Alan McDonald
@alanmcdonald.bsky.social
Screenwriter. Anna and the Apocalypse, Sony Pictures, Bad Wolf, Altitude, Buccaneer, Imaginarium and more. Repped by Dench Arnold (UK) and FRWD MGMT (US).
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival
August 31, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Actually, Frankenstein is a doctor success at the Venice film festival
Reposted by Alan McDonald
I'll admit that the AI features in PDF reader have fundamentally changed my experience - I now have to angrily click past a pop up before I can read the PDF I need to.
As Adobe rolls out more generative AI features for the PDF, the era of chatbot-less software is firmly a thing of the past.
The AI-Powered PDF Marks the End of an Era
As Adobe rolls out more generative AI features for the PDF, the era of chatbot-less software is firmly a thing of the past.
wrd.cm
August 20, 2025 at 6:04 AM
I'll admit that the AI features in PDF reader have fundamentally changed my experience - I now have to angrily click past a pop up before I can read the PDF I need to.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
just saw someone sincerely arguing that they need AI bc they don't have "natural" artistic talent and idk how to make you understand that nobody comes by this shit naturally. it's just...work. it's being bad at it for a really, really, really long time. it's intention, pursued over time! wtf!!!
August 17, 2025 at 1:57 PM
just saw someone sincerely arguing that they need AI bc they don't have "natural" artistic talent and idk how to make you understand that nobody comes by this shit naturally. it's just...work. it's being bad at it for a really, really, really long time. it's intention, pursued over time! wtf!!!
Reposted by Alan McDonald
The thing about "tax the rich and they'll leave" is that the rich are people, and want to live somewhere nice. And the places with low taxes tend not to be all that nice.
August 14, 2025 at 9:22 AM
The thing about "tax the rich and they'll leave" is that the rich are people, and want to live somewhere nice. And the places with low taxes tend not to be all that nice.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Do not let this happen!
It takes less than a minute to do your bit...
It takes less than a minute to do your bit...
⚡️Do NOT let Musk get his hands on British utilities. He’s applied for a license to supply energy here.
✍️ Tell Ofgem what you think about that:
www.bestforbritain.org/petition-elo...
✍️ Tell Ofgem what you think about that:
www.bestforbritain.org/petition-elo...
Take Action: Stop Elon Musk's Energy Power Grab
Change Minds → Change Politics
www.bestforbritain.org
August 14, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Do not let this happen!
It takes less than a minute to do your bit...
It takes less than a minute to do your bit...
It’s understandable lots of people haven’t read Pratchett because they don’t do fantasy but they’re missing out on some really wise and humane musings.
Discworld QOTD, from A Hat Full of Sky
“Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.”
“Tomorrow, your job is to change the world into a better place. Today, my job is to see that everyone gets there.”
Discworld QOTD, from Night Watch
“Once you get troops on the streets, it’s only a matter of time before it goes bad. Some kid throws a stone, next minute there’s houses on fire and people getting killed.”
“Once you get troops on the streets, it’s only a matter of time before it goes bad. Some kid throws a stone, next minute there’s houses on fire and people getting killed.”
August 13, 2025 at 6:31 PM
It’s understandable lots of people haven’t read Pratchett because they don’t do fantasy but they’re missing out on some really wise and humane musings.
I’m gradually losing my ability to stay calm and neutral over this, as the words NEW SLAYER!!!! steadily gain volume in my mind.
Sarah Michelle Gellar at a readthrough for the #BuffytheVampireslayer revival series
July 22, 2025 at 9:47 PM
I’m gradually losing my ability to stay calm and neutral over this, as the words NEW SLAYER!!!! steadily gain volume in my mind.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists
July 20, 2025 at 6:46 PM
do you ever stare at the ceiling and think about how the worldwide scientific establishment did the impossible and created a COVID vaccine in under a year and the response of the general public has been to go on an unstoppable rampage to destroy science and scientists
Reposted by Alan McDonald
In a stunning moment of erotic fervour, calculator demands BOOBS.
July 21, 2025 at 1:13 AM
In a stunning moment of erotic fervour, calculator demands BOOBS.
You’re not a serious person if you shrug off the rampant misinformation poisoning the general voting population and then claim 16 year-olds are uniquely unfit to make informed electoral decisions.
