Mahmood praising the Panopticon is a reminder that a lot of SF ideas did have a Look I've Invented A Torment Nexus origin before a vast number of Don't Invent The Torment Nexus stories followed a few years later.

years ago when i was working in casting during my gap year i was queueing for a sandwich in soho wearing a long old stripey scarf when a voice behind me boomed "I LIKE YOUR SCARF" and when i (and everyone else there) turned around it was only Tom bloody Baker. a truly fine moment of my life

I like that the Doctor's expression captures the moment when he too falls victim to the Master's devilish plan to make everybody on Earth into a sticker. "I shall keep the inhabitants of this annoying little planet in a sticker album, all except you, Doctor...you I will stick to my fridge"

"The eyes of the state can be on you at all times" is a chilling statement to read.

Constitutional Monarchies have this one weird trick (Presidents hate it!)

The US line of succession is a weird thing to have. Like, if a President is so bad you have to remove him from office, why would you want to replace him with that terrible President's chosen successor?

There's a probably apocryphal tale about some eminent astronomer (maybe Eddington, maybe Hoyle) giving a public lecture which went like this ASTRONOMER: A star is a very simple object HECKLER: You'd look pretty simple yourself at a distance of ten parsecs

Neither America nor the rest of the world is prepared for how the dismantling of Pax Americana by Trump will eventually impact American soft power in culture and entertainment. A lot of things will change.

These are the icy mountains of Pluto. It took 9 years to get these magnificent images… and 4.8 billion kilometers.

Now would be an excellent time for Americans to finally understand that other countries are real.

Ads all over the place saying: "Hey, you with your phone blasting out. Everyone thinks you're a cunt. And they're right. You're a cunt."

Well, that's one way to review an Alice Cooper concert

100% tariff on the MM/DD/YY format.

neolithic guys get pissed if you tell them their cultures are organized by the type of pots and jewelry they made. "we called ourselves the blood hunters" "we conquered villages far beyond this horizon" sorry bud you're the western linear pottery culture now

posting? no? drinking? yes

I don't suppose anyone has easy access to any fanzines that covered Blake's 7, published earlier than 1983? (Later than that is no good, and I've got all issues of the Marvel monthly.) It's for a thing.

I'm going to say it plainly: Vote scolding is good, vote shaming is good. You should be reminded that the choices you make have consequences especially if those consequences are dire. If you don't like people pointing out what your decisions lead to, try making good decisions.

Today I was at the BBC Written Archives Centre, and For Reasons was reading a lot of early audience reaction documents for Blake's 7. Guess what? Contemporary audiences praised the special effects. Yes, *those* special effects. 🧵

Sure. AI companies have ALWAYS been training their models on Wikipedia content, which under the free and open access model is available to anyone — including AI companies. Agreements like these require AI companies to limit and offset the strain they place on Wikimedia infrastructure.

So it's the anniversary of the Great Molasses Flood, so here is one of my favorite Milk & Cheese strips from @evandorkin.bsky.social I genuinely appreciate anyone who's savvy about this day in Boston history.

The Gunfighters is an s-tier classic

NASA say that the crew member who was ill and returned to earth is doing well and now having a meal with colleagues.

Tonight's turret meeting will be pretty awkward

I think the disconnect between Atlantic elites is that Americans think Donald Trump is a kid getting to drive a monster truck for Make A Wish and Europeans and Canadians think Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

When are we getting Dr Who #TheTraitors as a bonus feature somewhere? Purves going ballistic, Langford running evil rings around them all.

Much “table-top roleplaying games.”

Greenland PM Jens-Frederik Nielsen: "If we have to choose between the US & Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU." "Greenland does not want to be owned by the US. Greenland does not want to be governed by the US" he later added.

San Rocco really said “Holiness, but make it a SERVE.” (He is, unsurprisingly, the patron saint of bachelors. I assume that also means “bachelors.” 😁)

Ruin a band by changing one letter. Punk Floyd

this is that thing where, if you know something about the subject, you know how stupid the tech guys sound. opening a restaurant is sorta by definition an insane passion project that will almost certainly fail

Maybe the most fascinating belief among the billionaire class, especially the Silicon Valley set, has been their confidence that if they blow up the specific conditions and institutions that put them on top, they will certainly come out even higher on top

Was it aliens?

holy fuck it’s real

But at a larger level socialism of all kinds in the west has always had a bend of viewing civil liberties conversations as a middle class fob to prevent class equality: goes back as far as Thomas Carlyle's opposition to aboliton!

I think the knee-jerk disdain for liberalism - which, like it or lump it, has delivered the sort of massive cultural shifts around civil liberties and minority right after a fuckload of bellyaching - is sort of part of it.

Going to put together a starter pack of 49 decent but anodyne people and one absolute danger who'll ensure you're instantly blocked by 500,000 people the second you follow him.

COUGH ON A FED TODAY

"No Miss Grant, I am the delegate from the Canal and River Trust." #DoctorWho

JRRT has proven to have the largest "proven correct" to "people who can understand him" ratio of any author in human history

You could fit the United States of America's entire active participation in The Second War in the gap between now and when the next British General Election has to be called.

Idea for Tony Gilroy's next Star Wars TV series that bridges the gap between RotJ and Force Awakens. It's basically the story of how the rebel alliance fails to prosecute or punish the Empire for anything they did during the original series, including blowing up planets.

National Crime Agency must investigate X say Lib Dems

I have a bunch of these! "How to seamlessly embed classist assumptions into your fiction." "How to reconcile one's heartfelt liberal values with the fact all of one's POC characters read like they were lifted from Sax Rohmer." "Why Kids These Days are terrible but Kids 40 Years Ago weren't."

We need a government inquiry into everything Amanda has done #TheTraitors

Fascinating to see ex-DCI Amanda's classic confirmation bias: she's decided Jade is a traitor based on fuck all, and interprets every new piece of information so as to support her prior conviction. This is how miscarriages of justice happen. Hope she didn't put away any innocent people! #TheTraitors

I know the intentions are good, but I do worry that, in replacing the inherently shocking phrase "child p*rnography" with a semi-opaque acronym, we are unwitting accomplices in a rebranding that's ultimately helpful to the ghouls being discussed in this piece.