Sign in

Jay Owens

@jayowens.bsky.social
2.9K followers 1K following 836 posts

I’m Head of Audience at @lrb.co.uk and I wrote a book, ‘Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles’ (2023). I post about media and environment in approximately equal parts. 🔗 JayOwens.me

PostsRepliesMedia
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In local news: the pool hall above Tesco on Harringay Green Lanes was one of the best gay disco nightclubs in the UK 🪩 🕺🏻 notchesblog.com/2026/02/17/a...
notchesblog.com
A Love Letter to Bolts Nightclub
Bolts was one of the most vibrant LGBTQ nightclubs in 1980s London, renowned for its Hi-NRG music and its weekly shows that were at the vanguard of gay culture.
140
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
‘The group go on to discuss their visions for a sovereign Shetland. Hill outlines a kind of techno-futurist luxury communism; Irvine ­imagines returning to an agrarian system of bartering.’ @danielshailer.bsky.social on Britain's most northerly separatist movement. the-fence.com/article/shet...
the-fence.com
Shetland’s Most Wanted
A series of encounters with an unlikely band of separatists.
033
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
And ‘The thing that people are always shocked to hear is that print is, by a landslide, our biggest source of revenue,’ 𝘞 editor-in-chief Sara Moonves said. (From advertising, not subscriptions.) Interesting where that holds up.
000
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
‘The kids are yearning for pre-internet times,’ editor Ava Nirui said. ‘They want something that they can pull out of their bag and share and enjoy with their friends.’
100
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The long afterlife of a so-called dead medium. (US 𝘝𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 is now down to 8 issues a year! Damn.) But ‘where were today’s teenagers supposed to find things to paper their walls? Instagram feeds?’ As such, 𝘞𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 (pronounced ‘double youth’, appaz.) www.nytimes.com/2026/09/07/s...
nytimes.com
WYouth, New Magazine for Teens, Debuts With Justin and Hailey Bieber Cover
Sara Moonves managed to save and expand W, a fashion and culture magazine. Her next bet is on “Little W.”
220
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
And for the LRB Blog, Shubhanga Pandey: “Many Nepalis say that the word 𝘣𝘢𝘢𝘥𝘩𝘪 (‘flood’) is inadequate to express what happened. There is an older word, 𝘣𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘺𝘢𝘳𝘪, which once conveyed a calamity on this scale, but is now lost from everyday vocabulary.” www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
lrb.co.uk
Shubhanga Pandey | After the Bishyari
Not long after 8.30 a.m. on 26 August, a mass of rock and ice, more than six hundred metres wide, broke off the face of...
000
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“A landslide changes a slope. A flood rearranges a river. A retreating glacier exposes sediment and unstable ground. The first hazard changes the landscape in which the next one happens.” @bedforms.bsky.social on dynamic, cascading hazards in the Himalayas. theconversation.com/nepals-devas...
theconversation.com
Nepal’s devastating floods reveal the danger of ‘cascading hazards’ in Himalayas
One disaster can create the conditions for the next.
110
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The Erotic Review got Phoebe Philo advertising, jeez. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/08/s...
nytimes.com
The Sexy Magazine You Really Will Read for the Articles
Erotic Review is a refined publication for a different age.
000
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
‘All books end up to varying extents evading—exceeding—the bounds you’ve conceived of for them. This particular book did so more, and more dramatically, than any other book I’ve ever tried to write.’ China Miéville on his new novel, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 www.bostonreview.net/articles/rev...
bostonreview.net
Revenance Event
China Miéville returns to fiction with a secret history of late-twentieth-century Britain.
0104
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
One small place I’d disagree: this isn’t ambiguous. Circe’s physically overpowered by an armed man and I felt Nolan was clear about what that implied in a way that felt quite … feminist, even? For a $250 M action film.
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
‘“Did they hurt you?” Odysseus asks Circe. “They would have,” she answers.’ @angelicabastien.bsky.social excellent on how ‘Nolan’s genius ends when a woman enters the frame’ – and yet Samantha Morton’s ‘visceral’ performance as Circe exceeds his sexual timidity. www.vulture.com/article/circ...
vulture.com
The Odyssey’s Circe Is the Best Female Character Nolan Has Ever Written
Nolan’s never been great at writing women, but what doesn’t exist on the page Samantha Morton conjures through a tricksy, powerhouse performance.
