A Bug's Life

Go here to watch the performance

I've just watched it and it's great!

Excellent cast all round, great costumes (Gatwa looks amazing in his skin tight suit)

I mean, what could possible fail to delight in a show which starts with Gatwa playing  a piano in a ballgown?

Multi-racial cast, loads of laughs, Algernon and Jack definitely have bromance going on, and Oscar Wilde's brilliant script.

I think Wilde would have loved this performance as much as I did.

You've got one more day to watch it before the free view comes to an end!

1. "Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story"

(tags:iran israel journalism gambling ohforfuckssake )

2. Subnautica 2 Publisher Followed ChatGPT's Advice On How To Break The Law

(tags:law ai games OhForFucksSake )

3. Nvidia's Next-Gen Photo-Realistic Lighting looks, frankly, amazing

(tags:games lighting nvidia video )

4. Regression, Not Progress: A Response to World Athletics' Return to Sex Testing

(tags:gender testing OhForFucksSake women LGBT transgender biology )

5. Have some simple but inspiring images about growth through making mistakes

(tags:inspiration visualisation )

6. Almost 25 years ago, a war game exercise had an Iran-stand in use asymmetric warfare to obliterate a US military force. So they re-ran it to force a US victory.

(tags:usa military ohforfuckssake iran games )

I do wish that polls wouldn't ask if people thought that the PM was handling something "Well" or "Badly". Because two people answering "Badly" might mean completely different things by it.

Also, me saying "Immigration is important to me" means the opposite of what a Reform voter would mean by it.

This because of reporting of how many people think that Starmer is handling the Iran situation well or badly. When I can guarantee that some of the "badly" think we should be bombing Iran right now, and some think that we shouldn't be involved even slightly.

The guest, the bessa, and vengeance are like the machinery of classical tragedy, and once you are caught up in the mechanism, you must face the possibility of tragedy. [Chapter 3]

A tragedy set in Albania. Gjorg Berisha is compelled by the Kanun, the ancient laws of the mountain country, to kill the man who killed his brother. The murder cements his own fate: he'll be killed in turn by one of the men of the Kryeqyqe family, in thirty days' time. ( Read more... )

https://xkcd.com/3220/

https://xkcd.com/3220/

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/03/why-this-blog-update-is-late.html

... The TLDR is: the cataract in my one mostly working eye (the other has about 50% retinal occlusion) is steadily getting worse, and I'm scheduled for surgery on March 27th.

NB: no need to lecture me about cataract surgery, I've already had it on the other eye. Same team, same hospital, same prognosis. I know exactly what to expect. Nor are your best wishes welcome: replying to them gets tiring after the fiftieth time (see: poor eyesight, above).

But worsening eyesight means that reading (and writing!) is fatiguing, so I gradually do less and less of it in each session.

Consequently I've been spending my screen time, not on the blog, but on a revision pass over my next novel, and on writing the follow-up.

(No, I can't give you any details: let's just say they're space operas, not Laundry Files, and I'll talk about them when my agent gives me the go-ahead. Book 1 is written, subject to editing, and Book 2 is about 10-15% written. And neither of them is Ghost Engine, the white whale I've been fruitlessly hunting for the past decade, although the viable chunks of GE may get recycled into Book 2.)

After my eye surgery I'll be going to Iridescence, the 2026 British Eastercon, the following weekend in Birmingham. I have some program items: I'll update this blog entry when I have a final schedule.

After Iridescence, I'll be heading to Satellite 9 in Glasgow (May 22nd to 24th). And after that I'll be attending Metropol Con in Berlin, July 2nd to 5th.

I'm not attending any US SF conventions for the forseeable future (being deported to a concentration camp in El Salvador is not on my bucket list), but I will try to attend the 2027 World Science Fiction convention in Montreal, assuming the Paedopotus Rex hasn't gone on a Godzilla-style rampage north of the border by then, and that intercontinental air travel is still possible. (See, my inability to resist that kind of cheap shot is exactly why I'm not visiting the US these days: ICE want to see your social media history going back 5 years, and I gather they're using some horrible LLM tool from Palantir to vet travellers.)

