Seán Padraic Birnie
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seanbirnie.bsky.social
Seán Padraic Birnie
@seanbirnie.bsky.social
2.5K followers 1.8K following 2.9K posts
Writer: I Would Haunt You if I Could. Stories in Fictionable, Cōnfingō, Best British Short Stories, Interzone, Black Static, The Dark, ergot.

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undertowpublications.com/shop/i-would-haunt-you-if-i-could
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seanbirnie.bsky.social
Watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE last night for the first and not the last time. Fabulously atmospheric, insidiously creepy, and coldly, beautifully shot. Loved it.
A poster for the movie Cure: close up of the protagonist’s face, the flame of a lighter reflected in his eye, the title of the film at the bottom.
October 18, 2025 at 11:44 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Making v slow progress but I’m getting there with this head-to-tail double short story zine. Currently waiting for the second test to arrive with the patience I am famed for.
A test print of my short story zine ‘Digging & Flume’ on a cutting mat, next to a sealable plastic card bag with a piece of A4 purplish-blue card folded inside it, to protect the zine. The fit is too tight and when I was in the shop I also forgot that the zine is actually longer than A6.
October 13, 2025 at 2:21 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
'They recently started talking on LinkedIn.' LOL
"For the past three months, 28-year-old social worker Holly from Kent has been navigating a “situationship” with a co-worker. Though they knew each other from the office, they initially started speaking via LinkedIn. Now, they see each other sporadically – “I wouldn’t call them dates,” Holly deadpans – but speak often via WhatsApp. “I mainly use AI because I tend to write really long messages,” she says, “so I’ll put them into ChatGPT and say, ‘Please make this softer and more clear’, or, ‘I need to sound harsher here so he understands I’m upset.’” She doesn’t feel that it’s misleading – “I’m not trying to manipulate anyone,” she says."
October 12, 2025 at 9:49 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Good god this is grim. Quite a remarkable condensing of various contemporary ideological salients. A mutilation of language, meaning, the possibility of human relation as such. Nick is too dim to realise how evil it all is.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
A screenshot of a paragraph from the linked Guardian article, which read: "The majority of Chatfishers say they would never dream of letting AI do all of their talking. Most are like 38-year-old Londoner Nick, who sees it as a tool to help foster stronger connections with app matches. He works in tech and lives with his girlfriend; they’re in an open relationship and both date other people casually. He sometimes uses ChatGPT in his conversations on the dating apps Feeld and Bumble. “If I’m using a dating app,” he says, “I want to start a conversation that feels meaningful from the beginning so I can hook the other person in – but also I don’t want to spend too much time on it. Equally, while I want it to be ‘meaningful’, I don’t necessarily want to get super heavy and emotional straight away – it feels like quite a balancing act.” ChatGPT, he says, helps him tread that fine line: offering enough charm to spark a connection, without the investment of time or emotional labour that might otherwise feel wasted if the match fizzles out after a handful of messages."
October 12, 2025 at 9:47 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
This morning’s office. Lovely and warm in the sun, cold in the shade. The memory of Storm Amy a strong breeze that has so far failed to wake the baby. Seagulls patrolling the site like officious ticket inspectors.
A park bench with a Kobo displaying The Best Weird Fiction front cover, a paperback copy of Fritz Leiber’s Night Monsters, a pair of sunglasses, and a coffee cup; behind which a buggy is parked with its sun shade down.
October 5, 2025 at 10:03 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Article from the Onion, the headline over a picture of a bald white guy looking serious reads: Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point Beneath, the body text reads: A heartbreaking story is currently unfolding that's sure to have devastating ramifications for years to come. Just moments ago, without any warning, the worst person you know just made a great point. This is absolutely crushing news, and it's unclear if recovery will ever be possible.
September 12, 2025 at 8:14 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
'No pious unity...'
The conclusion to above-quoted essay: "The sociopaths trying to create a Septemberlebnis around their toytown martyr are the same people who idolised Kyle Rittenhouse and wanted the ‘insurrection’ to succeed. And most of the bourgeois politicians virtue-signalling and extolling non-partisan unity against political violence are vicious cynics up to their necks in Palestinian blood. The idea of earnestly standing shoulder to shoulder with such people, of a truce with Trump of all people over political violence, is, I trust, absurd and repellent to every sensible person in the world. No pious unity with bloodthirsty reaction, no suspension of political hostility, no phoney peace to create the interval in which they can ready whatever atrocities they think they can get away with. Keep your hate pure."
September 12, 2025 at 9:27 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Richard Seymour:

www.patreon.com/posts/note-o...
Screenshot of the opening to Richard Seymour's Patreon article 'Note on a killing': May I ask you, as Alexander Cockburn used to ask interns, _is your hate pure?_ If you fumble the question — what do you mean by hate, hate is a very strong word, isn’t it kind of like racism, it might provoke violence, we must reject the politics of hate — then I know you aren’t serious. Because you, and I’m talking to the Americans here, are going to need your reserves of sober, militant, purified hate for what’s coming.
