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I was going to come to this one later in the series but given yesterday’s post on anti-depressants I thought I’d post it today. As the title suggests, this one’s about the drugs. As I’ve explained in the YouTube description, this is our Everybody Hurts, a song about keeping on when you feel that everything’s… [more]
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The BBC reports that a new study, published in The Lancet, finds that anti-depressants really do work. The study, which analysed data from 522 trials involving 116,477 people, found 21 common anti-depressants were all more effective at reducing symptoms of acute depression than dummy pills. It’s timely given the massive and largely uncritical publicity recently… [more]
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For those of you who aren’t of the Windows persuasion, a three-fingered salute (in this context) is the keyboard combination you press when a computer program crashes. This song began with David’s string part, which I really love: it set the mood and tone for the whole song. David is incredibly self-deprecating about his musical… [more]
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I wrote about posting personal songs yesterday, but I want to start with one that isn’t. This one’s called All Messed Up. I can’t remember who did what – David and I move between programming, keys, loops whenever we feel like it – but I love the way this sounds. There’s a thing I love… [more]
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One of the reasons I’m not a famous pop star, my stunning looks aside, is that it takes me an eternity to finish things. And when I do finish things, I tend to be shy about promoting them. Or I don’t promote them at all. For example, back in early 2016, I uploaded a bunch… [more]
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“So a tran walks into a bar…†I went to a comedy show last night, and the comedian didn’t make any jokes about trans people. I knew he wouldn’t – the comic, Jimeoin, doesn’t do that kind of joke – so I felt safe enough to go as me. By “as me†I mean as… [more]
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This, by Robyn Pennacchia , is superb. It’s about school shootings, but it’s also about the problems of empathy in an age when other people are little more than non-player characters on your screen. In the 1970s, if you thought Ted Bundy was a hero for murdering all those women, you kept that to yourself. You… [more]
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Following on from yesterday’s post about violent, insecure men and shootings. here’s how the AR-15 assault rifle used in the most recent shootings (including Sandy Hook and yesterday’s atrocity) has been advertised. This one dates from 2010. In the accompanying press release, Bushmaster Firearms explained: …visitors of bushmaster.com will have to prove they’re a man… [more]
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We’re coming out of digital detox season, where newspaper columnists share the incredible insight that you can get a lot of stuff done if you don’t spend all your time dicking about on the internet. But as the developers of the excellent iA Writer app point out, taking a break is good but going offline… [more]
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Buzzfeed has a reputation for daft listicles, and deservedly so. But the traffic those listicles generates also pays for long form content like this personal and thought provoking essay by Shannon Keating. It’s important to recognize when “sex†or “gender†doesn’t have anything to do with the matter at hand at all — that workplace… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
