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John Power Jr.

@johnpower.bsky.social
1.2K followers 393 following 3.7K posts

Void Wizard Large Stone Enjoyer Wyrd Science Editor Freelance Writer God’s Own Idiot linktr.ee/wyrdscience

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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 16h
it does seem increasingly unwise to have given all the money in the world to a group of people that even the bloke I used to see down at Megatripolis and who thought he was King Arthur would have got up and moved if they'd sat down next to him on a bus
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
nature abhors a multi-party system
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Ah, Salò, now there's a film I needed a new 4K UHD restoration of
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Honestly I’m still just reeling at this Conservative Party unveiling an 87ft long metaphor for not being across the details at their conference
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Question just posed by friend, when they say “conversations with Grok”, do they actually mean Stephen Miller or Elon Musk wearing a couple of cardboard boxes covered in tinfoil, telling this sponge brained fool what to do?
Awesome-o 4000 from South Park (cartman wearing some cardboard boxes and pretending to be a robot)
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
We are all dogs in God’s hot car
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Keep it up, there’s a point in all clicks and suddenly what was a struggle becomes a joy Well, sometimes it can be
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I reckon what with *waves at everything* there’s definitely a space in UK politics for a party focused on environmental issues
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Here we go…
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
They might be thick as shit, but at least owls are comrades ✊
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Has he had a hand transplant?
A shitty so generated image by the Tories that’s supposed to look like the bayeux tapestry but of course looks nothing like it, as a bonus people in it have different coloured hands to the faces, because of course they do
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This place has incredible underground-temple-dedicated-to-Pan-that-the-recently-returned-from-the-levant-protagonist-of-a-1920s-novel-has-built-in-the-grounds-of-their-newly-acquired-manor energy
A candle lit grotto and stone bathA few of the grotto looking up at the light chimney carved through the rock
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Accommodation for the weekend. Hobbit mode engaged
A hobbit hole
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Laughing at my painfully naive thought that Liz Truss would be simply too much of an embarrassment for even the modern day never apologise, always go on the offensive right to try and rehabilitate
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Sad to report my Julie is less of a looker
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
downloaded what I thought was a texture from Shutterstock and the file seems to be so incredibly, but also weirdly, bad, I'm slightly unsure if I should complain because it's so bad that I can only assume that I must be doing something that even by my standards is remarkably stupid here
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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
fools, if the government had spent just £9 instead on 1 (one) Wyrd Science subscription they might be better placed to recognise fantasy thinking when its expensive lobbyists come knocking (+ the UK wouldn't still be at war with the Unseelie Court, but that's another matter altogether) wyrd.science
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
congrats Dan! well deserved, bring it home for games!
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
So what I’m hearing is that the manufacturer of nonce goggles is now sticking cameras inside toys that are designed to sit undetected in a child’s room. That’s their big play?
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I wonder how long it will be before this horrible filter, that most TV clips on Instagram have slathered over them, will be purposely used to induce nostalgia & meaning in the way that, say, grainy VHS textures are used now
A still from Games of Thrones that’s has had a kind of oil slick of hyper reality smeared over it
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
god, it must hurt them so much to see people enjoying and using bois de la Cambre, crying themselves to sleep every night thinking about when it can be turned back into a race track for cars again
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
it's amazing really that you can make an actual career out of having stupid, shitty opinions and enabling fascism and when it bites you on the ass you get to go oooops and somehow then make a career as someone whose opinion must now be courted and listened to from the other side no! no!!
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Holy Fuck were good tonight, shout out the other 150-300 middle aged blokes in any larger city who keep this kind of thing a vaguely going concern
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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Taking a break from Tolkienmaxxing to mark the remarkable, if slightly depressing, fact that 33 years ago today one of the greatest pieces of music ever was released. Deploy the pipeweed.
youtu.be
Sabres of Paradise - Smokebelch II (David Holmes Mix)
YouTube video by Scubadevils
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Absolutely not a fan of the world going the way it is because a load of unfuckable men would rather tear it all down to try and rebuild it in their image, than just get some game or, worse, treat women like people
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
is such a powerful creative engine and the old man in me does sometimes wonder what not having any kind of monoculture to contrast, oppose, subvert or whatever will do and maybe, probably, it will be/is all fine, culture eh finds a way but it's hard not to let go of your priors
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
and tbh I do think that's kind of sad in many ways. I spent most my life, at least since I became a teenager deeply embedded and embroiled with subcultures, whether music, fashion, hobbies or whatever but such an (often) unspoken, key part of subcultures is how their relationship to the mainstream
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
is fascinating more than anything, it's certainly no badge of honour not to have heard it it's just I know we've been living in an atomised pop culture landscape for years now but even I didn't think it (or indeed I) was quite so incredibly siloed
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
yeah, for myself it's just surprise. I listen to a phenomenal amount of music across a stupidly wide range of genres and this has just never once crossed my path until last week. and I'm sure there's hundreds of US number ones that I've never heard of but one that's been no.1 for almost 6 months
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
been thinking about Alan Lee's Tolkien art a lot recently, and I've only just really clocked how my thoughts on them have evolved over the years are almost identical to my views on Alex Ross's Marvel art which obviously shouldn't be some great revelation but still, there you go, as you were
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
has there been any good or interesting (non-fiction) writing of late about pirate utopias (real or very much not)?
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The course of true love never did run fucking smooth. [Lysander takes a long drag on his fag]
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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
the day after your hit skeet
4 panel comic

