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Bus just went past with an ad for Southern Cross Uni — "in the top 500 universities in the world!" — and I love to think that someone was paid for that.

As technology advances and maintaining a capitalist economy becomes even more absurd, the response from governments and corporations has been to come up with ever more brutal ways to engineer scarcity. We've always had everything we need for a just world, but it's so easy now they have to fight it.

Authors are going to fight for compensation for AI eating their books and the government will respond by outlawing second-hand book sales.

For me it's Edmund Burke — I will always swerve to hit Edmund Burke.

How do you do, fellow humans?

AI companies attempting to engineer book scarcity is really giving away the ending.

One thing Emily Wilson's review gets really right is the peculiar politics of Nolan's films — many of which are deeply conservative even as they think they're liberal. I find it really chilling, the way this seems to appeal to so many, aesthetically and emotionally.

This was also a great review.

Soft launching the London Review of Films (LRF)

Just read a comment that described Emily Wilson's review of Nolan's Odyssey as "posh" and I am going outside to lie in the gathering dusk and listen to the night birds until the bad thoughts stop.

Particularly funny watching people try to find ways in which Emily Wilson doesn't know what she's talking about, like, yeah, Emily, sure, but have you seen Die Hard?

Trojan 1: I'm just saying, I don't find this giant wooden horse a convincing work— it seems kind of hollow. Trojan 2: Ok, sure, but how often in the Bronze Age does a big studio create something with some complexity? Honestly, we should be grateful it exists at all.

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material." Really pleasing demolition of Nolan's Odysseus and Nolanism from @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social in the @lrb.co.uk

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated ManAs they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...www.lrb.co.uk

Listening to an old interview with Ken Loach and found it somehow deeply shaming that we can't seem to do social realism anymore. Even beyond the obvious, urgent social justice angles, it seems to me there's so much value in simply revealing how the systems of our society work.

I'd be keener on the opposite — "this is a prosaic piece, a functional piece, a piece that has a job and gets on with it."

The footage is excellent — you can almost hear them going "hur hur hur" as they set up the sunfish to be exploded.

Orcas seen ramming prey so hard it explodes may be playing gameScientists believe sunfish-smashing behaviour could be form of entertainment or to help younger whales feedwww.theguardian.com

Handwritten note this morning on the noticeboard in town: "Seeking affordable rental for mum and baby". The housing crisis, which was engineered by government, is a direct factor in the murder of women and children — when they need to escape a violent partner they have nowhere to go.

The crisis in university governance would be funny if it didn't matter so much: “This is not an earnest consultation, this is a reactionary response [...] a hysterical response. We are at a point of panic now. That panic has resulted in proposals that could see inclusion go backwards.”

ANU accused of ‘hysterical’ response to students using AI to cheat as unis scramble to ‘secure’ assessmentsAustralia risks ‘shipping’ intellectual capability overseas if educational rigour not restored, experts warnwww.theguardian.com

Lying to your editor

Brilliant from Stephanie Zacharek: "We’ve reached a point where we get so few extravagant, ambitious studio movies that we’re expected to collapse with gratitude whenever we're presented with one. That’s not opening ourselves to what movies can be; it’s succumbing to a kind of hostage taking."

'The Odyssey' Is Just Another Reason for DespairChristopher Nolan's latest is a testament to the filmmaker’s solemn dedication to the hallowed tradition of filmmaking, but a movie still needs to add up to something you actually want to watch.time.com