You can tell a lot about our current cultural moment by reading the TVTropes "Headscratchers" page for Jaws, where multiple entries basically ask, "Why is the shark so unusually large and aggressive?" and the replies all explain that Jaws is a movie about an unusually large and aggressive shark.

On the tube

Chekov was Star Trek, you fool! 😉😉😉

I know people who have names like Shifty, Ferret and The Mighty Bob that people have called them for decades without ever having to be reminded not to use their birth names.

"Oh, but we can't let Reform in!" Well, maybe the sitting Labour MP who the voters elected shouldn't have resigned then.

The idea that any other party, or for that matter the voters in the by-election, should do Labour a special favour to help it out of an internal mess it's got itself into, is just offensive.

Stunned, appalled, shocked etc to see actual tax reform from a politician. This from Wes Streeting today. A thread on why capital gains tax is broken. It's too low AND too high. & why this is a good proposal.

Lads, Harry Hill is a legend

National Football museum rejected my box of Premier League poggs last week if you're a mainstream journalist hit me up.

New EHRC guidance is due today. Remember: ➡️ Early reports based on unattributed briefings are spin, not facts. ➡️ This is civil law around who can and cannot bring discrimination claims - not criminal law. ➡️ Whatever it says, it is a choice by this government. They can fix it. ➡️ We will keep going.

Heyyyy lookit that five star review in SFX Magazine! #LeapofEighth #DoctorWho #8thDoctor

In honour of Pertwee Snr, I watched his son's finest hour: #DogSoldiers. Good werewolf movies are few and far between in my experience, and this one succeeds by essentially sticking to Doctor Who's base under siege story template, with a heavy dose of Chekov's Letter Opener.

Peter Davison meeting his fans #DoctorWho

Quote with a fictional band that is not Spinal Tap.

Remembering Jon Pertwee, thirty years gone and someone I wish I’d got to work with a lot more.

Pop-Up Submission Call!! In... 6 hours. Submissions will be open for one hour tonight/tomorrow morning (?), Wednesday, May 20, from 4am-5am ET (so, 1am-2am PT, and a more convenient hour for those of you outside the US). havehashad.submittable.com/submit/35651...

Some of the commentary around it is the director really wanted to make a Jack Kirby's Fourth World movie and so did it by stealth here - which given it's said the 4th World was one of Lucas' inspirations makes things weirdly circular. But it's not great as that either.

“Think back to your childhood. Do you remember when the anxiety started?”

@manmademoon.bsky.social That Fuji pic isn't genuine, you know.

Refuse to give a positive review to #MastersOfTheUniverse unless there's an Easter egg referencing this panel from the comics

Watched #MastersOfTheUniverse, the live-action He-Man movie with Dolph Lundgren from 1987. Such an exciting prospect to see nearly some of those old favourites as I'd never seen them before. Tom Paris and Monica Gellar team up with Mr Strickland to stop Phil Cool doing mumble mumble excitement?

🚨NEW EPISODE!🚨 On the 30th anniversary of Jon Pertwee's passing, we pay tribute to the Third #DoctorWho. soundcloud.com/powerof3pod/...

Picture exclusive! The new Cybermen figures. All pics (c) the Power of 3. If you're going to post these elsewhere, you can do so with our permission, but at least credit us. Believe it or not, our regular host is fully legally qualified in copyright law.

But if you listen to it you *will* at least understand that the blues as we now know it was the invention of a white chair salesman from Wisconsin. (No, I'm not joking)

I’ve done an inexplicable thing.

Terrific #screenwriting point here: Star Wars was Lucas fusing together random things that he liked and making a story out of them. That gave it originality, and passion. Someone made a thing they *loved* - and other people loved it too.

there’s some of this on the timeline this morning. “if you think Starmer is anti-trans then it’s not even worth pursuing a conversation” - you are being wilfully blind!

It's been said in the replies that no legislation changed. I would point out that the meaning of the words within the legislation was changed, and Starmer stood in front of the country and said there was a new, clear meaning that the Government supported. So yeah, it changed. Without changing.

Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho keeps saying the "UK is the only country in the world banning new oil and gas licenses". It's completely untrue. Denmark, France, Spain & Ireland have all done the same. She went completely unchallenged on Talk this AM when she repeated it.

I feel the growth of the gig economy has been driven in large part by employers ducking out of their pension obligations (among other workers' rights) and it's a disaster waiting to happen. Look at that stat for self-employed people.

Finished #MareOfEasttown, a VERY dark and grim murder mystery that is paradoxically fuelled by hope and the possibility of redemption. It's very strong on character, being more about its lead living with her own trauma than it is a whodunnit, but you could watch it and not notice.

buttondown.com/cooray_smith... TFW the TVM in 4K makes you think about The Trial of a Time Lord.

This, but also we have very good reason to believe the winners of that election will be an actual fascist party who may well do away with elections altogether. There'll *be* no 2034 election manifestos if FPTP isn't scrapped by 2029.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not social media - it's just people.

PodCastle are still looking for a narrator. Anyone know anyone?

BIPOC Artists check this out!

Ginger does not exist in a wild state. It has been cultivated for so long by human beings that it predates recorded history, and no "wild" variant actually exists.

20 years of my life trying to get clients to understand good UX is mostly making sure pressing a button today does the same thing as it did yesterday ... <breaks down in tears>

RIP the inboxes of all SF short story markets that will be receiving variations on this for the next year.

Oozing back and just kind of being accepted is a longstanding and highly successful tactic for awful men. This is your friendly reminder that it only works if we let it. Block that waste of space.

British Gas: We forgot to book you a service of your boiler! Ring us on this non-free number to arrange t! Me: Are you absolutely sure? Because you said this 2 months ago and then said the version of Homecare you moved me onto as part of my boiler's warranty doesn't cover services. British Gas: ...

While a lot of the paranormal bullshit slung in In Search Of... is adorably quaint, ancient astronaut shit makes me see red.

In the original version of the play that later became the book Peter Pan, there's no Captain Hook. He was invented later. A lot of us who watched the Disney movie or saw a theatre production forget how the book ends. Most adaptations hide its grim conclusion: Hook isn't the villain. Peter is.

Like, I probably wouldn't *actually* kill all billionaires, but if you give me a choice between "kill all billionaires" and "while billionaires should not exist in a functional society, it's not their fault as individuals and nobody can deny some make great contributions"...

call me a prude but i think babies should be born with clothes on

Do I know anyone with a spare copy of either the 80s Daemons (hairy Azal) or 90s Daemons (blue spine, Pearson floating heads) who’d like to swop it for my spare 70s copy? (Condition as seen). UK only or the postage gets silly

The replacement of contact forms with poorly coded chatbots is one of my go to examples of service degradation. A month of or so ago someone bought an Air Canada flight and accidentally used my email address as their contact address. I have been trying for a month to let *someone* know.

I still need someone to outline for me how creating a massive unemployed & unemployable class out of your mid-level professional taxpayers "benefits the economy".