I was today years old when I discovered that many of the "pod" vehicles carried by Thunderbird 2 in the original THUNDERBIRDS (1965) were kit-bashed from toys of the Vickers Vigor tractor, a modular Vickers design from the '50s that could have bulldozer blades and suchlike attached.

one of my favorite things about andor is the morning talk show they invented for it. they say the most vapid things and it's so funny. people wrote this. people set dressed this. people costumed and hair and makeuped and light designed and shot this. it's so good

Shipshapes for a cancelled animated project. A recurring theme.

My marks were routinely good to excellent, so I was taken aback when I got a bad grade on an essay that would directly impact my degree. I asked the lecturer about it and he smirked and tacitly admitted it was primarily animus, but he'd rationalise it if challenged. He burned my chance of a first.

This. He was a rabid movie buff (he got raided by the Vice Squad because his extensive film archive contained some pre-1920 "stag films"), and always regarded himself mainly as an actor (he's in the first CARRY ON). Horrible irony that he was just starting to act again when prostate cancer took him.

Remembering Bob Monkhouse, born this day in 1928.

The people cry out for Jarnathan

Today I ‘interviewed’ Facebook whistleblower on stage at Hay…& she couldn’t say a word. Facebook took legal action to prevent her speaking. What pathetic, pointless vindictiveness. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"You will join the Collective and be ass-stimulated..." "Just stop. Stop right there."

Didn’t just buy one

I have a weakness for vintage Belgian movie posters and I’m afraid that today I indulged it

On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy

DOJ Launches Criminal Investigation Into All Women

My husband has fulfilled my dream of being the curator of my very own, Haunted Little Free Library. Stay tuned for the installation and filling up with FREE horror books for my neighborhood

To celebrate the completion of all artwork for "Lo! An Amazon!" Bryan has released these pages for preview. The new graphic novel, written by @eyedotter.bsky.social details the life of the author of the manifesto "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" - Mary Wollstonecraft.

Scenes from 'Butterfly Winter' episode of DANGER UXB (1979) which writer Jeremy Paul confirmed was based on the 1943 Butterfly Bomb raid on Grimsby - to be commemorated this June with exhibition and service at Grimsby Minster.

I love this publicity photo for Big Train. A former screensaver of mine.

People have been asking, so I will once again share my Free Stuff Thread. Thousands of silent movies to stream for free thanks to archives, national libraries and nonprofits. Sweet deal!

Finally got around to watching WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025), the third KNIVES OUT film. I think it's my favourite of the three. It's long - 2.5 hours - and the first half hour moves slowly, but the subsequent two gallop, really well paced. Oh, plus an excellent Jeffrey Wright cameo. youtu.be/0hc8yz5-d5Y

Sometimes I teach writing classes. I get asked very specific spontaneous questions or questions related to the student's background in relation to their writing. You have to have lived experience to answer the questions. On this I am arrogantly confident. AI could never teach better than me.

A cartoon about book festivals for @theguardian.com

omg

It's only an invasion if it comes from the Invasion region of Eastern Ukraine. Otherwise, it's sparkling incursion.

This was at the Everything Electric Show North in May. Looks fabulous!

Can conservatives make art? Yeah maybe, but not so long as one of the core identity markers for "conservative" is open contempt for art, the artists who make it, and the craft they employ to make it, nor as long as their interaction with art is reduced to a desire to either crush or commodify it.

Paintings by Nizo Yamamoto for Sherlock Hound (1984–1985), dir. Hayao Miyazaki and Kyosuke Mikuriya, Tokyo Movie Shinsha

Ugh. "The Monday Club." That's a name I haven't heard in a long time, thank heavens. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Originally born out of swivel-eyed wrath that the UK government might not be sufficiently keen on apartheid in South Africa and South Rhodesia (as was).

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Stories like this always depress me a little. Somebody who, for reasons that make perfect sense to them, throw themselves at reality and end up being scraped off by the windscreen wiper of consequences. I admire their nerve and regret the tragedies that inevitably await them.

