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Keith Sands

@keithsands.bsky.social

98 followers 120 following 200 posts

Cambridge-based, work in ELT publishing / ed tech for a university press. Semi-competent rock climber. Half Man Half Biscuit & Cardiacs enjoyer. Occasional writing and translation.

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 18h

Casa del Frutetto (House of the Orchard), Pompeii

A Roman fresco of a garden on a dark background, centred on a pear tree, with a sinuous snake entwined around the trunk.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 5d

Cafe Nero, Stansted Airport, where celebrity autobiographies go to shed their dust jackets and die

A shelf of hardback books, many of them celebrity memoirs. John Cole, George Best etc

More shelves of books. Michael Caine. Chris Evans. So much Lee Child.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 6d

He looks uncannily like John Craven.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 10d

I ring up Dial-a-Poster
I ring up Dial-a-Poster
I ring up Dial-a-Poster
And say "that's not where I would put Llanberis"

(But overall, it's a lovely bit of work).

Half Man Half Biscuit Information Service @hmhbinfo.bsky.social · 10d

Edward Phillips posters have produced 'Mileage Chart' - a map taking in over 200 UK and Irish locations mentioned in #HMHB songs, including a key to which album each appear on. Methodical. www.edwardphilips.co.uk/vintage-rail...

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 10d

That's not where I would put Llanberis.
Otherwise, excellent work.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 11d

Just when you think he couldn't possibly get more patrician contempt into his delivery, he turns it up to 11 with "London's untidy spraawwl" at 15.14

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 16d

A really good, strange writer, not fascist. Looking at the dates though, Berg was probably written before the unlikely relationship with Williamson. It was later adapted into a terrible black comedy film called Killing Dad.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 16d

That's, um... I have questions

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 16d

Odd coincidence (?) came to mind reading this. The experimental novelist Ann Quin had a relationship with the elderly Williamson in the mid 1960s, and her first novel, written around then, about a disturbed murderer, was titled Berg.

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 20d

Proustian rush as the Ronseal Tile Red Garage Floor paint I am using on a workshop floor recalls the Oxblood Doc Martens I coveted in the summer of 1989

A tin of terracotta-ish paint on a concrete floor

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 20d

No I did not! Thanks!

HMHB in NME in the late 80s might be a desert though. They split in 1986 (citing "musical similarities, haha) then reonvened in 1990.

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 20d

Sounds a great find. If you happen to chance across anything Half Man Half Biscuit related in that lot, I'd be interested to see it (it's for a thing)

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 20d

Could be better, could be worse!

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 21d

Anyway, hope you're well. The Stirling job sounds like it was a great move.

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 21d

You were loitering in the area of it

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 21d

Pedantically points out that jokes like "If only there was a word for that!" don't work because he doesn't control the entire global supply of Monopoly sets.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 23d

I see that egret down there quite often. Always very dapper.

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 23d

Machine translation is an example. But what Clegg is arguing for is for giants like Meta and OpenAI to ignore the IP rules, in order to wipe out smaller competitors. And the result will be insupportable energy demands and an information and cultural landscape submerged in AI slop. 2/2

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 23d

"Ringing the doorbell would kill the burglary sector" is the easy response, but also he's just plain wrong: plenty of companies develop and train specialised LLMs/ SLMs quite legally, asking permission. Some do really useful things, in medicine and tech, with human monitoring of the output... 1/2

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 24d

Peak season.

A fridge crisper full of foraged mushrooms, mainly boletes

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 25d

"that escalated fast"

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · 28d

Pity the poor tabloid hack who's just been ordered to dredge for vaguely "woke" statements from the new Archbishop of Canterbury to go under the inevitable "Sarah Doolally" headline

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · Sep 30

If only there was a concise one word term to describe what these anti-pro-antifa guys really stood for

Keith Sands @keithsands.bsky.social · Sep 29

I'd heard of this, but never seen it till now. The greatest, weirdest bit of guerilla TV ever broadcast, when Sergei Kuryokhin got an hour-long slot on Soviet national TV to expound his theory that Lenin was a mushroom (1991) youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?...

Sergey Kuryokhin: Lenin was a mushroom / C.Курехин: Ленин был грибом, part 2

YouTube video by xox

youtu.be