I have just seen Evening All Afternoon at the Donmar Warehouse. It's a two-hander in which a stepmother and stepdaughter try and often fail to connect across very different outlooks and life experiences. Also a play in which the Covid lockdowns are an explicit backdrop. Very good.

OTD 2014: Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 becomes real In bad times, remember there are some victories against bigotry. Having had to wait 19 1/2 years by then, we got married on our 20th anniversary in that October: We chose our day. And each other. Congratulations to everyone else who has!

My Bluesky this morning: @filmisfabulous.bsky.social @missingepisodespod.bsky.social @themindrobber.bsky.social @tobyhadoke.bsky.social

Hadn't planned to post this today, but, y'know... #DoctorWho The Daleks' Master Plan: The Nightmare Begins! TC3, 22nd October 1965. #CGSets 'Five Zero Alpha to Charlo Charlo Egan...'

To donate to 'Film Is Fabulous!', a charitable trust, please follow the link below filmisfabulous.org.uk/the-film-is-...

Oh my god, you complete legends. Daleks! Mavec Chen! We finally get to see a Screamer, even if it does turn out to be a bit of flappy cloth in shadow. Katrina becomes the Hartnell companion with the highest percentage of existing footage. What excellent news. So happy to be a supporter.

Since @djm4.bsky.social has earwormed me with it, after Our Glorious Leader's uhm... ill advised little rant about banknotes, you can all get earwormed with it too

100000%, without knowing anything about the character (also I want that garment)

What is the point of this. Is there a particularly liberal group of voters in the UK who love Churchill and hate Badgers? I thought the Liberal Democrats “didn’t play the culture war game”. Or is that only a thing when we’re asked to defend progressive values.

I will never tear up my Lib Dem membership card, because it has on it a former Leader I both adored and had more face-to-face rows with than any before or since because he, too, cared passionately about principles. I don’t row with the current one. Just groan, ‘Oh, God, what useless banality now?’

Long ago when I was a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate I’d quote Churchill in support of Europe, or human rights, or against fascism or poverty. It was a way of getting Tory-ish but Liberal-curious voters to listen (and also made far right explode). But against badgers…?! Don’t be an absolute dick.

Drosophila whole-brain emulation based on map of fruit fly neural connectome tested using simulated fly body kinematic and sensory model: www.rathbiotaclan.com/whole-brain-... (Original research project here: flywire.ai )

This is astonishing. I had previously thought that scanning a single brain was technically infeasible: the technologies that scanned at the required resolution were too destructive or didn't capture the right info. And that turning 2D slices into a 3D structure would not be possible. I was wrong.

"And you say you're calling from Microsoft Support Company?"

"This is a phone call from Bank Security Department."

A full solar eclipse will be seen in Australia on 22 July, 2028 – a week before our proposed Worldcon in Brisbane from 27-31 July, 2028! Vote for our bid in Worldcon Site Selection so you can make the trip Down Under and do both! For more info, see our Detailed Bid Proposal: tinyurl.com/48b62fw

Most accurate portrait of modern culture currently available

NEW blog. I had a ball writing this one. Body swap fantasy! “If I had your dick and you had my cunt, here's how I would go about fucking you.” www.girlonthenet.com/blog/body-sw... How COOL is @stuartcb.bsky.social’s art for this? It’s such a clever, playful way to illustrate the concept 😍

I love the Get Birding podcast. It's a love letter to birds and birders, with a great range of voices from multiple backgrounds and levels of experience. But. The latest episode has a section on the song of the wood pigeon in which multiple people describe the song of ... the collared dove. Oops!

An international women’s day message from my friend and partner in activism Sandi Toksvig #iwd #internationalwomensday

Seriously, watch this video, please. She's magnificent.

Yesterday evening, for the second time in a year, the Met Police raided Westminster Quaker Meeting House and arrested a number of young nonviolent activists. STATEMENT: www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Much Ado About Nothing for romcom. I’m torn between Macbeth and Richard II for tragidrama. This is based on seeing productions: reading the play alone never works for me.

Much a do about nothing Macbeth (mostly because lady Macbeth)

My novel DEATH OF THE AUTHOR has won the Libby Book Award (a.k.a. the Librarians Choice Award) for Best Science Fiction, 🇳🇬🇺🇸🤖🐬! Full list here: www.libbylife.com/blog/the-win...

Greg: And the task was...? Alex: Conquer the city. Greg: And you? Odysseus: Built a giant wooden horse. Greg: And it's impressive. Completely fails the task. Odysseus (suddenly looking very like Jason Mantzoukas): But does it, Greg? Does it? Alex: There was a camera inside the horse.

