Chris McLaren
@chrismclaren.com
I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
The gang will be over for Night's Black Agents in 2.5 hours. Surely tonight is the night of katabasis (I've said that the last two sessions).
In the meantime I can definitely slip in a rewatch of an old favourite before thye get here, now that I have the fancy Shout Factory steelcase 4K redo of it…
In the meantime I can definitely slip in a rewatch of an old favourite before thye get here, now that I have the fancy Shout Factory steelcase 4K redo of it…
November 30, 2025 at 9:59 PM
The gang will be over for Night's Black Agents in 2.5 hours. Surely tonight is the night of katabasis (I've said that the last two sessions).
In the meantime I can definitely slip in a rewatch of an old favourite before thye get here, now that I have the fancy Shout Factory steelcase 4K redo of it…
In the meantime I can definitely slip in a rewatch of an old favourite before thye get here, now that I have the fancy Shout Factory steelcase 4K redo of it…
Reposted by Chris McLaren
ChatGPT’s signature writing style is everywhere now, and I hate it. It reminds me of when we tried mixing all the beverages at the soda fountain in middle school. We didn’t actually create the perfect drink, we just made a cloying monstrosity that lost everything good about its constituent parts.
November 19, 2025 at 5:17 PM
ChatGPT’s signature writing style is everywhere now, and I hate it. It reminds me of when we tried mixing all the beverages at the soda fountain in middle school. We didn’t actually create the perfect drink, we just made a cloying monstrosity that lost everything good about its constituent parts.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
In the 1990s, as a grad student, I was asked to give presentations on Camus at my uni, and I had to add a "Hitler was morally bad but also incompetent as fuck" segment into my presentation because Neo Nazis would show up to my talks and I felt compelled to shame them. We need more shaming en masse.
Hitler was bad.
An essay that, you know, I didn’t think I’d need to write.
An essay that, you know, I didn’t think I’d need to write.
Perry: The pro-Hitler problem with the American right
"We need to get back to the basics: Hitler was bad. The people who suggest otherwise are also bad," David M. Perry writes.
www.startribune.com
November 30, 2025 at 3:21 PM
In the 1990s, as a grad student, I was asked to give presentations on Camus at my uni, and I had to add a "Hitler was morally bad but also incompetent as fuck" segment into my presentation because Neo Nazis would show up to my talks and I felt compelled to shame them. We need more shaming en masse.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Whenever I see the 'Ireland is Full' mob in the news, I often think of this map. I think I took the photo at the Dunbrody Famine Ship Museum, years ago. There was a time when it was *our* people leaving their country in their masses, either fleeing a crisis or in search of a better life.
#SpeirGorm
#SpeirGorm
November 30, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Whenever I see the 'Ireland is Full' mob in the news, I often think of this map. I think I took the photo at the Dunbrody Famine Ship Museum, years ago. There was a time when it was *our* people leaving their country in their masses, either fleeing a crisis or in search of a better life.
#SpeirGorm
#SpeirGorm
Reposted by Chris McLaren
being ruled by tiny men bereft of both curiosity and the ability to feel wonder is a terrible fate
November 30, 2025 at 3:39 PM
being ruled by tiny men bereft of both curiosity and the ability to feel wonder is a terrible fate
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Is dungeons and dragons woke? Did women ruin comic books? Is it racist to make the little mermaid black? Why don’t people come to my house for Thanksgiving
November 30, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Is dungeons and dragons woke? Did women ruin comic books? Is it racist to make the little mermaid black? Why don’t people come to my house for Thanksgiving
Reposted by Chris McLaren
it is amazing how so much tech gets unremittingly worse year on year at whatever you once used it for and less pleasant to use and more bound up with creepy politics as well as personal and environmental harms and yet also still less productive of actual goods and these are somehow great visionaries
November 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
it is amazing how so much tech gets unremittingly worse year on year at whatever you once used it for and less pleasant to use and more bound up with creepy politics as well as personal and environmental harms and yet also still less productive of actual goods and these are somehow great visionaries
Reposted by Chris McLaren
It can be done badly, but exposure to a certain sort of analytic philosopher’s complete intolerance of undergraduate bullshit is a valuable part of any decent education.
November 30, 2025 at 7:16 AM
It can be done badly, but exposure to a certain sort of analytic philosopher’s complete intolerance of undergraduate bullshit is a valuable part of any decent education.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
"Police detained a 17-year-old teenage boy before releasing him the following day, and he will have to attend a course on citizenship."
I don't know, sounds like the kid knows how to be a good citizen already.
I don't know, sounds like the kid knows how to be a good citizen already.
November 30, 2025 at 12:17 AM
"Police detained a 17-year-old teenage boy before releasing him the following day, and he will have to attend a course on citizenship."
I don't know, sounds like the kid knows how to be a good citizen already.
I don't know, sounds like the kid knows how to be a good citizen already.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
They're very slowly encasing the prick in choux pastry.
France’s far-right leader hit by egg, days after flour attack
French far-right leader hit on the head with an egg
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, was hit on the head with an egg Saturday, just days after another incident in which a protester threw flour at him.
www.ctvnews.ca
November 30, 2025 at 8:14 AM
They're very slowly encasing the prick in choux pastry.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
MFAs are a scam. The only writers I trust are autodidacts who worked in a boot-blacking factory because their fathers were sent to debtors' prison
November 30, 2025 at 7:23 AM
MFAs are a scam. The only writers I trust are autodidacts who worked in a boot-blacking factory because their fathers were sent to debtors' prison
Reposted by Chris McLaren
they're auctioning Blake's Tyger next week
seems impossible, like selling a comet or a shooting star
www.christies.com/en/stories/t...
seems impossible, like selling a comet or a shooting star
www.christies.com/en/stories/t...