Intriguing to hear so many of the objections to votes at 16 today. Consciously or otherwise, so many are exactly the dame arguments which were used about every single extension of the franchise since the 19th century.
They don’t want it! They can’t handle it! They won’t use it! They’ll abuse it!
They don’t want it! They can’t handle it! They won’t use it! They’ll abuse it!
July 18, 2025 at 8:04 AM
You’re not a serious person if you shrug off the rampant misinformation poisoning the general voting population and then claim 16 year-olds are uniquely unfit to make informed electoral decisions.
Cured of the temptation to… watch the show you are interested in.
Really a sad way to go through life www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/b...
June 27, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Cured of the temptation to… watch the show you are interested in.
The Switch 2 mouse controls totally work just sliding around on the couch cushion and, as a guy who has spent years irritatedly re-centring the PC mouse on its pad when it hits the desk and the cursor crashes to a stop… this sort’ve feels like magic.
June 6, 2025 at 7:30 AM
The Switch 2 mouse controls totally work just sliding around on the couch cushion and, as a guy who has spent years irritatedly re-centring the PC mouse on its pad when it hits the desk and the cursor crashes to a stop… this sort’ve feels like magic.
Millions of the vulnerable expected to die from USAID cuts, whole lives and careers blown up overnight, turned an influential online network into a mainstream platform for the far right, actively spread misinformation, and THREW OUT TWO NAZI SALUTES.
But he has money so let’s forgive and forget?!
But he has money so let’s forgive and forget?!
Some Democrats are looking to cosy up to Musk:
Ro Khanna: “We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with.”
Ritchie Torres: “I'm a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation.”
Ro Khanna: “We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with.”
Ritchie Torres: “I'm a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation.”
June 5, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Millions of the vulnerable expected to die from USAID cuts, whole lives and careers blown up overnight, turned an influential online network into a mainstream platform for the far right, actively spread misinformation, and THREW OUT TWO NAZI SALUTES.
But he has money so let’s forgive and forget?!
But he has money so let’s forgive and forget?!
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Even if "white British" will be a minority in the UK in 40 years - so what? Seriously, so what? What is so terrible about that? Make people spell out their horrors. Make them spell out the things they are supposedly not allowed to say. Make them own it.
June 4, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Even if "white British" will be a minority in the UK in 40 years - so what? Seriously, so what? What is so terrible about that? Make people spell out their horrors. Make them spell out the things they are supposedly not allowed to say. Make them own it.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Anyone saying ‘DEI’ here in the UK is telling you very directly where their hate is imported from.
June 2, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Anyone saying ‘DEI’ here in the UK is telling you very directly where their hate is imported from.
I hate parry systems. Not my thing. Totally spoils a game. I dropped COE33 down to story difficulty and have been absolutely loving it - including the combat. It’s a revelation for turn-based RPGs and I expect all the big names to steal from it. Great game all round. And the music… oof.
How I learned to stop worrying and love Clair Obscur's story mode
aftermath.site/clair-obscur-e...
aftermath.site/clair-obscur-e...
May 30, 2025 at 7:00 AM
I hate parry systems. Not my thing. Totally spoils a game. I dropped COE33 down to story difficulty and have been absolutely loving it - including the combat. It’s a revelation for turn-based RPGs and I expect all the big names to steal from it. Great game all round. And the music… oof.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
"These people don’t want to automate work, they want to automate existence."
Newsletter: We are in the era of the Business Idiot, where middle management has seized power, breeding out true meritocracy and value-creation in favor of symbolic growth and superficial intelligence. This piece ties together everything I've ever written.
www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-t...
www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-t...
The Era Of The Business Idiot
Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize.
Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic
Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch.
Last week, Bloomberg profiled ...
www.wheresyoured.at
May 21, 2025 at 11:24 PM
"These people don’t want to automate work, they want to automate existence."
Reposted by Alan McDonald
would take all these guys posting about using AI to avoid any and all time-consuming activities more seriously if even one of them looked like they then actually used that extra free time to gallivant
May 20, 2025 at 9:10 PM
would take all these guys posting about using AI to avoid any and all time-consuming activities more seriously if even one of them looked like they then actually used that extra free time to gallivant
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Fourteen Thousand.
The long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians is, fundamentally, about this. To provide cover for the annihilation of a people and their culture, from the youngest to the oldest, to shrugs from the most powerful nations in the world.
