I think about the hatchet job all the time. Such savagery. (Can recommend Peck's book What We Lost)

I tried Clerks again the other day and it was rough going, despite being a personality-forming experience first time.

Goddamn it, all that reading in preparation to defeat evil forces and I fall for the oldest trick in the (free) books. Hopefully I removed the curse by buying the bar staff a drink!

This brought a wild proustian rush - read this exact edition when I was ten.

I can strongly recommend this story as both nauseating and unnerving. (I recently helped parents move house, so was optimally primed.)

Thank you for the poem. Simple and painful. Beautifully done.

This wasn't even an MH professional. This was a Home Office lawyer besmirching her soul with a tawdry playbook of innuendo and diminishment. Delighted we got the right result, but a grim insight into a world I hadn't experienced before

Ooof. I was involved in a young asylum seeker case and these were the (failed) arguments they made to deport her: "You say your fear of being sent back impacts your mental health. But you've washed your hair, so...?"

Devastating to live in Birmingham and hear about this for the first time on the 7th of November. Looks great.

This made me think of Peter Singer and got to to this fantastic article title:

So grateful to @influxpress.bsky.social for bringing him into my life

I'm always recommending this one:

Sounds like it shares a vibe with Twenty Days of Turin, which I adored. I keep happening across second hand copies of Books of Blood too battered and loved to gain admission to my collection, but it's on the (infinite) list

This is exactly what I thought about Mieville when I read this and why I appreciated your article. ("Here's the same list anyone would make" seems to have a strange appeal for some editors and readers.) I'd never heard of the Barker at all and it sounds amazing.

I think it was - for my group of very diverse London kids - the paleness of the set up that was striking. And the scene outside, England's mountains green: more Jersey than Jerusalem.