iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Having some feelings about this passage from Gibson’s Idoru (1996).

6. DESH Chia had programmed her Music Master to have an affinity for bridges. He appeared in her virtual Venice whenever she crossed one at moderate speed: a slender young man with pale blue eyes and a penchant for long, flowing coats. He'd been the subject of a look-and-feel action, in his beta release, when lawyers representing a venerable British singer had protested that the Music Master's designers had scanned in images of their client as a much younger man. This had been settled out of court, and all later versions, including Chia's, were much more carefully gen- eric. (Kelsey had told her that it had mainly had to do with changing one of his eyes, but why only the one?)

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Definitely feeling the personal touch from the British Museum.

Exhibitions Events Shop FAQS Bayeux Tapestry - Members' priority booking opens 12 noon on Tuesday 6 October • Dear Example Primary Salutation, We greatly look forward to the next Members' priority booking

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

William Gibson’s Virtual Light (1993) anticipates looksmaxxing.

Five minutes to their first house check, then they'd be swinging back toward Beverly Hills. They were talking about this chain of Japanese gyms called Body Hammer. Body Hammer didn't offer much in the way of tra- ditional gym culture; in fact they went as far as possible in the op- posite direction, catering mostly to kids who liked the idea of being injected with Brazilian fetal tissue and having their skeletons rein- forced with what the ads called performance materials." Sublett said it was the Devil's work. Rydell said it was a Tokyo franchise operation.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Exhibit A: this photo. Exhibit B: The Onion, 2001 theonion.com/starbucks-to...

Common Room: mission complete Our living laboratory has achieved its goals and is now closed. Thank you to all our customers - you enabled us to develop our technology. Stay tuned for the next iteration as KAIKAKU keeps revolutionising restaurant experiences through hardware, sofware, and Al. KAIKAKU

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Please stop naming tube stations after me.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I’m doing a solo talk this year; even now, am adding puns to the draft.

Saturday, 11 July 2026 14:00 EDT 19:00 BST • The Sword of the Lyctor Create - Collaborate, Duration: 60 mins Graham Sleight Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series has provoked much discussion, both online and here at Readercon. There are still many unanswered questions, though; in this solo talk, critic Graham Sleight will try to address some of them. What might happen in Alecto the Ninth? How many Homestuck references is too many? Is Muir critiquing The Book of the New Sun? Expect spoilers for the series so far, wild speculations, and, of course, dad- jokes.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

GOOD MORNING ERIN [Not pictured: chorus of gulls impersonating dial-up modems]

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

From the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford University Press, trans Irma A Richter, p 369)

Go every Saturday to the hot bath where you will see naked men.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

OUTRAGEOUS. [sort-of spoiler for today’s NYT Spelling Bee; in the absence of a spoiler label here, have labelled as graphic content, which it kind of is]

A screenshot of the New York Times’s Spelling Bee, showing the word “Marillion” as not recognised.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Epigraphs for a book I’ll write at some point

“We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards."
- Tim Berners-Lee, "Information Management: A Proposal"

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
- H P Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Saw this podcast title and wondered if he’s Team Edward or Team Jacob

Podcast titled “Dem Paralysis & McConnell’s Twilight Era”

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Post your favourite #doctorwho . Wrong answers only.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

From the Faber Book of Diaries (Ed Simon Brett) for 24 October. CW: dental trauma, file under “thankful for modern medicine”.

24 October 1785 The Tooth-Ach so very bad all night and the same this Morn' that I sent for John Reeves the Farrier who lives at the Hart and often draws Teeth for People, to draw one for me. He returned with my Man about i 1 o'clock this Morning and he pulled it out for me the first Pull, but it was a monstrous Crash and more so, it being one of the Eye Teeth, it had but one Fang but that was very long. I gave Johnny Reeves for drawing it O. 2. 6. A great pain in the Jaw Bone continued all Day and Night but nothing so bad as the Tooth Ach. The Reverend James Woodforde

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Lol. It’s not like anything’s happened since then.

The ABC/538 election forecast page, saying: As of July 21 at 2 p.m. Eastern, President Joe Biden has suspended his campaign for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination for president. We will publish an election forecast including the new presumptive Democratic nominee, when such nominee is announced.” And then, in big red letters, “Forecast suspended”.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 03/08/2024

I mean, here in two sentences (reviewing a less-good late Fritz Leiber novel), she gives a convincing explanation for the decline in quality of superhero sequels, why Doctor Who should never have touched the Timeless Child mythos, etc etc.

In books as well as T.V., series tend to decay after their templates satisfactorily establish who’s who and what’s what. I wonder if the very early ‘‘Adept’s Gambit’’ was not the last of -the Fafhrd-Mouser stories in which something really happened humanly, that is, in which somebody actually changed.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 03/08/2024

Reading old Joanna Russ reviews from 1979, as one does, and, basically, inject this stuff into my veins. (The compression of argument! The range of knowledge! The fierceness of engagement! The jokes!)

Another pastiche, youthfully energetic and rather appealing, is Steven Utley’s and Howard Waldrop’s ‘“Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole,”’ which gives Frankenstein’s creature further adventures and a beautiful, blind lady to fall in love with. Without the charm of the borrowings, however (Lovecraft, Henley, Poe, Melville, Symmes, (Mary) Shelley, Edgar Rice Bur- roughs and doubtless others I miss- ed), the story would not make it, and although it’s genuinely enjoy- able to watch the Malaprop Kids excitedly rummaging through The Classics, somebody should’ve warned them against putting ‘‘erst- while’’ and ‘‘displacement activity’’ in the same sentence (except in straight parody) and that ‘‘arcing’’ and ‘‘stomped’’ are not words. There are other screamers, my favorite being ‘‘willing to cope with the basin’s large predators on a moment-to-moment basis.”’ There is also an Expository Lump on p. 91 that should’ve been given to the brontosaur (on p. 82) to eat.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 27/07/2024

Reading a Robert Aickman story I hadn’t previously (Hand in Glove) and this bit may be Peak Aickman.

"There's something wrong," said Millicent. "There's something very wrong with almost every-thing."
They ploughed back through the coarse grass to the brick path up to the porch. The owls seemed indeed to have retired once more to their carnivorous bothies.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 19/05/2024

Trying to complete my shelf of jonathanstrahan.bsky.social ‘s fine Year’s Bests and, uh, I really hope this Amazon listing is accurate?

A listing for a 2010-published Year’s Best SFF anthology, claiming the book is in Middle English.

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 19/04/2024

I did not have “Taylor Swift fans find out about my favourite obscure band” on today’s bingo card:

Lyric from “Guilty as Sin”:

Drowning in the Blue Nile
He sent me "Downtown Lights"
I hadn't heard it in a while

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 05/02/2024

Never not reading this in the voice of Yoda

POETRY FOUNDATION Spring and Fall BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS to a young child Márgarét, áre you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 30/01/2024

This estimate of climate change-caused deaths (by @carlson.bsky.social ) seems….kind of important? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A screenshot of the full text of the Nature Medicine commentary "After millions of preventable deaths, climate change must be treated like a health emergency." (The full text doesn't fit in the alt text, I'm sorry)

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Graham Sleight @grahamsleight.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

First morning in NYC, after a rough flight. Followed the prompt of @hels.bsky.social in the New Yorker and tried the breakfast sandwich at Court Street Grocers. A very very very good decision.