Stu West

This Columbo where he spends a month living in Elizabeth Holmes’s beach house has to be one of the best ones

I lasted 2 and a quarter days (2 days training, about an hour on the phones) at a UK telesales company when I was 17. They were committing massive fraud, had a document incinerator running in the office and received all their phone bills in Chinese

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Incredible to me how many replies to posts about politics on this site are posted by obvious ops and bots. Just speculating, but if someone’s display name is I HATE DSA and their bio reads "Posting about how I hate the DSA" they are probably not an authentic human here to enjoy interaction

Bluesky cannot be dying if so many people still think it’s worth putting effort into trying to unmanufacture consent here

So if I prompt a chatbot to file my taxes and it does a bunch of fraud on my behalf can I just avoid all consequences by saying it went rogue or

I take it as a sign of our fallen and slop-jaded times that people are watching the Narnia trailer and not unanimously going HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT LOOKS INCREDIBLE

statnews.comHelen Branswell, whose reporting on infectious diseases and public health drew acclaim, dies at 69Helen Branswell, STAT's infectious disease reporter who earned the respect of experts and public health officials with her accessible, prescient dispatches, has died at age 69.

Shocked and saddened to see this, Helen Branswell was an incredible resource during the darkest days of the pandemic

STAT@statnews.com

We are going to miss you very much, Helen. https://www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/helen-branswell-stat-reporter-obituary/

Guy who has only seen Naomi Wolf interviews: Getting a lot of ‘Death recorded’ vibes from this…

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

Saw someone on here say there's no UK band with a big fanbase that has as little US cultural footprint as the Manic Street Preachers and after thinking about it my explanation is they're sort of like "what if The Smiths but you had to do homework before you could enjoy them"

Not meant as a takedown of the Manics, which is a band I quite enjoy in places, but they don't have any undeniable bangers like Panic or This Charming Man or Bigmouth Strikes again, or even tracks like Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now where the lyrics and vocal delivery give you everything you need

The archetypal experience of a potential Manics enjoyer encountering them for the first time is generally "that's quite pleasant, wonder what he's on about"

First thing we do, let’s kill all the motherfucking lawyers

Mark Wallace@wallaceme.bsky.social

Ok don’t let’s get carried away but I found something genuinely good on Threads.

19 Sept

1. Because last night I dreamt I went to Batmanderley again 2. The one where Bane does the Bane voice 3. Blades, Blind Justice 4. Most of them, love Catwoman 5. Brian Bolland

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16 Sept

They’re obviously playing the long game by making the character into Tom King, guaranteeing that Tom King won’t be able to resist writing them a 12-issue Miracleman maxi-series whenever he’s out of contract with DC

Asher HELLbein@asherelbein.bsky.social

It's never been really clear to me why Marvel has been so desperate to get Miracleman into its continuity. Who's popping for this? Who's excited about it? What does it do?

Some discussion lately about how The Kids are not into Douglas Adams. As a massive Douglas Adams fan I want to suggest it’s because his best-known series is five books long, they tend to be sold in an omnibus or a boxed set, and only about half of them are good

Book 5: An extremely sour and unpleasant book. I read it many times on its original release, partly because I’d spent a lot of pocket money to buy the hardcover and partly because at that age I also tended to pick at scabs

I feel like I can criticise criticise these books from a place of great familiarity and affection. On the other hand, according to wikipedia there’s also a sixth book in the series not written by Adams and I’m not going to bother having an opinion about that

Book 3: Includes some great bits. The part about Arthur Dent’s nemesis being foiled from killing him by a time paradox is very good. Sadly, the main plot is about cricket-playing aliens and had been rejected from Doctor Who due to the combination of cricket and science fiction being inadvisable

Book 4: Quite an interesting novel about Arthur Dent having a mid-life crisis. As an ostensible sf comedy, very confusing to me when I read it aged 12

At school, my best friend and I used to have entire conversations by exchanging Hitchhikers quotes. It wasn’t obvious to us that only half of the five books were good, partly because there were only four books at that time