140
Reposted by Jay Owens
Ash Routen @ashrouten.com · 25/07/2026
If we know each other through the adventure and expedition world, I'd love to share a new project I'm launching. At the Edge of the Map is a new independent publication covering global expeditions, adventure and exploration through original reporting, interviews and analysis. Continued 👇
172
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
‘After decades of marginalisation and perceived irrelevance, academics may not notice that they are being co-opted by a sophisticated PR machine.’ AI companies are inviting philosophers and theologians to work with them. Carmody Grey turned them down giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic
The AI industry is courting the humanities — but it is asking the wrong questions
050
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
‘A number of years ago there was the whiff of an offer of a newspaper columnist role, and I pushed it away without much thought, because I know what most columnists write, and I have aspirations to be a better writer than that.’ Huw Lemmey on writing, money & time huw.substack.com/p/cancelled-...
huw.substack.com
Cancelled! Cancelled! Cancelled!
None of you are free of sin!
030
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Advance welcome to town! I’m off to Switzerland for some mountains, but I hope you have a good time here.
120
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
‘People like me, most of the people who read my books—we live in one world, and there are people who live in another world. We know it but we don’t know it, at the same time. And I can’t not feel guilty about that.’ Constance Debré on her new book, Offenses thisispublicparking.com/posts/i-got-...
thisispublicparking.com
Public Parking Publication | Manitoba | Public Parking
000
Reposted by Jay Owens
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 22/06/2026
Can the Green Party’s Nature’s Rights Bill change Britain’s relationship with nature away from the predominant legal model of ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’? Is nature really a ‘legal person’ anyway, or is it something far stranger? @jayowens.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
lrb.co.uk
Jay Owens | Rights for Gods
The Thames may be cleaner than when it was declared biologically dead in 1957, but other rivers are close to ecological...
151
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
... @jayrayner1.bsky.social reviews CUE POINT, whose co-founder, Mursal Saiq, first came to the UK as a refugee from Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Magnificent, and I want to go there now (even though it’s in Notting Hill - might as well be Penzance, it’s that far west). www.ft.com/content/a5c0...
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Cambs News editor @johnelworthy.bsky.social says the BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Service (meant to plug gaps in local government scrutiny) is no longer worth funding. ‘Overly long, cautious, and formulaic’ writing & avoids reporting real political news. www.cambsnews.co.uk/opinion-the-...
cambsnews.co.uk
CambsNews — News for Peterborough and Cambridgeshire
Breaking news, investigations and what's on across Peterborough, Cambridge, Ely, Wisbech, March, Huntingdon and Fenland.
000
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Byzantine drone metal 🤘 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/a...
nytimes.com
From the Altar to the Alt-Scene: A Greek Priest’s Drone Metal Debut
030
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Both that and the Spirited Away god are such great additions, and I’m kicking myself that I didn’t know / forgot about them.
010
Reposted by Jay Owens
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I wrote (briefly and elliptically) about the phrase I've been thinking about most from @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s 𝘐𝘴 𝘈 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦? A river is not a person but ‘a god. For now, I want to call the river 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘥.’ www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
lrb.co.uk
Jay Owens | Rights for Gods
Britain’s waterways are filthy and flowing with sewage, as well as fertiliser and pesticide pollution, thousands of...
7398
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
‘Finally, a Bookstore That Sells Mesh Underwear.’ (Phew!) CLIMAX, in the East Village, also ‘a dealer of rare books and ephemera’. How many art bookshops can the fashion industry possibly sustain?! Tho at least there are some Mary Gaitskill short stories there too. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/28/s...
nytimes.com
Finally, a Bookstore That Sells Mesh Underwear
020
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
STUDIO NOCTURNE, a ‘purveyor of spells, books and art objects’ in De Beauvoir Town. This is absolutely nepo money, you can’t persuade me otherwise. studionocturne.co.uk www.wallpaper.com/fashion-beau...
wallpaper.com
London's Studio Nocturne is the fashion world’s next favourite bookstore
Former curator of the Alaïa Bookstore, Flora Gau, has opened an enclave for ‘spells, books and art objects’ in east London
130
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
From the so-called ‘sexiest’ library in the world to the ‘coolest’ ... IDEA in London’s Soho is again art books. Kinda seems like the business is kept afload by hat sales, tbh: I DON’T WORK HERE, All England Techno Club, etc www.ideanow.online/collections/... www.thetimes.com/life-style/f...
thetimes.com
Is this the coolest bookshop in the world?
