PicoBlog

✨ a cosy online space for curious readers ✨ from Sunday Times Bestselling author Emma Gannon. On books, work, wellbeing & creativity. 5th literature Substack globally. "One of Britain’s most prominent Substack writers" —The Times Over 49,000 subscribers Let me have a read 👀ncG1vNJzZmismJq1urzHnqVnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZA%3D%3D

EDITING, EDITING, EDITING! A lot of filmmakers these days really can’t help but indulge themselves. I swear, most of the shows and movies I watch need to be cut at least by 30%. The same goes for The Idol. Out of a 50-minute episode, the first 30 minutes actually move along fine, but then the rest is just sexy sex filler. Don’t get me wrong, this episode is leaps and bounds better than the first one, but I want the script to be tighter (don’t even joke about this rn).

My spelling checker doesn’t know the word enshittification, but I didn’t make it up (as far as I know Cory Doctorow did, thank you, Cory), and I am pretty sure you know what I mean by it, whether or not it happens to be in your training corpus. And it’s on: the LLM-driven enshittification of the internet. § I first warned of a LLM-driven deluge on February 12, a few days after Kevin Roose described his sense of “awe” at the unveiling of the new GPT-4 powered Bing—and a few days before it notoriously recommended he get a divorce—in that brief initial period in which Bing and GPT-4 were viewed through entirely rose-colored glasses.

As an ongoing series, I thought it would be fun and educational to analyze the training of great bodybuilders of the past. This is purely for my own Bro enjoyment, and perhaps you will enjoy it as well. Arguably the most genetically gifted bodybuilder of all time, he was Mr. Olympia from 1967-1969, and displayed a physique that has not been equaled in sheer absurdity of proportions to this day. Oliva only lost the Mr.

Every Golden Age has to end. Every heyday has to come to a close eventually. Nothing gold can stay. For Jim Varney, Ernest P. Worrell’s legendary winning streak came to an abrupt end with 1993’s Ernest Rides Again, his first movie post-Touchstone and his final film to receive a major national release.  The next Ernest movie, 1994’s Ernest Goes to School, was theatrically released in just two lucky cities: Cincinnati and Louisville.

We are passionate about our science, and that is wonderful; it is one of the best things about this job. It is worth cherishing and worth cultivating. There is a danger that comes with that passion. It may make us a bit blind to the danger of over-committing, getting overwhelmed, getting exhausted, and may lead to burnout. You say: Surely this would never happen to me. I love my work! My science is so cool, how could it lead to burnout?

Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labour of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com. Don’t forget to check out our SHOP and our Podcast. The common notion of Indian food is that it is rich in flavour.

Harlan Coben is one of those names that you kind of recognise. You’ve seen it on a poster, or it’s popped up online at some point. Now, his name is probably most well-known for preceding a considerable number of Netflix original series’ titles; Harlan Coben’s Shelter, Harlan Coben’s Safe, The Stranger, Stay Close and other punchy titles enigmatic enough to pique the interest of a passing browser. He’s also known for the books that serve as source material for these productions.

Everyone always says, “Read tons of screenplays!”  Now It’s gotten to the point where people brag about how many scripts they’ve read.  Don’t get me wrong.  There’s a hell of a lot of value you can get from reading screenplays, but there’s really only so many you can look at before saying, “Okay, I get it.”   The real value, of course, comes from actually writing over and over, again.  But beyond that and maybe a “How to” book, one subject that writers should be exploring is Psychology because this can help you make your characters more interesting and realistic.