𝙿𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙽𝚘𝚋𝚕𝚎 🎙🧐

I'll be giving a spoken-word performance as part of the Fresh Coast Film Festival in Traverse City, with the help of Here:Say Storytelling! It's happening Saturday, May 2, at 2 p.m. in Right Brain Brewery. Tickets available here. oldmissionculture.org/freshcoastfilm…

@GadSaad Also available in audiobook format, just saying. (Narrated by me.) audible.com/pd/The-Book-of…

He did not suffer from Suicidal Empathy.

The city of Andernach, Germany planted 101 varieties of tomatoes in the town center and told everyone to take whatever they wanted. It was such a hit they did beans the next year, then added onions, fruit trees, lettuce, zucchini, berries, and herbs. All free to the public and maintained by the city. Andernach is now known as the "edible city." Philadelphia has been doing a version of this since 2007. The Philadelphia Orchard Project has helped establish 67 sites across the city with thousands of food-bearing trees. Baltimore is planting fruit trees on sidewalks. Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and Asheville all have public urban orchards. A mature apple tree produces 400-500 pounds of fruit per year. A mature pear tree can produce for 75 years. We've decided our cities should have trees. We just haven't decided those trees should feed people. Would you support urban fruit trees and vegetables in your city?

@DreyfusJames 👋

Boy, this algorithm is appalling… Miss seeing you all… It’s like being a lone goldfish in bowl, bobbing about in the sea. You know others are out there, but can’t do a bloody thing about it…

Bit of an exciting audiobook #ReleaseDay: Søren Sveistrup's *Hide and Seek*! Sequel to *The Chestnut Man*, and coming soon to Netflix. :-) (@audibleuk release - @audible_com release looks like it'll be later this year.) audible.co.uk/pd/Hide-And-Se…

@nealasher That's the one! :-)

@SoundsNoble Heh. Dark Agent?

Didn't think I was going to write anything today. I felt drained both physically and mentally. Could I no longer come up with weird and twisted ideas? Was storytelling for me, henceforth, just going to be a nuts and bolts thing without much joy in it? Then I remembered something from a podcast (Huberman I think) about how the brain really needs a rest from constant input, so it has time and space for cogitation and output. I sprawled on the sofa not to sleep but just to close my eyes and think, to throw around some ideas and come up with some images. It was like someone had taken their foot off my neck. Maybe an hour later I got up and made some notes. I needn't have bothered because shortly after that I sat at my computer and wrote 2,000 words of weirdness without referring to them once. Writers! Get off the internet!

The Departure (Audio Download): Neal Asher, Peter Noble, Macmillan Digital Audio: Amazon.co.uk: Books amazon.co.uk/Departure-Owne…

I’ve been a barber for 20 years. Most guys just want a fade and to talk about football. Yesterday, a young man walked in. He looked rough. Grease under his fingernails, work boots covered in dust. "I need a shave," he said. "And a cut. Make me look... respectable." I draped the cape over him. As I raised the scissors, I noticed he was trembling. The chair was actually vibrating. I put the scissors down. "You okay, son?" I asked. "Nervous about a date?" He looked at me in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. "No, sir," he whispered. "My little brother died on Tuesday. The funeral is in an hour. I want to look like the big brother he looked up to." The shop went silent. The other customers stopped talking. I didn't rush. I gave him the works. I used the hot towel. I used the straight razor. I trimmed every stray hair. I even polished his boots while the hot towel was on his face. When I spun the chair around, he looked like a new man. He stood taller. He reached for his wallet. "Put that away," I said. "I can pay," he argued. "I work hard." "I know you do," I told him. "But your money is no good here today. Go be with your family. Go make him proud." He choked up. He grabbed my hand and held it tight. "Thank you," he said. "I felt like I was falling apart. I feel ready now." He walked out with his head held high. A haircut can't fix a broken heart. But sometimes, it gives you the dignity you need to carry it. Anonymous

In SELF-MADE MAVERICK, @Drrezazahedi1, a leading figure in international real estate, delivers a powerful manifesto for those who refuse to settle. Listen now on #audiobook with @GreenleafBookGr, featuring narration by @SoundsNoble. 🎧 ➡➡ greenleafbookgroup.com/titles/self-ma…

@DreyfusJames @NigelPlaner1 Met @NigelPlaner1 once in a recording studio green room. He shook my hand and said, 'I'm Nigel.' Me: 'Yes. I know.' Because I am an idiot, and was somewhat speechless. 😶 Happy birthday, sir!

