The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

Today is publication day for my book, Prestige Drama. It's a funny, angry book about Derry, memory and Troubles-scented television. I think it's quite good, however I can *confirm* that it's quite short. But don't take my word for how great it is, look at all these lovely people saying that.

Penguin released not one, but *two* books by Morrissey in their Classics line. One was the memoir excoriated by AA Gill, but the other was his novel List Of The Lost, which was much, much worse. 11 years ago this week, I read it so you don't have to. www.balls.ie/the-rewind/m...

The Lads clearly know who Turning Point UK are, and not just that but that they are "unabashedly racist" and have links to both Reform and the Conservatives. Reeeaaaaally feels worth commenting on the fact that this organisation was recently exposed as claiming to be able to contract assassinations

Reminded this morning of a guy I was on a summer job with when at college. We were shoveling muck of some sort and he said, "I'm not doing this. The only muscle I want to use is my brain."

If anyone would be kind enough to furnish me with some of the other examples of the "CEOs Guide To Robot Parenting" ouevre, I'd be much obliged. I know I've seen at least half a dozen more in tweets or LinkedIn posts.

I also love how the three things it comes up with are the most anodyne, generic three things a person can say about a child. 'Cold, boring and hates animals' would have been actually interesting, at least.

Really seems like a mask slip moment for the skinsuit set. Maybe I'm built different but I do know 3 things I like about my own kids. Fuck it, I held a stranger's fat little baby for 3 minutes last week and I could easily give you 5 things I liked about that excellent little gentleman right now.

what is the earliest console game that lets you pick non-binary and please tell me it's not fucking austin powers for game boy color of all things

Imagine being so brutally, one-dimensionally self-caricatured, that pretty much anyone who's heard of you would read this and know instantly that it is about you.

Cruelty is anhedonic. It rarely delivers the euphoria promised because, in the abstract, what feels righteous and joyful inevitably reveals itself to be sordid and small. Then it's "No not like that". "No not enough". "No the real battle, the forever war to make this feel good starts now". Forever.

If I'd loudly, and at length, bemoaned the fact that Muhammad being a popular name in Ireland was a sign of creeping Sharia law, I think it would come up. With Linehan it doesn't. Because frothing transphobia is not merely excused. It's worse. If you hate trans people enough, all else is forgiven

If I had reacted online to images of death and destruction in Gaza, not with mere whataboutery or scepticism, but with *actual cheering and gloating*, I think it would come up.

Let me put it another way: I regularly do press for my books with national press. If I had **even once in my entire life, not dozens of times a week** posted something as racist as saying that a black actress hired on my wife's hit sitcom was a tokenistic diversity hire, I think it would come up.

It's like he comes so pre-disgraced that he gets the racism as a freebie. So the Telegraph, or The Critic, or Talk TV, or the BBC, or RTE in their hurry to launder his transphobic bigotry as "controversial" just skip right by the fact he thinks black people can't act or muslims are beneath contempt.

It's an odd side-effect of him being so absurdly focused on transphobic bigotry that the fact he constantly posts *hundreds* of the most racist things I have ever read online is just never, ever mentioned. Things that would follow any other person to their grave as THE thing that disgraced them.

Have seen this Nature piece about the effects of X's algorithm mentioned again and it bears repeating; exposure to a right wing algorithm makes you - measurably and predictably - more right wing, even after you stop using it. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 'Under The Sea', Sebastian tells us that "even the sturgeon and the ray, they get the urge and start to play", but the reluctance of said fish is, sadly, presumed rather than demonstrated, marring an otherwise logically consistent essay on the overwhelming musical enthusiasm of sea creatures.

Ha ha, let's hope this doesn't find the fash conflicted. Perhaps the RBL will be added to their hate list along with the RNLI. Perhaps in due course everything with a 'Royal' prefix will be deemed traitorous.

You have to laugh at the sheer insanity of Turning Point UK being found to be organising literal contract killings and paid agitation at protests up and down the country and it barely even raises a flicker across the press. If that isn't 'terrorism' on some level I don't really know what is

In college, Chevy Chase played drums in a jazz-rock trio called Leather Canary. Seeing no future in it, he quit to go off and become a globally successful comic actor. The remaining members decided to keep going as a duo, but changed their name to Steely Dan.

I get a lot of these bullshit AI author request emails but I gotta say this is the first time one has quoted by one star reviews to me and tried to spin it to me lol. Thanks man.

If anyone's kid has lost their Columbia Statistical Research Group' model of survivorship bias, I found it on the street in Walthamstow yesterday.

My keen knowledge of statistics tells me these feet are merely suffering from survivorship bias.

Hello. I will be at Thought Bubble comics fest on November 15th and 16th with some new comics! And some old comics! Pay me money, I'm poor!

Can't articulate why, but I find something deeply insipid about the practice of addressing conference-goers as "Conference". "Conference, is it just me or-" "And that's why, Conference, I promise-" Dehumanised nothingspeak. Grandiose, vague, bland all at once. Bleak and sad in some weird way.

No family should have to worry about the cost of travel when their child is seriously ill. Please sign GOSH's petition for the government to fund travel for sick kids in the UK. gosh-blueprint.appspot.com/a/travel-fun...

We'd have both of those.

Proud to sign this open letter in the @newstatesman1913.bsky.social. www.newstatesman.com/cover-story/...

It's rare you see a post that manages, entirely accidentally and so perfectly, to achieve the logic and rhythm of a Viz letterbocks entry. I had a sausage sandwich this morning. Contrast that with man landing on the moon.

If you're not watching Al Jazeera investigates live now, you *really* should The most remarkable undercover footage I've ever seen. Turning Point UK actively involved in soliciting what they think is a hit UK police really need to be watching www.aljazeera.com/video/live

so this is the baby's room, please excuse the mess

Any time these people show you the inside of their homes, it's always like they live in a house-sized ExxonMobil boardroom.

This is a quietly metastasizing moral panic

It's also that his vernacular is from 1998. It's not that there isn't *any* distinct accent/slang/affect associated with different racial groups in the UK in 2026, but a) there's much more accepted slippage between groups and b) the relevant cultural tropes aren't *these* cultural tropes in any case

It's darkly funny that his only other options are another racist one or the homophobic one

A general obs not a dunk on the OP. But I find it depressingly telling about the cursed state of our discourse that Baron Cohen's revival of *one of* his racist characters is mainly generating intellectualisation & chin stroking rather then straightforward rejection & condemnation