With its fashion-insider clientele and very clever merch, Idea in Soho is a world away from Waterstones
120
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
In bookstore trends... REFERENCE POINT, a reading room with a bar in 180 Strand. Art books, obv. A £12/month membership gets you after-hours access, events tickets and drinks discounts. (I have 𝘯𝘰 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢 how this makes money but it's founded by a Freud.) www.ft.com/content/2da5...
ft.com
Is Jonah Freud’s Reference Point the sexiest library in the world?
Meet the men still championing print
250
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Teen Vogue: 1. www.instagram.com/p/DVdmRQykm1... 2. www.instagram.com/p/DZdf1hjAf-...
Alysa Liu Teen Vogue coverJulia Wolf Teen Vogue cover
120
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
How magazines respond: Creative editorial director Mi-Anne Chan ‘has been steering 𝘛𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘝𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 through a redesign that emphasizes hand-drawn lettering and digital embellishments.’
120
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
The solution: For desktop, top stories followed by ‘story sets’ on the left; reverse chrono feed of articles and quick posts on the right. ‘On mobile, these same ideas translate into feeds you can toggle between at the top of your screen.’ [Um no-one's going to do that, but maybe doesn’t matter.]
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
The challenge: how do you balance a magazine with a ‘firehose of news’? Some readers visit multiple times a day, others only occasionally. With a reverse chronological feed, ‘some of our best work simply didn’t stay visible long enough.’
100
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Also in new aesthetics: goo. Gen Z goo! ‘The clean look that once signified sophistication now reeks of venture capital funding, or worse, artificial intelligence. “The worse it looks, the better it performs.”’ Callie Holtermann on ‘the glitchy, gloppy look of now’ www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/s...
nytimes.com
The Glitchy, Gloppy Look of Now
140
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘦’s homepage has evolved again, and is back to looking a little more traditional. Exec creative director William Joel (who's since left for 𝘠𝘢𝘩𝘰𝘰 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦) explains the new design. A useful read for me – though at the 𝘓𝘙𝘉 we’re looking at archive first ... www.theverge.com/bulletin/914...
theverge.com
The next evolution of The Verge’s homepage is here
We’re continuously improving how The Verge works for you.
110
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Did we not learn from the 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 uranium mine on the 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 side of Mount Taylor, Jackpile-Paguate, and the cancers and the contaminated groundwater that left? ‘They have to look at it every day and wonder if that’s the reason why they’re dying.’ Elizabeth Miller, 2021 www.hcn.org/articles/nuc...
hcn.org
40 years after its closure, the Jackpile Mine’s toxic legacy continues - High Country News
‘They have to look at it every day and wonder if that’s the reason why they’re dying.’
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
In further ‘Please do not bulldoze the sacred mountain’ news: A proposed uranium mine on the slopes of Mount Taylor in New Mexico, which is sacred to Diné and Pueblo people. It is a very significant cultural site - akin to putting a mine on top of Stonehenge. sourcenm.com/2026/01/15/m...
sourcenm.com
Mining company announces milestone in push to dig new uranium mine in NM • Source New Mexico
“This is a big deal in a number of senses,” said Eric Jantz told Source New Mexico on Thursday.
161
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
I’d been wondering what he’d been up to. Answer: ghost writing Gavin Newsom’s autobiography!
000
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
One or two quibbles with reporting - describing Conglomerate Mesa as having ‘The feeling ... of a place that has been unchanged for millennia’ when it’s just over the ridge from the extremely changeable Patsiata (Owens Lake), er no... The desert isn’t empty or outside history.
040
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Lone Pine in eastern California was one of my main sites for my book 𝘋𝘶𝘴𝘵 (2023), as some of you may remember :) Reporting by Griffin Jones, who managed to speak to Numu (Paiute) elder Kathy Bancroft before she passed away in January.
130
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
There’s a new gold rush in the American west. Trump’s Unleashing American Energy Act reclassified gold and silver as critical minerals and made BLM approve mining projects on public lands. Will this mean an open-pit heap leach mine on sacred Conglomerate Mesa? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Showdown in the desert: the small town fending off a new California gold rush
A prospecting company’s search for gold has the town of Lone Pine and Indigenous leaders on edge, as the Trump administration greenlights new projects across the American west
132
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Meant approvingly, in this instance at least.