Happy Birthday to the fantastic @NigelPlaner1 !!

@simon_schama @Poochigian "Exit, pursued by a bear." - The Winter's Tale

@Poochigian " There was a star danced and under that I was born" ( Much Ado)

What's your favorite line by Shakespeare? Mine is: "like quills upon the fretful porpentine" ("Hamlet")

An algorithm’s watching me, I am not certain why, It sends advertisements for things I do not want to buy, It makes me feel uneasy, that upon me it has preyed, And if I could locate it, I would whack it with a spade.

The Literary Fiction & Classic finalists deliver a master class in storytelling and nuance, with language that lingers and performances that make these stories sing. #Audies2026 @SimonAudio @soundsnoble @HarperCollins

*Reports of His Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated* by James Goodhand is an #AudieAwards finalist! Elegant, funny, moving, I am so grateful to be part of the life of this book. Huge love to @HarperAudio! #Audies2026

@almurray Al is in Wonderland?

It's just occurred to me that after the trip to Wonderland Models and those kits going in the tour van that I now have not one but two stashes. #livingthedream

Huge love to @AudioFileMag for the wonderful review of Christoffer Carlsson's *The Living and the Dead* - and mahoosive thanks to Garrick Hagon for steering it through! #EarphonesAward audiofilemagazine.com/reviews/read/2…

The most successful people I know all have an almost irrational belief that everything will work out And I just recently learned the word for it: Pronoia. It means the opposite of paranoia. The belief that the world is secretly conspiring in your favor. The funny thing about Pronoia is that it's self-fulfilling. When you believe things will work out, you try harder. You persist longer, and you see opportunities where others see dead ends. What's that quote again? "Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money." – Nat Friedman We all need a little more pronoia in our lives.

An excellent and thoughtful Reading List on Israel & the Palestinians @aziz0nomics "Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Montefiore’s great strength in Jerusalem: The Biography is that he refuses to treat the city as a prop in a modern political argument. His approach is both immersive and panoramic: he gives you Jerusalem as a dazzling three-thousand-year tapestry—you get a real sense of the geography and get a sense of it as an almost magical kind of lived-in space. “Panoramic” also means he doesn’t start the clock in 1948, or 1917, or 1967 (which is the default move in a lot of the contemporary debate). He gives you a long arc: from the Judean kingdoms and Roman destruction; Byzantine Christian Jerusalem; early Islamic rule and the Umayyads; Crusader conquest and massacre; Ayyubid restoration; Mamluk administration; Ottoman stability; the 19th-century influx of European powers and pilgrims; the British Mandate; and only then the modern national conflict. The effect is to make today’s disputes feel less like a cosmic morality play and more like what they are: the most recent chapter in a city that sits on a nexus of fault lines relating to faith, power, demography, and myth. We are just the latest actors on the great stage of Jerusalem, doomed to fade away like all those before us. This is a solid book to start with for the full span of history, and it’s meticulously written."

A Reading List relating to Israel & the Palestinians. #No1 @aziz0nomics Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore "Montefiore’s great strength in Jerusalem: The Biography is that he refuses to treat the city as a prop in a modern political argument. His approach is both immersive and panoramic: he gives you Jerusalem as a dazzling three-thousand-year tapestry—you get a real sense of the geography and get a sense of it as an almost magical kind of lived-in space. “Panoramic” also means he doesn’t start the clock in 1948, or 1917, or 1967 (which is the default move in a lot of the contemporary debate). He gives you a long arc: from the Judean kingdoms and Roman destruction; Byzantine Christian Jerusalem; early Islamic rule and the Umayyads; Crusader conquest and massacre; Ayyubid restoration; Mamluk administration; Ottoman stability; the 19th-century influx of European powers and pilgrims; the British Mandate; and only then the modern national conflict. The effect is to make today’s disputes feel less like a cosmic morality play and more like what they are: the most recent chapter in a city that sits on a nexus of fault lines relating to faith, power, demography, and myth. We are just the latest actors on the great stage of Jerusalem, doomed to fade away like all those before us. This is a solid book to start with for the full span of history, and it’s meticulously written."