p1: a crow is doing stand-up, in his speech bubble is another funny/charming/odd looking cover for the hobbit, this time the portuguese translation

p2: a man in the crowd shouts "booo! get other material"

p3: the crow is sweating, looking worried

p4: pan down to his hands (wings?) in which are just several other weird/charming/odd foreign translations of the hobbit
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
So i guess we really are doing that thing where the news just looks increasingly like it would be playing ominously on TVs in the background during the first third of a really depressing film
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
its wild, there's been diminishing returns for a long time, but it felt like there were ways of mitigating the losses or at leats alternative avenues to replace some, but right this second who knows!
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
now, I know there'll be a chunk missing it didn't pick up for whatever reason but still it won't be that many what with search being increasingly useless too, and paid ads having very mixed results, I'm kinda at a loss as to what anyone is doing nowadays (assuming this isn't entirely an us problem)
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
it's genuinely quite fascinating, and a bit horrifying, just how badly social media seems to perform these days as a referrer to our main site. had a few posts, on Bluesky and Instagram do (relative for us) numbers this week. but our analytics are barely registering double digit visitors from either
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
That aubergine segment on gardener’s world felt like a parting gift to the internet from Monty Don
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
my brain genuinely read that as HAM for some reason and was like same girl, same
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
oh thank you, and yeah the woke stuff is incredibly easy to brush off
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I’d genuinely love someone who’s been in the labour government at any point the past couple of years to explain who they actually think comprised the kind of voter coalition that delivered one of the largest majorities in history, as it’s all been as remarkable as it has been depressing to watch
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
At least in the 90s/00s you had to go to a sketchy place, hang around for ages and then probably still have to sit through some 5th generation copy of a shit barely watchable cult comedy from the 1980s before business could be concluded and you could get on with your evening
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Last decade it’s been odd only coming back to the UK every 6 months or so to noticeably see it get worse every time. So much of it must be driven by being able to just pull up an app and choose from a menu like you’re ordering a pizza and have shit delivered.
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
‘Maternally’ what a weird typo 🤔
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Scream Marketing Masterclass, but yeah nice to be maternally and very unexpectedly pulled back from the abyss this morning. Hasn’t helped get the vast amounts of stuff I have to get done in the next few days done, ofc, but small victories and all that
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Most days, and right now especially, I find it remarkably hard to think of Wyrd Science as being much other than a crushing disappointment and frankly ridiculous endeavour, and I try not to vocalise that because it’s does a grotesque disservice to all the great writers we have and doesn’t exactly
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The same person recently gave no.8 a go to see if we were still shit & fuck me I clicked that link with trepidation turns out they didn’t hate it! in fact they thought it was much better (with some reservations), which has chipped about 1% off my crushing imposter syndrome and I’ll happily take rn
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
There have been quite a few vitriolic reviews of Wyrd Science, generally along the lines of “this woke commie bastard is ruining games” which lol. But there was one fairly scathing review of issue 3 that absolutely crushed me at the time (mainly as I agreed with lots of it), anyway randomly saw that
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Wyrd Science Magazine @wyrdscience.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
my favourite part of Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien. remember he started work on LotR in 1937, at this point it’s 1942, it was finally published in 1954 If he ever does get beatified it will great for writers to finally have a patron saint of procrastinators & pantsers

A photo of a page from a book:

But Stanley Unwin continued to take an interest in the progress of the 'new Hobbit', and in December 1942 he received a letter from Tolkien which reported: It is now approaching completion. I hope to get a little free time this vacation, and might hope to finish it off early next year. It has reached Chapter XXXI and will require at least six more to finish (these are already sketched)’

Yet Chapter XXXI (the original number of Flotsam and Jetsam') was only at the end of what became Book III; and in the event there were to be not six but thirty-one more chapters before the book was complete. Tolkien tried to tackle the story in the months that followed, and he wrote a little more of it. But by the summer of 1943 he had to admit that he was 'dead stuck.
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John Power Jr. @johnpower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
she was dead to Aslan!
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