Just heard a Brit with the TRAP-BATH split pronounce MAGA with the BATH vowel. For people with that split, which vowel would you use? I don't have the split, so hearing it sounds really odd to my ear, but may be completely natural to those with it.

It’s coming up it’s coming up it’s coming up IT’S LEAR - #ProjectBossBaby chooses Chaos with Akira Kurosawa in RAN (1985). My thoughts -

Democracy starts by establishing the basic rights that can never be lost or upended by the loss of an election. Without that guarantee, the electoral stakes are too high for anyone to tolerate or accept an electoral defeat. Democracy does not mean minorities must freely surrender their freedoms.

You can’t wander into the Thirty Years War and just decide to settle the matter by voting. The Protestants get 51% of the vote, so now all the Catholics have to convert. That’s not what democracy is. Democracy is when no one has to convert no matter who wins the next election.

Despite all the insanity from various people who've not spent five minutes in this constituency, the reason the Greens won here is very simple.

Someone today was like "I run these highly technical briefs through ChatGPT to understand what it means" and I'll be over there weeping at the state of mankind (For starters hallucinations and also the most probable definition isn't necessarily the correct one if we're talking obscure technical)

I see people saying that Labour deserved to come third after their shambles of a government and disgusting whipping up hate against trans people and immigrants and descendants of immigrants I couldn’t disagree more! Labour deserved to come eighth But third will do.

Now on a long thread…! OTD 1980: Blake’s 7 – Rumours of Death “It’s an old wall, Avon, it waits…” Love and betrayal A film noir political thriller in which revenge is defeat and everyone loses Utterly spellbinding Utter despair The greatest Blake’s 7 of all. Tell me who / Tell me why: 1/30

Ridiculously excited to say that we have @amalelmohtar.com with us on the 9th of April in conversation with @elizachanwrites.bsky.social! "Fairytales with teeth"? Oh we are so ready. Tickets via link below!

This time in '24 - 1000 words about a sexy picture of me and my then-boyfriend snogging in a pub: www.girlonthenet.com/blog/a-thous... (and if you're on Patreon, come hear me and @stuartcb.bsky.social chatting about this image in his interview! www.patreon.com/posts/116056...)

I find audiobooks almost impossible to enjoy, because - I suspect - I don’t read text in strict word order. I dart about, gathering scraps of info, and it drives me nuts because the person reading insists on doing all the words in a row, as the author intended. Everyone reads differently, I think.

Conversation between birds in a garden in Pitsmoor: "We have cleaned out our coconut shell. We need the human to bring us a new shell filled with tasty fat." "But the human is a bit slow - maybe they are some sort of pigeon? - and may not notice this." "I have an idea."

Finally managed to sit and watch this with @rigg.lgbt It's a cross between Blackadder, Pride Prejudice and Zombies with some romance elements and a huge budget with a cast to die for But the marketing SUCKED, Jennie hadn't even heard of it, it was never going to find the right audience It's fun

At scale, "least streamed track on an album" tends to be the final track, unless the final track is a famous banger, in which case it'll be the second or third last. The revealed behaviour is quite interesting IMO - yes, people listen to albums, but they don't finish listening

At Northampton to watch Leyton Orient play a very important relegation-zone six-pointer. Come on you Os! #LOFC

OTD 1979 Blake’s 7 – Killer Robert Holmes’ prescription for B7: ‘What this show needs is “Avon’s Two”. ‘And a dose of horror.’ Paul Daneman is superb as a genial, laid-back epidemiologist, but his final line is one of the most existentially terrifying things I’ve ever heard. I won’t write it down…

Please. Read the writeup I helped Trans Rescue write. transrescue.org/leaving-the-...

Oh, we weren't supposed to be We learnt too much at school Now we can't help but see That the future that you've got mapped out Is nothing much to shout about, oh-oh-oh

At the Trafalgar Theatre to see Oh, Mary!, which has been recommended to me by everyone who's seen it. It wasn't originally on my schedule, but the word-of-mouth was so good that I came down from Sheffield for the day specially.

Every word of this headline just gets better and better. The premise sounds amazing, and fucking love David Leitch movies. 👍

The constant background wind and the smeary lense all added to the ‘alien’ sense. You have to admire the audacity to try something like this. It may not work 100% but when it’s good it’s brilliant

OTD 1965: #DoctorWho The Web Planet The TARDIS is pulled into TV Who’s one all-alien adventure A very variable spectacle, but the ancient pyramid and great gauzy canyon Crater of Needles are magical Insect movement of giant ants and grubs, Lovecraftian tentacular horrors…

Just spent an hour responding to this. There's still a couple of hours left to do so.