Stan Carey

That's a pity. I'm having a blast with it.

Swelter, as soon as he saw who it was, stopped dead, and across his face little billows of flesh ran swiftly here and there until, as though they had determined to adhere to the same impulse, they swept up into both oceans of soft cheek, leaving between them a vacuum, a gaping segment like a slice cut from a melon. It was horrible. It was as though nature had lost control. As though the smile, as a concept, as a manifestation of pleasure, had been a mistake, for here on the face of Swelter the idea had been abused.

TITUS GROAN luxuriates in baroque description, outlandish metaphor, and flights of fancy; it won't be to all tastes, but it's hitting the spot for me.

Evidence Grows That Google's AI Overviews Have Eviscerated the Media Industry Google's AI overviews have eviscerated the media landscape, with some top publications losing up to 97 percent of their web traffic.

Welp. The internet had a nice run.

Some outlets have lost over 90% of their traffic since the "AI" summaries rolled out.

"...the four worst-hit publications [now] get less monthly web traffic combined than the r/ChatGPT subreddit gets on its own."

Eight Irish coins in old money, featuring a horse, salmon, bull, hare, wolfhound, hen and chicks, pig, and kingfisher.

The old Irish coins with animals were beautiful
www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

fangled (adj.) 1580s, "new-made,' with implications of "foppish," from fangle (n.) "a new fancy, a novelty," based on newfangle "fond of novelty' (see newfangled) also from 1580s > Entries linking to fangled newfangled (adj.) late 15c., "addicted to novelty" literally "ready to grasp at all new things, from adjective newefange/ "fond of novelty" (mid-13c., neufangel), from new + -fangel "inclined to take," from Proto-Germanic *fanglon "to grasp, from nasalized form of PIE root *pag- "to fasten" (compare fang). Sense of "lately D AMJAN

"newfangled" older than you'd think
www.etymonline.com/word/fangled

"fangled up in new"

I'm enjoying it tremendously so far

I hope you've documented this organisational pattern somewhere. I tend to read more genre fiction (especially SFF and horror) when the days are short, maybe because I need escapism more intensely. Plus there's the Halloween effect, which can last months.

Sometimes! If it seems in keeping with the mood or contents

By the end of paragraph one, I was all in:

"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow."

Chunky paperback copy of Titus Groan. The cover has a nice illustration by Mark Robertson, showing a medieval village in the foreground and Gormenghast castle in the misty background. The village looks pleasant and cosy; the near roof has a big clump of ivy. The castle looks remote and chilly, its crenellated towers and turrets set into a vast rock face overlooking a hilly, woody landscape. A few birds, maybe crows, fly over the village roofs.

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy feels more like an autumn/winter read, but I didn't want to put it off any longer

😄 While he, meanwhile, files it under Irish behaviour

I can't get my head around it

He could peek through a keyhole with both eyes

Traditional Irish expression, said of a man with a very thin face: He could kiss a goat between the horns

It really is. "Trakkie daks" doesn't follow the pattern, though, which is why I excluded it. That goes for a lot of AusE and other hypocorisms: they're similar, but they don't fit this particular formula. "Maccy D's" emerged in the 1970s as US Black and campus slang, as noted in the post.

Thanks! Most are a few years old, and I may have underplayed the Australian influence. But many refer to peculiarly British events/places, so that seemed worth foregrounding. (Was "bloggy p" familiar/old hat? I thought I'd coined it😭.) I've linked to an older post that focuses on AusE abbreviations.

Loved this. And glad the update was added, because I was going to add to the appeal for it.

"always the golfer, never the wildfire victim."

A review of Unbelievable (2019) Succeeds as both immersive procedural thriller and powerful structural polemic. It feels qualitatively different from the start, its empathy for victims and lack of interest in the history or emotiona...

Mini-review of a miniseries: Unbelievable (2019)
letterboxd.com/stancarey/fi...

Giving out, Irish style The phrasal verb give out has several common senses: distribute – ‘she gave out free passes to the gig’ emit – ‘the machine gave out a distinctive hum’ break down, stop work…

Saw this sentence with both the Irish English "give out" and a standardized-English "give out":

"The banks often give out¹ that the rules are too tight and they can’t give out² the money people need."

¹ complain
² issue, distribute

Source and commentary: stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/g...

Parsing this as "per Mutations Man" because I listen to oddball superheros

Serve a man cheese and win his congested, stuttering heart
#tempting

What a viral speech in Ireland reveals about colonial history and Caribbean English Linguists say reaction to Irish TD’s remarks reflects shared regional English roots and enduring impact of empire

Saw some excited reaction videos lately to a clip of an Irish politician sounding Caribbean. This is a good analysis of what's going on, by Nadine White:
www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

Paywall workaround:
removepaywalls.com/https://www....

As Flann O'Brien said of Joyce, "That poor writer's end was hastened by that same intrusive apostrophe."

(Though not referring to this Penguin cover in particular)

a man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a blue background that says news team Alt: Will Ferrell in Anchorman saying, "I don't believe you."

Me to the researchers:

Good morning asymmetric information battlespace!!

This Irish English speaker does the same but did not, before now, have an idiom for the practice. (It does make it easier to peel, because it shrinks the egg slightly, but I find it takes more than a few seconds to be effective.)

Quite right, anatomically speaking

In fairness to Enda Kenny he has a lovely jumper on him

Or, hear me out, women: eat the cheese, saving none for men, and then you will have more cheese and fewer men in your life