September 12, 2025 at 9:25 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Took ages because I am slow, but I finally have a test print.
The first page of the story 'Digging', beginning on the righthand page of the first spread. The title in lower case Futura is placed above the body text, which is in Sabon. The first spread of 'Digging'.
August 29, 2025 at 6:19 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Made a thing.
The front cover of the zine FLUME & DIGGING by me, a 111x181mm booklet. The cover is dark blue with a watercolour texture applied; author name and first story title 'flume' in Futura on the bottom right. Above it, a white circle dominates the top two thirds, with the watercolour texture overlaid. The blank inside cover and first page of the zine from the image before. The circle remains in place but is now black; the title 'flume' remains in place but is now black, and my name has been removed. The first page of the story 'Flume', beginning on the righthand page of the first spread. The title in lower case Futura is placed above the body text, which is in Sabon. The other front cover of the zine DIGGING & FLUME by me, a 111x181mm booklet. Turn 'Flume' over and you get 'Digging'. The cover is yellow with a watercolour texture applied; author name and first story title 'digging' in Futura on the bottom right. Above it, a white black dominates the top two thirds, with the watercolour texture overlaid.
August 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
A photo of a passage from Jack Klausner's short story 'We Didn't Always Used to Be Like this', from WEIRD HORROR #11: 'A landlord who refused to fix the kitchen's leaking flat roof, a brown stain spreading across the ceiling like a filthy cloud. The drawers are kept locked and only I have the key. I keep driving. It starts to rain. The suburbs, now, a little more space between the houses. All of it new-build estates, knotted rabbit-warren streets and closes, rises and cul-de-sacs, where every house looks the same. So easy to lose yourself inside. We lived here, once, I think—a starter home, cheaply built, walls like cardboard—we must have, but where is the memory, the actual memory, rather than a vague feeling? And beyond all of this, after a while: the older suburbs, the grand 1930s detached houses, imposing behind their generous front gardens, their manicured lawns, their BMWs and Audis and Jaguars lying idle on gravel or blockwork driveways, fringed with clipped hydrangeas and pruned privet hedges, all watched over by dormer loft conversions and fresh paint and wooden shutter-blinds and there, finally, its windows dim, its gravel driveway wide and empty like an open, hungry mouth: our house. 'We didn't always live here, I think.'
August 23, 2025 at 3:07 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
No discussion of Streeting is complete without Dawn Foster’s immortal précis.
Screenshot of a tweet from the late, great Dawn Foster, which reads: ‘I knew Wes when I was a student and he was the NUS president - always been a right wing lickspittle cunt’ Dated Jan 3, 2021.
August 19, 2025 at 9:46 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
No cheating, post the last pic of your pet
Ruben the collie beside some roses in the messy side return of our messy yarden, a yellow ball in his mouth.
August 16, 2025 at 4:05 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Glad I noticed the '(optional)' because the only thing I could find at the time was this, taken a few years back when me and my colleagues were testing the studios at work before the start of term.
A studio portrait of me in a maroon-ish check short sleeve shirt. I'm staring straight at the camera, head held slightly too high up, eyes slightly too wide. I look odd.
August 16, 2025 at 9:23 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
This afternoon’s office isn’t so bad.
Laptop on a pub garden table, a pint of lager next to it. It’s sunny. The people cropped out are too loud and annoying but I like their dogs. Oh fuck some kids just arrived.
August 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
www.marxists.org/archive/trot...

Quite a postscript, this.
The second paragraph of Trotsky's postscript to the linked essay. It reads: 'The more impotent the police regime of the Nazi is in the field of national economy, the more it is forced to transfer its efforts to the field of foreign policy. This corresponds fully to the inner dynamics of German capitalism, aggressive through and through. The sudden turn of the Nazi leaders to peaceful declarations could deceive only utter simpletons. What other method remains at Hitler’s disposal to transfer the responsibility for internal distresses to external enemies and to accumulate under the press of the dictatorship the explosive force of nationalism? This part of the program, outlined openly even prior to the Nazis” assumption of power, is now being fulfilled with iron logic before the eyes of the world. The date of the new European catastrophe will be determined by the time necessary for the arming of Germany. It is not a question of months, but neither is it a question of decades. It will be but a few years before Europe is again plunged into a war, unless Hitler is forestalled in time by the inner forces of Germany. 'November 2, 1933'
August 14, 2025 at 6:11 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Two more, portraits occasioned by the failure of the flash sync
A monochrome close-up photograph of a face in quarter profile, eyes shut. The image was drastically underexposed, necessitating an exposure increase of four or five stops in post, resulting in an extremely noisy, quite abstract portrait. A monochrome photograph of a seated male subject in profile, eyes shut. The image was drastically underexposed, necessitating an exposure increase of four or five stops in post, resulting in an extremely noisy, quite abstract portrait. Less noisy than the one before, though.