Still number one in my misericord ranking, the finest mercy seats, an incursion of demons..!

whatever religion this is, i’m joining

I've written a stage adaptation of Lovecraft's 'The Rats in the Walls', which is having it's world premier in October this year (in a double bill with Agatha Christie's 'The Rats'). If you're in the North of England do come and see it! #hplovecraft #agathachristie #theratsinthewalls #therats

Last of the Salute stock of our Antifa Love Minis shirts are in the webshop now. We will be reprinting later in the year but these are available to ship now!

When you see news reports about the pro-ICE protest outside Delaney Hall today, know that it is about 6 people total surrounded by a million cameras with about 75 to 100 anti-ICE demonstrators across the street.

It’s Stephen Tobolowsky’s birthday. Here he is trying to convince Steven Seagal to kill his serial killer character in The Glimmer Man after Seagal decided he no longer wanted to want to kill onscreen due to a spiritual awakening:

I would like AOC to run for three reasons: 1. I think the D candidate in 2028 is strongly favored to win regardless of who it is 2. We need to elect someone who understands the moment and is committed to a new reconstruction 3. Of all plausible candidates I am most convinced AOC meets that bar

Anyone need a story prompt? We open for general subs at the start of August… 🕷️

S14 continues with @emmanewman.bsky.social! Emma writes SFF short stories, novels & novellas, and is an audiobook narrator & Hugo Award-winning podcaster. Will she raise us up to her award-winning level, or will we drag her down with our shenanigan-riddled chaos? I think we all know the answer...

Hey! It is my BIRTHDAY today and I am OLD. I know that most people will be outside, enjoying life BUT should you choose to shackle yourself to a screen instead, why not check out/share/re-watch/rate/review/shout at my film DUCKS? www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8vZ... ko-fi.com/moonjam 🎂🦆🍞🦆🎂

Oh I hope everybody enjoyed how loudly I shrieked at getting an ARC of THE BOOK OF THE DEAD! Lookit that cover! This contains maybe one of my very, very favourite short stories I've written for AGES And there's an ILLUSTRATION! :D

Oh hey we're at stall 3-913 at #ukge , we're listed wrong on the programme! Come find us for cool sculpts of ladies, capybaras, turkey men and more! Please share so folk can find us 🥹🥹

Gearing up to start promo for our next novella series! This will be another set of novellas alongside a short story collection, with an especial interest in queer speculative fiction. You can sign up here to get notified when we go live: www.kickstarter.com/projects/dav...

Ich was goinge to wryte a substantial horror novel about liminal spaces but the project ys now yn limbo

Long before ANDOR, BABYLON 5 warned us of how fascism raises quitely and slowly until it feels “normalized.” Heck, even predicted the use of blonde-haired woman used as the “pleasant” face of the movement. And the use of “aliens” as the scapegoat.

The MAGA view is that masculinity *requires* cruelty. The fascist view is that masculinity *requires* cruelty. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.

so for those keeping count of the heavy launch systems (me, i'm the motherfucker keeping count) that's elon's starship: 12 test flights, 11 damaged, 6 explosions bezos' new glenn: 3 test flights, 2 explosions nasa's space launch system, in development for 12 years, 2 launches, 0 explosions

This is awful, and from what I'm reading UK law on the issue is completely inadequate:

Democrats self-sabotaged in 2024 when they stopped talking about these guys as the weird perverts and assholes that they are. Most of the country sees people like Stephen Miller and think they're gross monsters. They will always respond well when leaders/institutions that affirm their gut vibes.

This is an interesting film: the Quatermass movie that wasn't. Hammer wanted to brand it as a Quatermass film but Nigel Kneale refused them a license. In truth, it is a bit too meat and two veg in concept to pass as a Quatermass plot, but with that said, it's a more than decent "alien thing" movie.