We now return you to your regular scheduled kvetching about the state of world affairs until my eyeballs are firing on all cylinders again. (Say, did you know that 30% of the world's fertilizer is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz? And about 20% of the sulfur that ends up as feedstock in sulfuric acid for industrial processes comes from sour Gulf crude, so ditto? Not to mention the helium that is required to keep MRI machines and TSMC's semiconductor fab lines running, never mind your grandkids' party balloons? Happy days ...)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/03/why-this-blog-update-is-late.html

1. Royal Mail The Lord of the Rings Stamps

(tags:lotr movies royalmail )

2. UK government to launch £1bn plan to tackle youth unemployment

(tags:unemployment apprentices uk )

3. Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year (I've been using it for over 35 years and had no idea)

(tags:excel date history computers )

4. Scientists create first-of-its-kind 'hexagonal diamond' harder than real thing

(tags:diamonds materials )

Simon’s been trying to keep things friendly, neutral, light, to act like they didn’t spend two days presenting one another with secrets like outdoor cats gently placing mangled rodents at one another’s feet. [p. 205]

Simon Devereaux is thirty-four, prone to migraines and anxiety attacks, and for seven years one of the two stars of Out There, a sci-fi show described as 'Twin Peaks in space, leaning hard into the camp'. Simon's antisocial tendencies are acknowledged and accepted by the rest of the cast, and he has a comfortable enmity going with his co-star Charlie Blake, who's improbably good-looking and highly gregarious. Now Simon's thinking of leaving the show. ( Read more... )

• ‘The Evolution Man’ by Roy Lewis.


• ‘The Specialist’ by Charles Sale.


• ‘The Canterbury Tales’ by Chaucer.


• ‘Fairy Tales’ by Charles Perrault.


• Jacqueline Simpson’s folklore books.


• Everything by J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis.


• ‘The Wind From the Sun’ by Arthur C. Clarke.


• ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons (my favourite book).


• ‘Mistress Masham’s Repose’ and the Arthurian Trilogy by T H White.


• I also add the new series of novels set in St Mary’s by Jodi Taylor, of whom I am a keen fan, and strongly recommend. Terry told Jodi how much he liked her writings. Start with ‘Just One Da*ned Thing After Another’ and carry on enjoying!


• Edit - I forgot 'The Moomins' series!

1. 'Buffy' Reboot Dead at Hulu

(tags:Buffy TV )

2. The Life Cycle of Money

(tags:money )

3. A Guide to Terms of Address for British Nobility

(tags:monarchy language uk )

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

https://dotat.at/@/2026-03-14-eggs.html

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a couple of boiled eggs

(in the shell, with plenty of salt and pepper, and buttery fingers of toast to dunk into the runny yolk)

and pondering how fiddly it is to cut off one end of the shell after boiling compared to eating a poached egg. And I was annoyed because (I thought) I didn't know how to poach eggs.

( Read more... )

The first time Gideon fell asleep in front of the toilet we moved him to a comfy chair. From where he woke up still feeling sick and Jane found him lying on the floor with a bucket he'd found and relocated him back to the toilet, where he then fell asleep again.

I missed all of this because I had passed out in bed feeling rubbish. I did wake up to various noises, but each time I did I tried to open my eyelids, failed, and fell back to sleep again. Thankfully Jane isn't feeling as bad as me, and Sophia was off having a play date at the other end of the street.

So far nobody has actually thrown up. Fingers crossed that continues.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

1. This 18-year-old Afghan girl had offers from York and Reading - thanks to Shabana Mahmood, she will now never escape the Taliban

(tags:Afghanistan women UK migration asylum education OhForFucksSake )

2. AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately

(tags:toys children ai )

3. PEGI to give 16 age rating to games with loot boxes (amongst several other changes)

(tags:gambling children games )

4. Have two people being *ridiculously* good at a Dance Pad game

Streamed live at: https://www.twitch.tv/tomatoniumWorld 1st PG on Sarabande CoopP1: ElijahTSP2: Tomatonium

(tags:games dancing video viamybrothermike )

5. New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work

(tags:LGBT bigotry healthcare OhForFucksSake transgender )

6. Tracing the lobbying behind age verification laws

(tags:age surveillance USA law politics )

I hadn't been on the ice since last Saturday (Huskies and Women's Blues practices were all Varsity squads only, and Kodiaks practice got cancelled by the rink) but I made it to and through Warbirds practice tonight. It was so worth it. I also got my Varsity notebook from Women's Blues: every team member gets a notebook, and everyone writes a note in every teammate's notebook, and we read them before Varsity to inspire us. Mine was very sweet and I love the team very much for making me welcome.

I need to leave the house in 7.5 hours to get back to the rink for Varsity. I'm playing in alumni game 1, getting cleaned up during alumni game 2, and spending the rest of the day in the scorekeepers box with a rotating cast of some of my favourite people. The three non-alumni games will be livestreamed

• 14:00 Mixed 2nds (Huskies v Vikings B)
• 17:00 Women's Blues
• 20:00 Men's Blues

I also had a little art session this evening before going to the rink, making signs for my Huskies teammates. The sign in Irish may well only be understood by the teammate who got me back into learning Irish this year - our class covered "how to cheer on your sports team" a couple weeks ago and I made careful notes - or maybe it will cause any lurking Gaeilgeoirí in the rink to make themselves known.

I think I'm wound down enough to sleep now.

https://xkcd.com/3219/

https://xkcd.com/3219/