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Granta will no longer publish the Commonwealth short story prize winner after this year’s AI debacle, saying ‘it would no longer be involved in “external publishing partnerships” in which it had no editorial control.’ Wise! Y’aint literary without gatekeeping. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/j...
theguardian.com
Granta stops publishing short story award winners over AI controversy
Literary magazine will no longer engage in ‘external publishing partnerships’ after Commonwealth prize furore
140
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Hahaha, tantalising! What’s the book on, or provisionally titled?
100
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
‘I have spent more than half my life chronicling the exploitations of California, so I know delirium to be a condition of the land.’ Mark Arax on the AI boom www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
Welcome to California: land of plunder and hypocrisy | Mark Arax
From gold to water, California’s wealth was built on extraction. The AI boom is reviving an old question: who pays the price?
182
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I thought it interesting that everyone was avoiding that point — and it seemed worth complicating the aliveness question a bit :) Took a while to articulate, but got there in the end. Thank you for the stimulus! And for sharing
140
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Oh very good, thank you for surfacing
100
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I wrote (briefly and elliptically) about the phrase I've been thinking about most from @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s 𝘐𝘴 𝘈 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦? A river is not a person but ‘a god. For now, I want to call the river 𝘢 𝘨𝘰𝘥.’ www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
lrb.co.uk
Jay Owens | Rights for Gods
Britain’s waterways are filthy and flowing with sewage, as well as fertiliser and pesticide pollution, thousands of...
7398
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Oh man I need this: BIRDIE: ‘The air quality monitor that drops dead when your air quality gets bad. Until you open your windows and bring it back to life.’ www.kickstarter.com/projects/bir...
kickstarter.com
Birdie® Pro: the iconic air monitor - now smarter!
The cutest, best-reviewed and most iconic air quality monitor in the world — Now upgraded!
020
Reposted by Jay Owens
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 18/06/2026
‘It’s the first time that rights of nature have been formally considered at Westminster. It could not be more different from the instrumentalised, financialised model of nature that talks of “natural capital” and “ecosystem services”.’ @jayowens.bsky.social on the blog www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
lrb.co.uk
Jay Owens | Rights for Gods
Britain’s waterways are filthy and flowing with sewage, as well as fertiliser and pesticide pollution, thousands of...
064
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Yet ‘Legal metamorphoses between persons/things have been recurrent in history,’ Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa says. If ‘persons can become things, animals turn into persons, and even ghosts can obtain personhood in the legal domain,’ the ‘law would work then as a form of magic [with] very real effects.’
Yet ‘Legal metamorphoses between persons/things have been recurrent in history,’ as the legal scholar Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa says, giving the examples of human rights trials in Argentina, which gave retrospective rights to people who had been disappeared by the junta, and cases where orangutans, chimpanzees and elephants have been legally declared persons. If ‘persons can become things, animals can turn into persons, and even ghosts can obtain personhood in the legal domain,’ the ‘law would work then as a form of magic, a powerful instrument to create realities that, although fictional, have very real effects.’
010
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
And can the Nature's Rights Bill really alter Britain’s relationship with nature for the better? @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social has doubts: ‘I wonder heretically if so many people are drawn to the notion of nature’s rights because they are longing for something like transcendence from the law ...’
If some version of the Nature’s Rights Bill becomes law, then this may change. Whether it will alter Britain’s relationship with nature is another question. The Green Party hopes it will. Robert Macfarlane, for one, has doubts. ‘I wonder heretically,’ he writes in Is a River Alive?, looking at the laws passed by countries such as Ecuador,

if so many people are drawn to the notion of nature’s rights because they are longing for something like transcendence from the law; beckoned by an overenchanted dream in which judicial language acts with a moral lucidity as clear as the waters of the Río Los Cedros. Perhaps, though, there is no good reason to believe that this new framing will get us out of our old conflicts, or slough off the confusion, bad faith and apathy that bedevil any attempt at betterment.
120
Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
The new Nature's Rights Bill calls for Nature (capitalised) to be recognised in UK law as ‘a legal subject and rights-bearing entity’. But what if a river is less a ‘legal person’ than a god? New from me on the @lrb.co.uk blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ju...
lrb.co.uk
Jay Owens | Rights for Gods
Britain’s waterways are filthy and flowing with sewage, as well as fertiliser and pesticide pollution, thousands of...
1127