November 29, 2025 at 5:36 AM
they're auctioning Blake's Tyger next week
seems impossible, like selling a comet or a shooting star
www.christies.com/en/stories/t...
seems impossible, like selling a comet or a shooting star
www.christies.com/en/stories/t...
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Don’t tell me to unclench my jaw. I am grinding my teeth instead of ur bones.
November 30, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Don’t tell me to unclench my jaw. I am grinding my teeth instead of ur bones.
Literally the first full-length, proper novel I ever read, in the enrichment class in Grade 3. With that cover.
Looking back I suspect a lot of who I ended up being was set by that experience.
That is not a complaint. Quite the opposite.
Looking back I suspect a lot of who I ended up being was set by that experience.
That is not a complaint. Quite the opposite.
Richard Bober's cover to the 1976 Dell Laurel-Leaf edition of A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. Bober was only confirmed as the artist in 2023!
November 30, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Literally the first full-length, proper novel I ever read, in the enrichment class in Grade 3. With that cover.
Looking back I suspect a lot of who I ended up being was set by that experience.
That is not a complaint. Quite the opposite.
Looking back I suspect a lot of who I ended up being was set by that experience.
That is not a complaint. Quite the opposite.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
They should bring back those oversized TV remotes that get struck by lightning and send you into the TV where you learn important lessons about life.
November 30, 2025 at 5:18 AM
They should bring back those oversized TV remotes that get struck by lightning and send you into the TV where you learn important lessons about life.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Reposted by Chris McLaren
The shadow is the body and he casts the man
November 28, 2025 at 8:35 AM
The shadow is the body and he casts the man
Reposted by Chris McLaren
2 years ago today
In memory, Shane Patrick MacGowan, former member of the punk band Nipple Erectors, co-founder and lead singer of the Celtic punk band The Pogues, founder of Shane MacGowan and The Popes, died of pneumonia after a long illness.
📸 Gie Knaeps
#ShaneMacGowan #punkrockhistoy
In memory, Shane Patrick MacGowan, former member of the punk band Nipple Erectors, co-founder and lead singer of the Celtic punk band The Pogues, founder of Shane MacGowan and The Popes, died of pneumonia after a long illness.
📸 Gie Knaeps
#ShaneMacGowan #punkrockhistoy
November 30, 2025 at 4:18 AM
2 years ago today
In memory, Shane Patrick MacGowan, former member of the punk band Nipple Erectors, co-founder and lead singer of the Celtic punk band The Pogues, founder of Shane MacGowan and The Popes, died of pneumonia after a long illness.
📸 Gie Knaeps
#ShaneMacGowan #punkrockhistoy
In memory, Shane Patrick MacGowan, former member of the punk band Nipple Erectors, co-founder and lead singer of the Celtic punk band The Pogues, founder of Shane MacGowan and The Popes, died of pneumonia after a long illness.
📸 Gie Knaeps
#ShaneMacGowan #punkrockhistoy
"On the one hand, 15 years isn't very long to a literal immortal. On the other hand, it's 15 years forced to be incarnate, held prisoner by humans. Every moment incarnate they see as lowering or sullying themselves. Being held there by us—by what they think of as jumped up dust—offends their ego "
November 30, 2025 at 6:44 AM
"On the one hand, 15 years isn't very long to a literal immortal. On the other hand, it's 15 years forced to be incarnate, held prisoner by humans. Every moment incarnate they see as lowering or sullying themselves. Being held there by us—by what they think of as jumped up dust—offends their ego "
Quick, someone find @aristemple.bsky.social and @adamstemple.bsky.social, I need to have a detailed discussion with them on new apple varieties.
November 30, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Quick, someone find @aristemple.bsky.social and @adamstemple.bsky.social, I need to have a detailed discussion with them on new apple varieties.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
What he said: 💯 🎯
November 29, 2025 at 9:40 PM
What he said: 💯 🎯
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Bill Hicks once told me: “The dance with mystery evolves us.” I have never been able to banish those words. Long live mystery and our dancing with it.
November 29, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Bill Hicks once told me: “The dance with mystery evolves us.” I have never been able to banish those words. Long live mystery and our dancing with it.
Reposted by Chris McLaren
Every single person in the world should get free COVID boosters if they want them.
November 29, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Every single person in the world should get free COVID boosters if they want them.
"We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."
Oof. He was truly a master, from Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern to Arcadia to Leopoldstadt—just a lifetime of tremendous, thought-provoking, hilarious work. RIP. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard dies at 88
www.bbc.com
November 30, 2025 at 2:33 AM
"We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."
Reposted by Chris McLaren
New Death Sucks sonnet, on the death of Tom Stoppard. www.patreon.com/posts/on-dea...
On the Death of Tom Stoppard | Jo Walton
Get more from Jo Walton on Patreon
www.patreon.com
November 29, 2025 at 10:54 PM
New Death Sucks sonnet, on the death of Tom Stoppard. www.patreon.com/posts/on-dea...