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Colin Dixon

@cldx.bsky.social
80 followers 61 following 226 posts

Perpetually semi-retired software architect, living between UK and Greece. Economics, philosophy, long-distance bike rides. Real life is poetry, Greek language and Griffon Vultures.

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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
An Easy Death by de Beauvoir. Superb book. Don't read it.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Which novel?
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Today feels right for 'Briggflatts' by Basil Bunting. It's a long, lovely poem. Even if you understood not one word, the sound of it is exactly right.
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today it’s the 1st in a new series about the weird & wonderful world of transhumanism: the idea that human beings can be transformed by technology and machines. David talks to historian of ideas @duncanbell.bsky.social about where it all began. Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Develop AI systems during the day. In the evenings discuss poetry, analyse translation choices (Greek -> English), do deep analysis of poetry (text, music) with AI. It's all amazing, magic. But I can feel my cognition changing. Writing poetry is my salvation, but I'm even beginning to fear for that.
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Words Without Borders & WWB Campus @wwborders.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Author Maria Stepanova and translator Sasha Dugdale discuss THE DISAPPEARING ACT, longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Read the next interview in our 2026 National Book Awards series at the link: wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...
wordswithoutborders.org
The National Book Award Interviews: Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale - Words Without Borders
Author Maria Stepanova and translator Sasha Dugdale discuss The Disappearing Act, longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
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Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Maria Stepanova is reading and discussing her @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social beauty The Disappearing Act with me on 27 October In London www.pushkinhouse.org/whats-on/eve...
pushkinhouse.org
The Disappearing Act. Maria Stepanova in Conversation with Sasha Dugdale
Book Talk: The Disappearing Act. Maria Stepanova in Conversation with Sasha Dugdale
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
- Honestly my dear grandchildren, you’ll never believe how low rates were in the 2010s. - at least you built a load of infrastructure when borrowing costs were so low grandad? Right? Right?
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hannah Sullivan's The Work Of Revision is fascinating for those of us who broil over how a text or poem becomes - if it ever does - its final incarnation. I like her writing. Three Poems is a masterpiece.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Three big influences atm - Laura Riding, Denise Riley and Hannah Sullivan. All advocate against a poetry performance/publishing circuit in favour of the poem itself. Forget what it's 'for'. Save your ear for the poem, not the applause. Liberating.
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🚨 Check out the new courses we've just launched to accompany our Philosophers and Great Essays series! For anyone wanting to go deeper into some of what we cover. Completely free for anyone to use. And more to come. Do please spread the word! www.ppfideas.com/courses
ppfideas.com
Courses | Past Present Future
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Truth, beauty etc.
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Abigail Dombey @abigaildombey.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Just finished Maupassant's Bel Ami, expecting a mighty fall for Du Roy in the last pages. The way Maupassant builds then handles that expectation is dark. And brilliant, I suppose. I'm outraged. Honestly.
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Aidan McGlynn @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Kate's biography 'Becoming Beauvoir' is still one of my favourite things I've read in the past 5 years or so, and so this will be well worth listening to (the book is available as an audiobook too)
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 26/08/2026
I'm not an economist but my back of the envelope math suggests that Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI can't all simultaneously sell $30 trillion dollars worth of enterprise solutions to a global economy where the sum total of all economic activity currently adds up to under $120t.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The Musee d'Orsay is the best day out in Paris - a day of beauty and enchantment.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I'm with you, guys.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
A Survey Of Modernist Poetry (1929) Laura Riding & Robert Graves. A revelation. Uncompromising takedown of 'easy' poetry. I'm persuaded.
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Abigail Dombey @abigaildombey.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Another reason to avoid flying.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I'm cycling down the West Coast of France. It's warm, the country is beautiful. I stop to swim and eat good food. Each day I meet someone new. This just could be the summer of my life.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
God has given me this moment, in the cool before the Paris summer heat. This tartine. This coffee. These voices.
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! The penultimate great political fiction in this series is not strictly a fiction: it’s Annie Ernaux’s retelling of her own life in The Years (2008). What does this book tell us about the passing of political time? What comes next? Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com
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Jyoti Mishra @jyotimishra.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Well, that was a fucking ride.
A cropped screenshot of an article section titled "Gary Larson cartoon incident" from a Tumblr page. The text describes a controversy involving a Far Side cartoon and Jane Goodall. 

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Gary Larson cartoon incident

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 In 1987 Gary Larson published a Far Side cartoon of two chimpanzees grooming, in which one discovers a blonde hair and says, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?"[127] The Jane Goodall Institute called the cartoon an "atrocity" in a letter drafted by its lawyers to Larson and his syndicate. Goodall, who was in Africa at the time, later found the cartoon amusing.[128] 

She went on to name it her favourite depiction of herself in pop culture.[129] Larson offered profits from sales of a shirt featuring the cartoon to the Jane Goodall Institute.[130] 

Goodall wrote the preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the controversy.[131] She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behaviour of humans and animals. 

