buttondown.com/cooray_smith... For paid subscribers, but there's always the option to join them in the City of Morphoton: Who really created Doctor Who anyway?

OK, maybe there was a point to Penguin Awareness Day after all.

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

An advertising classic. Digital = has numbers on a dial Flashes = well, the numbers are seen through a window in the watch face, perhaps it's phosphorescent? "Computer" = unclear, but perhaps describing a general "vibe" with no actual functional significance.

Awful day yesterday. So first, all these assholes get on the wrong bus

Finally, the scourge of penguin unawareness is being addressed.

One of the projects you can support on Smelt is a new sitcom by me. It's called The Least Bad Of All Possible Worlds and it's about refugees from parallel universes trying to integrate into society in Morecambe. You can pledge to fund it here: if you fund it, we make it! mirlo.space/leadmojo/rel...

Old PC didn't like it when the power went off. After it came back on, Old PC just sat making weebly weebly noises instead of turning on. Replaced the PSU and Old PC now happily turns on again. But still markedly reluctant to do very much beyond that, which is why it became Old PC in the first place.

This is interesting - but also raises questions such as, how did they boil eggs? That there were not accurate clocks does not mean that there were not things that took short amounts of time, so how *did* they talk about them?

Had a man round to drive a metal spike into the mysterious void beneath the floorboards, just to make sure there's not a Great Vampire hiding out under there. Found a mysterious forgotten cardboard tube.

Nice one, Wes Going to get Jordan Peterson to address officials overseeing dietary guidelines next? Have Jeremy Clarkson set the environmental agenda? Might as well do at this point. They've all sold loads of books too, that's all the qualifications you need, right? #socialmediaban #badscience

"Let me get this straight, Goody. Your assessment on whether there would be hooliganism at the football match was based on googling 'Will there be hooliganism at the football match?'"

I can officially confirm that Denton and Cook's "The Great Egg Race" theme remains absolutely brilliant. Their TV stuff usually is. Get yourself a copy of "Hong Kong Beat and Other BBC TV Themes". Pretty much every one a belter. www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWU...

I’m gobsmacked at how they pulled off the technical aspects of the sketch which starts at about 1:45 into this episode:

Paul Verhoeven undefeated in creating a movie that flies right over the heads of the people it’s making fun of

Reminds me of when my daughter saw violins and said "look! tiny cellos!"

Theatre Royal Drury Lane, late November 1980. The Roches (+support)

Seeing all the people puzzling over where their new followers came from, saying "explain yourself, new followers!" lest they be bots, pondering what world event has prompted the influx — illustrates how we can all be on the same platform yet have very different experiences and expectations of it.

In the interests of promoting a greater variety of ironic image postings on Bluesky, I should point out there are *nine* photos in this set. www.shutterstock.com/editorial/se...

I have a long-running list of surprising eponyms, and in this dark time I wish to share my amusement with you. To clarify, an eponym is something named for a person. “Newton’s Laws” are called that for Isaac Newton. A surprising eponym is just that. So, let’s begin. Eponyms/0

Is The Guardian working through All the Men in AI in alphabetical order and making sure they all feel special?

Wow. Thin Lizzy playing the Doctor Who theme music is not something I had come across before youtu.be/nbsoEcXAaiY

What was the last movie or TV show you watched in 2025?

Oh - the animations in the middle of the London Eye aren’t added to the feed digitally. Instead they set up a small Hologauze projection right in front of the camera so it appears like it’s in the middle of the Eye. Why?! Somehow that’s worse? www.avinteractive.com/news/project...

Sophie Aldred's on Celebrity Mastermind tomorrow. Someone's specialty subject is "The actor Sylvester McCoy". I don't think I'll stop laughing until well into the new year if it isn't her.

Being "hilariously/magnificently/majestically owned into next year" isn't all that impressive when next year is only a few days away. They should have a rolling "owned into" window of maybe 6 to 18 months from date of post, depending on the deservedness and comprehensiveness of the owning.

Forget the Rani, sod Omega, this is the fan service we needed in 2025 #DoctorWho www.facebook.com/reel/2034779...

What are the odds, eh? *Two* changing hands in the last couple of weeks, for frankly silly money, over 40 years since I wrote it.

I really should have tried to hang on to a few of these at the time...

PRICES SLASHED IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS! SURPRISE YOUR LOVED ONES ON CHRISTMAS MORNING WITH A BLAST OF THE SWEENEY! fasttunes.bandcamp.com/album/the-ne... www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40582709... www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40634188... www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40528402...

Great, more Dr Who pareidolia.

"Post a favourite work of art from the year exactly 50 years before you were born."

A reminder I do phone wallpapers. Titles in the alt text marswasrubbish.etsy.com

25 'MOST BLUESKY' POSTS OF 2025 Here's my selection of the 25 Bluesky posts that most impressed me this year. They're quite varied, but doesn't that reflect the thriving, harmonious site this really is? Yes. It does. They've been anonymised anyway, who cares?

Have you picked up a copy of LIES AND DOLLS by Nev Fountain yet? 💛 A pacy, laugh-out-loud funny whodunnit set in the world of cult sci-fi fandom, this novel sees the return of sleuth Kit Pelham as she investigates a murder at a rare toy museum. https://tinyurl.com/4uzhh8m9

PLUS The automatic bottle opener you saw us using at the Christmas party, *with* its instructions.

Truth. Also - that set (which presumably has been erected in many less interestingly decorated venues) could have been made for Brixton Academy.

I haven't blogged for ages, so I wrote far too many words about something that happened 40 years ago, and which nobody outside of America cares about.

Maybe...

Christmas Ident Calendar Day 5 extra. BBC TV channels almost didn't broadcast over Christmas in 1978 because of strike action. It was resolved at the very last minute. Here's a BBC news report on what happened, with behind the scenes footage of the BBC1 symbol being put together.

Field of Dreamscape

Here you go! #ChristmasSongBingo Whammageddon is for losers!!!

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Birds painted on beer mats. A new hardback book with my first 50 beer mats. darrenhaymanart.com

Honestly never occurred to me that it could be *worn*.

Damn, already slightly over my budget. Anyone want to lend me, say, forty grand? www.sothebys.com/en/buy/aucti...

Ah, now it makes sense. GPUs are made of Electrons. Each containing a single 1MHz 6502A CPU, so it probably does need quite a lot of them.

Tell me you’ve used AI to tweak an archive photo without telling me you’ve used AI to tweak an archive photo. Breeds musnuey, indeed.

I have finished a three year long project. Original Doctor Who theme remade from the ground up. Going to take a very long nap.😴 youtu.be/pCzrppQtK9Y?...

As one of the BBC’s most extraordinary series returns to iPlayer to mark its fortieth anniversary, Jude Rogers speaks to several key members of the team who made the ecologically minded crime thriller Why #EdgeOfDarkness makes so much sense in 2025 buff.ly/nIF9mdh