. These are all recipes that describe structure.

Structure is the Salt, Fat, Acid Heat of writing.

3-Act/Hero's Journey etc are recipes.

You can make great meals without using a recipe if you understand the principles of structure.

Mx. D. D. Ward (they/them) @ddwardiswriting.bsky.social · 2d

So #WritingCommunity how do we feel about structure?

Do you use the 3 act structure? The 5 act?

Hero's Journey? Save the Cat? Super Structure Method? Story Genius Method?

Something else?

What have you got?

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 22h

Ray McAnally was an interesting actor! I'm always on the lookout for his performances after A Very British Coup, so this is welcome.

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 1d

😂You’re right about its vibe, but it is well written, and actually useful

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 1d

Aix was exquisite (Mrs was working there, I visited) - but I regretted having to only change trains at Marseille en route there, so I went back to Marseille and loved the slightly electric vibe. Appreciate that it has its troubles, and that my 'edgy' may be others' 'rough'.

Reposted by Alex MacLaren

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 1d

There are no quick fixes. As a start on long term fixes I think we need political focus on the crisis, limits on the wealth & power of individuals, more regulation of social media & genAI, enforcement of laws on monopolies & mergers in media, strengthening of watchdogs, strong humanities education.

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 1d

Solid list here

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 1d

I was wondering if someone was gonna mention Marseille. Whenever I’ve been there, I thought it was very exciting.

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 1d

Don’t do it! Every time I mess up a spellimg I remind myself of the pleasures of digital accountability and it is always worth the trade, in 2025

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 2d

i can imagine, and there have of course been moments when I realised a benefit had been lost.

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 2d

I hadn’t the heart to stay in any of it in the end!

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 2d

Moses supposes his toeses are roses
but Moses sucks cocks in hell

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 2d

Yes - the Cory Doctorow cycle became a lived experience. I felt it just as keenly on Facebook.

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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 2d

It's almost exactly four years since Tim Shipman's notorious "Boris Johnson squats like a giant toad" tweet.

Seems like important context given how we often talk as though the next election – four years away – is a done deal.

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Jeremy Limb @jlimb.bsky.social · 2d

That really moving Marseillaise scene in Casablanca is now 400% more moving youtu.be/CbWgOpG1988

Casablanca - Marseillaise Scene (extended edition)

YouTube video by Jeremy Limb

youtu.be

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Reposted by Alex MacLaren

Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 2d

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_...

The coffee drinker outlived the experiment itself.

^ Experiment
The king ordered the experiment to be conducted using a pair of identical twins. Both of the twins had been tried for the crimes they had committed and condemned to death. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment
on the condition that one of the twins drink three pots of coffee, and the other drink the
same amount of tea, every day for the rest of their lives. 7]
The tea drinking twin died first at the age of 83, long after the death of Gustav Ill, who was assassinated in 1792. The age of the coffee-drinking twin at his death is unknown, as both doctors assigned by the king to monitor this study predeceased him. 7][51[81[9]

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 3d

I once with remote-and-pause-button tried to count Catriona‘s dogs. 7? 9? It’s not easy to tell, but then it may actually be another of the film’s supernatural questions

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 3d

I think it’s too late, and they’re never going to.

Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 3d

I read that piece he wrote called ‘The Straussian Moment’, long ago. The fascism is really very hard to ignore

Reposted by Alex MacLaren

womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 3d

US activist Angela Davis and novelist Toni Morrison walking together in 1974, by photographer Jill Krementz #womensart #BlackHistoryMonth US

Monochrome photograph of two Black women walking down a street towards the viewer, the subject to the right looks at the other as if in conversation, while the other looks down as if listening

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 3d

People think the first thing Gutenberg printed was the Bible. This is false. The first things he printed were a political prophecy, propaganda about the Turks’ threat to Christendom, & a popular school text. If you want a parallel to AI, that’s it: making $ from conspiracies, racism, & school slop.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 4d

really nice piece on this btw from @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer

The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...

sonjadrimmer.com

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Alex MacLaren @alexmaclaren.bsky.social · 3d

Account Manager in Shenzhen (reading news): Hmm, let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet