well, get your director to do me one as promo work for the new movie

Ben when are you going to do me a shelfie already? Or get me some of your flying monkeys!

Do YOU have 42 spare minutes to watch a non-verbal arthouse animated sci fi movie about a robot on Io?

I will not play at tug o' war. I'd rather play at hug o' war, Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, And everyone grins, And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins.

how can we forget

which I do think is a lot more helpful but maybe not as exciting as hey, you're all going to be fighting each other to the death on a reality show, you know?

I mean to be fair I tend to be an SF optimist, mostly because miserable futures are boring to write, and the purpose of something like The Children's Book of the Future was to inspire kids not to think about how awful everything can be

ultimately, we need a killswitch for the Internet that will essentially be - Cut The Cables.

from a security perspective, analog remains far more robust than anything digital - that extends to knowledge, too. One could wipe out every digital record of every book ever written - it would be much harder to do the same for the physical medium.

the most revolutionary tech of the 20th century has been the domestic washing machine, and refrigeration (as anyone who's lived without them know). Not sexy, but life-changing. And with all talk of AI, half the planet does not have access to domestic tech or clean water.

there is no world where your washing machine needs to be connected to the Internet

The lesson from recent news (the supermarket fridge hacks in France, AI devs warning of worms in networked devices) is not to say "we need better cyber security" it's to for the love of god go back to analog.

I have written too much and too well

ah, to venture forth to an aussie book festival!

c'est magnifique!

did that not so long ago! i was live tweeting it!

Huh. I'd be tempted to go to this, if only to be the annoying person in the audience going BUT WHAT ABOUT NOON: 22ND CENTURY.

So if I were going to pick up another Cormac McCarthy book- not Blood Meridian or No Country for old Men (read) nor The Road (don't fancy it) - which one should it be?