Books 1 and 2: The HHGttG series starts with an excellent novel. Unfortunately, because Douglas Adams ran up against a deadline, it was split in half and published as two ~200 page volumes

Stu West reposted

Patrick Monahan

@pattymo.com

4 Sept

When someone unironically references Roko’s basilisk that’s how you know they’re [noticing sniper’s red dot centering on my heart, from the future] absolutely normal and correct

Gene Ha creator of 2026 IL Reads pick MAE The Definitive Edition

4 Sept

Why did the director of Reservoir Dogs not release a camping-themed movie during the pandemic under the name Tentin Quarantino

Stu West reposted

dave

@gloomfather.bsky.social

13 Aug

yeah man "woke 1" sucked ass. I "woke 1" morning from uneasy dreams to find myself transformed into a giant insect

Stu West reposted

@geneha.com

17 Aug

Replying to @geneha.com

My best known work is Top 10 w writer #AlanMoore & layout artist @zandercannon.bsky.social. It’s been translated and reprinted around the world and is loved by comic geeks, screenwriters, and by a lot of cops. I once asked Alan if he ever did a “ride along.” He replied, “Never in the front seat…”

9 Aug

Reading about Middle Eastern history and finding out lots of things about Michel Aflaq, founder of the Ba'ath movement. Ideally every time I see the name Aflaq my brain wouldn't immediately go

8 Aug

Don’t know why the Spider-Man movies have left out the crucial lore detail that he tracks down crooks using spider-shaped AirTags that put his brain on vibrate mode

I've got the official tie-in book to Oliver Stone's JFK, which contains not just the screenplay and some historical notes, but also reviews, news articles and outraged letters to the editor about the movie, and I strongly feel Christopher Nolan should now publish something similar for The Odyssey

There's a reprint of an illustrated article Gary Trudeau did for the New York Times depicting Oliver Stone in a motorcade with media commentators taking potshots at him. We need a prominent cartoonist to draw Nolan's critical odyssey, maybe Kate Beaton is available

I'm not the world's biggest Norman Mailer fan, so his overview of Oliver Stone's career is my favourite thing he ever wrote. "One of the worst great movies ever made" a real banger of a line in my view

@phyrexianmetamour.bsky.social

The term 'state actors' is pretty funny because I just imagine someone with a 50 year career on stage playing Denmark

Stu West reposted

Icewind Dale Gribble

The Byrne’s Supper was a legendary night in the annals of Scottish comics fandom. My only regret is that I didn’t show up dressed as a character from Tutti Frutti, in tribute to the wrong John Byrne

Al Kennedy@alkennedy.bsky.social

About 20 years ago, we held a Burns Supper at our flat, with @stuwest.com @craig-mcgill.bsky.social @wilsondeluxe.bsky.social and others, but because we were (were?) comics nerds, we had a Byrne's Supper instead. We had readings from comics he'd scripted, and I read the Mr Immortal Memory.

28 July

Is it a sign of being internet poisoned if you can’t read Claude Debussy’s surname without smirking

27 July

[desperately trying to come up with some topical Odyssey movie takes] Men will literally live in seclusion on the island of Ogygia eating the apathy-inducing lotus flower for seven years rather than go to therapy

26 July

The current direction of tech is that any cybercrime that previously would have required hiring a dodgy Russian on the dark web will now be done by a bedroom hacker with an LLM, terrible news for the job security of dodgy Russian dark web cybercriminals

26 July

Genuinely curious to know if they see the writing on the wall and are all currently rebranding as high-priced corporate cybersecurity consultants

23 July

DiscussingFilm@discussingfilm.net

First poster for ‘EBENEZER’, a new film based on ‘A Christmas Carol’ starring Johnny Depp. “Before he was Scrooge, he was Ebenezer”

23 July

Exciting news from Glasgow

Ghoulson Deadluxe@wilsondeluxe.bsky.social

I have acquired a cat, btw. Her name is Stella. She is ridiculous, as are all cats