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Taking two Netflix stars closely associated with Madrid and Paris and throwing them together in a third European city, Bess Wohl's Barcelona is an entertaining story so full of red herrings that even trying to describe a genre for it feels like a spoiler. Its plot does hinge on quite a lot of elements that probably don't bear too much close inspection - I hear that hen dos have got …

"Cusk is unparalleled in her innovation of narrational modes for accessing the self, and her dexterity is nowhere as accomplished as in the roving narration of Arlington Park, a work of cosmophagic consciousness"

As I was interviewing candidates for my “designer who can ship” position, I asked a few how they picked typefaces. One person’s answer stood out above the rest. They shared their screen to show me a folder of inspiration on their hard drive. Dear reader: the folders structure was immaculate. In that moment, I immediately realized I was talking to a professional. What is it about a clean workspace that …

RSVPed Attending Web Writer's Workshop [Online] Web Writer's Workshop is a 90 minute event on Dec. 3, 2024 to discuss all things writing on the web. Whether you publish fiction or non-fiction, introspection or ideas, you are welcome to join us for an informal chat about writing!

Saturday 2nd November 2024 A.I. suggests I call this blog "The Quirky Pub Culture of Yorkshire" which reassures me that I'm still marginally cleverer than a robot. I guess that comment won't age well. Where were we? Ah yes, Old Hill, somewhere betwixt Birmingham and Dudley. Not for the first time in my life whilst 'in drink', I get north & south mixed up and end up waiting for a …

Recently, I asked people to send me anonymous questions again, which is always good fun until someone sends you something unpleasant. Anonymity and nasty messages, what are the odds? Anyway, I particularly enjoyed this one, as it gives me an excuse to link to one of my favourite things ever. “Favourite audience reaction in a sitcom? I know it’s difficult to choose. The reaction at the end of Seinfeld’s The …

Sent to the front lines, soldiers in the First World War could only communicate home through letters. Although censored, these letters provided comfort to both those at home and those fighting in the trenches, and they were often reproduced by local newspapers. A British soldier writes home in a loft over a cow shed, ‘somewhere near the front’ | Illustrated War News | 30 December 1914 In this special blog, …

A Novel In The Grand Manner… Unmasking The Tawdriness Of The Bullring… Probing The Soul Of An American Girl Aroused To Strange Emotions Each Time She Faced Death In The Arena More shocking that Blasco Ibáñez’ Blood and Sand More fascinating that Tom Lea’s The Brave Bulls More candid than Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon via

1. AI Makes Tech Debt More Expensive - The core argument is that generative AI significantly widens the gap between codebases with low and high tech debt. Companies with clean code can leverage generative AI to write code much faster, while companies with messy legacy codebases struggle to adopt these new tools. This widens the gap between the two codebases, making tech debt even more expensive for companies with outdated …

Gladiator, Jr.(WARNING: plot of Gladiator 2 discussed in close and explicit detail!)Coming out of the multiplex after a screening of Gladiator ll: A: What do you think?N: Wasn't a fan of the first Gladiator. Not a fan of anything Scott since Blade Runner.A: That's over forty years ago. N: I'm trying to figure out why Scott's films look so ugly now. His first film The Duellists seem inspired by Hogarth …

Griping about after 7pm public transport is a very Melbourne thing. We have the population of a big city but provincial-style train timetables that concentrate service in peak times with 30 minute gaps following after dark. Sydney has around twice our evening service levels while taking public transport at night is less mainstream amongst the residents of our less populous capitals. But there was one brief time nearly two decades …

Strangolapreti are delicious Italian spinach and bread gnocchi (dumplings) traditional in Eastern Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige. Made with bread, spinach, eggs and cheese or flour, strangolapreti are usually served in a simple sage and butter sauce. So tasty and comforting, these dumplings are a super way to use up leftover stale bread and even cooked spinach.... The post Strangolapreti (spinach and bread gnocchi) appeared first on The Pasta Project.

The film is adapted from Irish writer Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. "Hamnet" has sold 2 million copies in the U.K. and U.S. and has been translated in to 40 languages.

I’ve finally gotten around to getting accounts set up across a range of social media networks beyond Mastodon. Here’s the complete set of links: Follow me: on Bluesky on Mastodon on Threads Follow the blog: on Bluesky on Mastodon on Threads I’m trying not to cross-post much outside of work announcements on my personal accounts, but I honestly don’t know these things all fit together, and I’m not sure all …

Between the Temples (Nathan Silver, 2024).On a cold day in Rhinebeck, New York, Ben Gottlieb, the cantor of the local synagogue, walks into a Catholic church. Anxious, and recently widowed, Ben has come to talk about the afterlife. “Yeah, we don’t have Heaven or Hell,” he explains to the priest, pausing sheepishly, “we just have, you know, Upstate New York.” Ben is wondering whether, if he starts believing in heaven, …