The long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians is, fundamentally, about this. To provide cover for the annihilation of a people and their culture, from the youngest to the oldest, to shrugs from the most powerful nations in the world.
“I want to save as many as these 14,000 babies as we can in the next 48 hours,” he told the BBC.
UN warns 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in next 48 hours without aid – Israel-Gaza war live
UN’s humanitarian chief says aid lorries, which contain baby food and nutrition, are technically in Gaza but have not reached civilians
www.theguardian.com
May 20, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Fourteen Thousand.
The long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians is, fundamentally, about this. To provide cover for the annihilation of a people and their culture, from the youngest to the oldest, to shrugs from the most powerful nations in the world.
The long campaign to dehumanize Palestinians is, fundamentally, about this. To provide cover for the annihilation of a people and their culture, from the youngest to the oldest, to shrugs from the most powerful nations in the world.
#Andor was just exceptional, start to finish. Easily the best sci fi TV since 2000s Battlestar. That final shot, too. The whole purpose of the Rebellion in one quiet moment. What a show.
May 20, 2025 at 6:38 AM
#Andor was just exceptional, start to finish. Easily the best sci fi TV since 2000s Battlestar. That final shot, too. The whole purpose of the Rebellion in one quiet moment. What a show.
The show has often excelled when required to do explore ideas with small resources. And it’d be great to keep it going as a way of letting new British talent and varied voices try things out, without the pressure that comes with being a mega show.
I'm tempting the gods here, but I do sort of think that 'Doctor Who being made on a more limited budget' has the potential to be very good for British TV, in that it might free TV bosses from the (IMV unhelpful and wrongheaded) idea that everything needs to be a glossy co-production to succeed.
This is terrific news and I am very much here for an eight part Edge of Destruction where nobody leaves the TARDIS and it’s like avant garde 1960s theatre.
May 17, 2025 at 9:27 AM
The show has often excelled when required to do explore ideas with small resources. And it’d be great to keep it going as a way of letting new British talent and varied voices try things out, without the pressure that comes with being a mega show.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
I cherish audiobooks because of the performance and the interpretation of the narrator. I have been lucky to have my work read by a wide range of excellent readers, all of whom have added their own artistry to what was on the page. I don't ever want my books read by an AI, or to listen to one.
May 15, 2025 at 5:55 PM
I cherish audiobooks because of the performance and the interpretation of the narrator. I have been lucky to have my work read by a wide range of excellent readers, all of whom have added their own artistry to what was on the page. I don't ever want my books read by an AI, or to listen to one.
Only caught up with 8 eps of #Andor season two so far but *damn*. It is actually the best thing on TV, isn’t it? It’s doing everything sci fi is meant to, somehow all within a mega franchise. Might actually have more to say about the 2020s than even Succession.
May 14, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Only caught up with 8 eps of #Andor season two so far but *damn*. It is actually the best thing on TV, isn’t it? It’s doing everything sci fi is meant to, somehow all within a mega franchise. Might actually have more to say about the 2020s than even Succession.
Reposted by Alan McDonald
Scotland specifically needs more immigrants. Every year we are absolutely begging you to make immigration more lenient and every year you ignore us and do shit like this
May 13, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Scotland specifically needs more immigrants. Every year we are absolutely begging you to make immigration more lenient and every year you ignore us and do shit like this
Reposted by Alan McDonald
If you really wanted to address it, you'd invest in social and community projects. Not blame immigrants.
This is awful language in this context.
There *is* a risk of us becoming a country of strangers but that's from social atomisation and a lack of shared and binding experiences, coming from multiple fragmentations in what makes communities.
To blame it all on immigration is far-right rhetoric.
There *is* a risk of us becoming a country of strangers but that's from social atomisation and a lack of shared and binding experiences, coming from multiple fragmentations in what makes communities.
To blame it all on immigration is far-right rhetoric.
Keir Starmer says immigration system is “almost designed to permit abuse” and that it risks “pulling the country apart”.
PM says UK needs tougher rules to reduce immigration significantly or it risks becoming “an island of strangers”.
PM says UK needs tougher rules to reduce immigration significantly or it risks becoming “an island of strangers”.
May 12, 2025 at 1:26 PM
If you really wanted to address it, you'd invest in social and community projects. Not blame immigrants.