In 1988 Larson visited Goodall's research facility in Tanzania.[128] While there, he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo.[127][132]
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Sometimes the moment is exactly right to hear a poem. To let it in. Daisies, by Louise Gluck.
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s political fiction is a spy novel, a Cold War comedy and a meditation on the nature of good and evil: Graham Greene’s The Human Factor. Why has Greene so fallen out of fashion? And how did he prefigure the world of Slow Horses? Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com
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badly drawn boo! 🎃👻🧛🏼‍♀️ @soapachu.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I cannot overstate how much you don't want this.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
My (just) 4yo grandson asked me today how old I'd be when he grew up. Very old, I told him. He looked sad, really sad, then asked me if I would die. Not before you are a grown-up, I told him. Then he asked about my own grandad, who was my best friend in this life. Cried tonight.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
What do you mean 'among nominees' ? www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...
bbc.co.uk
Manchester United's Michael Carrick among nominees for Premier League Manager of the Season
Manchester United caretaker head coach Michael Carrick is included on a six-man shortlist for the Premier League's Manager of the Season award.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
"November has tied me to an old dead tree Get word to April to rescue me " Tom Waits, November. I'd kill to have written that.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Lord, I love Sorrentino movies. Even the bad one. Especially the bad one.
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The Poetry Society @poetrysociety.org.uk · 05/05/2026
Sorry to hear of the death of Carol Rumens, who has passed away aged 81 www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...
theguardian.com
Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81
The British poet, who also wrote plays, fiction and published poetry in translation, analysed almost 1,000 poems for her much-loved series
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Καλημέρα, Καλαθά.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
It's the season of hallucinogenic sunsets in Kalathas.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
This place.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Reading 'In Memory Of Memory' by Maria Stepanova. In the beginning I thought 'This is a big book. How long will it take?'. Now I'm nearly finished, I don't want it to stop. Translation by @sashadugdale.bsky.social , like her own work, is wonderful.
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
BONUS EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s PPF+ bonus is the 4th and final part of our series on George Orwell & WW2 exploring how he tried to make sense of the war as it came to an end. Where in his idea of a coming ‘cold war’ did the nightmare of 1984 reside? Join PPF+ now: www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus
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Scout Tzofiya Bolton @scouttzofiya.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
shout out to everyone who watches one film on Mubi per month because they feel like if they cancel the subscription but keep Netflix it's just further evidence that they're just three dumbasses in a trenchcoat posing as an intellectual
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Sasha Dugdale @sashadugdale.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
In which I talk with the delightful @gregorykearns.bsky.social about stealing books, a railway childhood, translation and the soul’s mobility…. @carcanet.bsky.social
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Don Paterson recommended #Scrivener for writing and collecting poetry. At first I doubted it. Now I can't imagine working without it. Happy to share my MO with anyone struggling with heaps of Word files, or mountains of notebooks.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Alia Kobuszko's 'Dream Latitudes' is a special collection of poetry. It feels like an important debut.
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Tony Allen-Mills @taminf.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Thanks to @robcrank68.bsky.social for today's theme of #LargeBirdsinFlight for #BirdoftheDay. Earlier this week I was lucky enough to watch one of France's largest and rarest birds floating down the gorges of the Verdon River below me. Here's a Griffon vulture at full stretch. #photography #birds
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Τρελός Σαίξπηρ @crazyshakespeare.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Δες την εκτόξευση να σου φτιάξει η διάθεση ρε, 4 άνθρωποι φεύγουν από την Γη και θα πάνε στην πιο μακρινή απόσταση που έχει πάει ποτέ άνθρωπος. Όσο πιο μακριά γίνεται από τα χάλια που συμβαίνουν αυτή την στιγμή στον πλανήτη μας, και όσο πιο κοντά γίνεται στο να κατανοήσουν την ματαιότητα όλων αυτών.
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GreyBruceInfo- Part Owner of Canada 🇨🇦 @brucegreyinfo.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Annual reminder: don't spray spring dandelions with roundup or similar chemicals. One flower can be visited by 100+ bees in a day, and your chemicals will kill all of them.
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Entropy @stellaentelos.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Νίκησα το Ιραν, ελέγχω τα Στενά Οκ, θα νικήσω το Ιραν, ελάτε να βοηθήσετε να ελέγξω τα Στενά. Οκ, θα νικήσω το Ιραν, μπορώ και μόνος να ελέγξω τα Στενά Οκ, νομιζω πως νικησα το Ιραν, ποιος τα χεζει τα Στενά, δεν τα χρησιμοποιώ εγω, δικό σας προβλημα. Νομίζω πως νικησα το Ιραν, πάω Κουβα.
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THE NERVE @thenerve.news · 14/03/2026
NEW MoD sources warn Palantir’s role at heart of government is threat to UK’s security. One said: "Ministers clearly have a lack of understanding of Palantir’s technology" Investigation by Charlie Young @charlienotold.bsky.social Report by Charlie Young and @carolecadwalla.bsky.social 🧵 1/7
Card with image of Starmer and Louis Mosley

‘It beggars belief’: 
MoD sources warn Palantir’s role at heart of government is threat to UK’s security By Charlie Young and Carole Cadwalladr
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Just ordered a new laptop. That used to be quite exciting, but now it's just a depressing and expensive tithe paid to use a device effectively owned by Microsoft, who will rapidly obsolete it under weight of bloatware, just like the one I'm reluctantly replacing.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Ah, Cyprus. After Brexit, when I was less temperate, I engaged with someone who believed we should take on the French navy to stop the boats. Sometimes I wish I was still on Twitter.
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Colin Dixon @cldx.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
People should be aware that Facebook is permanently suspending accounts that poke fun at you-know-who. I can provide evidence, but it's not hard to find.
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