August 10, 2025 at 2:34 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Two pictures from the archives.
a large format monorail camera on a heavy tripod, lit with studio lights against a black colorama backdrop. An X-rite Color Checker Classic has been placed upside down in front of the camera. a large format monorail camera on a heavy tripod, lit with studio lights against a black colorama backdrop.
August 10, 2025 at 11:27 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Craft knife, pencil, rubber, square and marked up bit of pine on a worktop. Final trivet with glorious chamfered edges on my dining table.
July 31, 2025 at 8:00 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Shutting down an empty dark room on your own never not spooky.
A view of a dark room under a red safe light, from a position at the end of two long sinks. In the sinks are trays with developer, which is covered with a second tray, stop, and fix. At the far end a clock reads 17:05, the numbers illuminated with red light.
July 30, 2025 at 4:27 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
A trip to the ‘Genius Bar’ enlivened by this. Quite a powerful atmosphere - defiance and grief.
July 26, 2025 at 11:38 AM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Today's therapeutic rest break at work was very soothing.
A blue rubbish skip with a metal frame and a white table in front of it;; to the left are leant two plastic model legs and upper torsos with arms, and on the table a plastic model of a human body has been laid down.
July 24, 2025 at 1:48 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
And this on the danger of tail-wagging formulations vis-a-vis Israel & western governments.
A screenshot of an earlier paragraph from Seymour's blog: "You’re right that part of my wariness, beyond interpretive issues, has always been a worry about how such arguments, by overestimating the global power of a small Levantine state which calls itself the ‘Jewish state’, could feed into antisemitic conspiracy theory. And while that isn’t my main worry at the moment, you can see how far-right influencers like Candace Owens and nativists like Tucker Carlson are able to sound very critical of Israel without departing from the ethnonationalist predicates that Zionists also assume. The current speculation is that Jeffrey Epstein, who is alleged to have been associated with Mossad, corrupted the US political system by sexually compromising legions of politicians and businessmen who were plied with access to trafficked children. And since the nativist Right basically thinks of the world in ethnic terms, in its crudest versions this devolves into overt antisemitic conspiracism. I’m happy to see the Right schism over Israel, but if this sort of stuff gains ground in the pro-Palestine movement, it weakens us, and it gives the reactionaries a foothold — so we have to be on guard.
July 15, 2025 at 3:26 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
'...an example of misplaced concreteness.'

@leninology.bsky.social's answer to a question on the Israel Lobby/tail-wagging-the-dog hypothesis contains this illuminating description of the State. I have too many Patreon/other subscriptions but his is well worth the low subscription cost.
Screenshot of a paragraph from Richard Seymour's blog: "So, when we talk about ‘strategic interests’, we also have to look at the relationships between geopolitical alignments and domestic political management. Then there is the question of ‘the state’. McNally criticises the old metaphor of the tail wagging the dog, and he’s right: it implies that only one side has agency. So, yeah, lobbying matters to some degree. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t. But then, if we want to avoid portraying this as foreign subversion, we need a better understanding of how states actually work. The definite article in ‘the state’ is, famously, an example of misplaced concreteness. There is no ‘the state’ if by that we mean a unitary object or an historical subject. States are fields of power relations ultimately condensing the relations of dominance and struggle that we find in society as a whole. In that sense, their structures and policy lines tend to express the dominance of specific fractions of capital rather than a determinate ‘national interest’, whatever that might be. And as capital internationalises, so does the state. The whole process of ‘globalisation’ was, after a fashion, a project of impregnating subordinates with the imperatives of an American state remade by neoliberalism. In the same way, the Memoranda of Understanding between the US and Israel establish American foreign policy objectives in the region as Israeli priorities. But why should it all be one way? Why wouldn’t an empire state also, in the very act of dominance, internalise some of the priorities of its subordinates? Wouldn’t lobbying, in that sense, be an expression of the interpenetration of states?"
July 15, 2025 at 3:23 PM
seanbirnie.bsky.social
Quite ludicrously excited to be, like, making a thing. It's so fun. This was the last zine I made, The Séance Room, in the second year of my Photography MA in 2014 or 15. This was the one spenny hardcover version, made by Hannah Moore, a bookbinders in Lewes. Interiors on newsprint.
A gif of stills showing the pages, from front cover to back, of The Séance Room. It combines imagery scanned from a popular photography mag of the 1950s, detailing a step by step process for devving film, with images lifted from Phenomena of Materialisation: A Contribution to the Investigation of Mediumistic Teleplastics (1923), by Baron von Schrenck Notzing, on the recto page of each spread; captions from the step by step guide are positioned at the bottom left of the verso page. The photo mag was beautiful but stank of damp. You know I'm serious about design because I say 'verso' and 'recto'.
July 9, 2025 at 3:06 PM