Tim Sleath

FROM SERBIA TO BRAZIL AND EVERY DISCO I GET IN MY HEART IS PUMPING FOR LOVE

Ysabel Yates'... I mean Cookie Monster's superb takedown of why GenAI in the workplace sucks.

To celebrate Hobbit day yesterday (happy belated birthday frodo and bilbo btw) I've listened to the pilot episode of Eleanor and Alasdair Read That which I realised i'd missed, about the hobbit. Highly recommend! www.podbean.com/ew/pb-gx3r7-...

Here's my list of alternate names for birthdays in the middling years, to obfuscate age and just be more fun. I'm currently in year Area (or Pastis). Next year is Energy. Then Herbie, followed by Studio, then Britvic. Not as succinct, but next would be Hungarian Revolution. Then Heinz.

I've seen this ad on the tube. It's really odd. Main picture, fine, gives a flavour of the Turkish coast, great. But then the boat that should be in the foreground is covered up with a weird photo of 2 kids by a lake that could be...anywhere? I just find it very strange. Bodrum is ace, by the way.

🐳 You’re God damned right @hesterblum.bsky.social & I made a TWENTY-FIVE EPISODE PODCAST just about 𝐌𝐎𝐁𝐘-𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐊. Subscribe now at exploringthegreats.com/moby-dick & enjoy our thrilling trailer:

Says the guy who, after losing in a free & fair election, incited an insurrection against his own country: the very definition of treason. #ImpeachConvictRemoveImprison

On my way, Clacton.

Don't have anything to say about the Brexit anniversary except: What a goddamn waste of time.

I’m thinking of entering #Eurovision next year doing a 3-minute abridged version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight read in Middle English, accompanied by a lute-playing John Cooper Clarke (who’ll hopefully agree to be paid on results). Surely an inexpensive way to 0 points or even 1. Any takers?

@misterabk.bsky.social Hello! After your excellent show recently, I recalled a website from the dawn of the internet which had an amusing aside about ducks. The site still exists although slightly broken in places. Sharing is caring, so here you are: www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/duck/

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” Robert Hughes

@misterabk.bsky.social a thoroughly enjoyable show, thanks for capering, performing and otherwise entertaining us with jollity and whimsy. It will push back the shuddering awfulness of reality by, oh, a few hours, I dare say. Apologies I couldn't hang around for a "selfish daguerrotype". Pip pip!

- A 100,000 drop in net migration costs us £7bn - Scrapping the two-child benefit cap costs us £3bn What gets more attention? James O’Brien says 'we have become a ludicrous country'.

this exists it is called thinking

Having just watched a report on the increasing number of people turning to AI agents for relationship advice, we can't be far away (if not already there) from a significant slice of voters asking ChatGPT/Grok/Siri/Whatever to tell them for whom they should vote. Take a moment to think about that.

I know noone cares, but @nytimes.com, Ii think I'm going to stop doing Spelling Bee. "colloidal" is the last straw, after "pelmet" and "trug". I mean, just plug the thing into a decent dictionary, why don't you?

really NYT Games, I am very disappointed.

I'm sure you've listened to this already...What!? You haven't? You simply must! Or we are no longer friends, simple as that. 😘

I was greatly dismayed yesterday in NYT games that "pelmet" wasn't accepted as a valid word. I mean, I know things are bad, but really this feels like the last straw.

@sturdyalex.bsky.social Hi Alex! Bit of a random one, I went to see Showmanism at Hampstead Theatre last night and thought, "blimey, Alex Andreou would love this". Sort of a paean to the performing arts, with lip sync monologues of e.g. Ian McKellen and Mimi Denissi. Go if you get the chance!

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... I assume the papacy works like the Olympics, so we should see an "old world" pope? My money's on Italy, classic. It would be nice to see a plucky outsider, say an African nation, or the Philippines definitely deserve to be contenders. #PontiffCup2025

Imagine if Radio 4's 'In Our Time' was just really, really sexy... Invigorating intellectual rigour here with great guest contributions and beautifully chosen music and film excerpts. Honestly, give this your time: you will learn so much. Deep reflections await!

Bravo, @sturdyalex.bsky.social on episode one of Podyssey! Scholarly but accessible, entertaining & thought-provoking. Right up my street. It's also prompted me to read/re-read The Lady of Shallott, and also listen to some Maria Callas. Thanks for your hard work on this! ❤️

Can I just say that I am delighted to know that my old neighbour, Mark Carney, is prime minister of Canada? I suspect he is the most successful neighbour I have ever had. (so far)

Went to see Kyoto at Soho Place on Wednesday night. Absolutely brilliant - a pretty dry subject made utterly thrilling with great staging and performances. Go if you can.

Laser-sharp rebuke of previous gov'ts on #Brexit and trade, down by most measures, from Douglas Alexander. "As Sun-Tzu said, "tactics without strategy are simply the noise before defeat"... What's very obvious, as we look back over the last eight years, is that there was no defined strategy." ~AA

A brilliant episode, thanks @quietriotpod.bsky.social !

Emma Thompson went from playing the heartbroken sister of the PM in Love Actually to being one herself in Johnny English Strikes Again. She got all tangled up with a nefarious tech billionaire, but got it all sorted in the end with not Mr Beans' help. Perhaps give Emma a call Kier?

Top Tip: if you're planning to dump a body, try and do so around 7th January. No-one bats an eyelid as you're hefting a 6-foot bulky tarpaulin-wrapped package to the park. Sure, could be a Christmas tree, or could be a disrespecting wise guy encroaching on my turf, who's to say?.

I've only just noticed this staggering typo in Adobe Acrobat. I'm not pedantic about this in general speech, life is too short, but Adobe's job is software and documentation, so you'd hope they'd use the word "fewer", wouldn't you?

Starting 2025 off right, by signing up to a podcast I enjoy very much - @quietriotpod.bsky.social Support your local podcast, especially when it's as good as this one. Informative, enjoyable AND likeable.

I have decided to start tweeting about another thing I know about- strength and conditioning. Although my achievements are exceptionally modest it is something I enjoy talking about.

Just been out checking the ion harvesters in Geodome 17. Processing optimal. Just going to follow up on that signal anomaly near the frontier zone - I'm sure it's nothing. Happy New Orbital Simulation, fellow pod-dwellers!

Mad Max Two? Christmas movie. Blade runner? Christmas movie. Inception? Christmas movie. Do we just do this now?

On Sunday, I reflected that there are few things more wholesomely enjoyable than going for a run that ends with a visit to the butcher's. I discovered tonight that there is: cooking & enjoying toad in the hole as a family. Simple pleasures.

So Interpublic and Omnicom are to merge. The obvious name is staring us in the face: Publicom. Would there be confusion with BBC's longest running TV soap opera, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pobol_y...? Yes, but it's worth the risk.

This country needs to pull its finger out on many fronts.

Paperback books are like velveteen rabbits — there to be loved and squeezed and read and stuffed into shoulder bags and left in the sun and read again until there's nothing left but the best kind of memories

I've just learned about this and it is so massively the intersection of many of my Venn diagram circles of interest that I cannot wait to see it.

Poison Ivy, radical conservationist.

I think I have my first bemused Russian pornbot follower! (Izhvinitzhye if you are not a pornbot, and call apologyHandler("sorry"); if you're not Russian)

I just did a little cheer out loud when I read that the UK would comply with generally accepted international legal principles. The direction of travel doesn't always have to be shittier. (Well, the trend probably is, this might just be a localised blip - but I'll take you, little blip.)

I wish pundits would stop saying "Trump will not go as far as xyz", because he is going to keep doing xyz, or in this case, RFK.