Here’s a piece of news that I had missed - the military regime in Myanmar has restricted access to period products because they argue that rebels are using them for first aid.
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...?
Sledgehammer was released 40 years ago today!
The Bacchae returns this evening at The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen.
companyofwolves.org/projects/the...
At the start of April, we announced new Standard Play Contract Rates for playwrights in Scotland, negotiated with our friends at the Federation of Scottish Theatre. These went into effect immediately, and more info can be found through the link in our bio.
#playwright #scottishplaywrights #fst #ssp
The 2026 Shields Prize Shortlist is Here!
Hellions by Julia Elliott (Tin House), The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes (One World), Cannon by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly), A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (McClelland & Stewart; Knopf), and Lion by Sonya Walger (New York Review Books).
A miniature posy of real spring flowers in a thimble
Thankyou *so* much for your support of my ko-fi in the last few days, it’s helped more than you know. Here’s a seasonal posy in a thimble (all real flowers from the garden), including forget me not, sorrel, geum & lily of the valley. Spot the cow parsley floret 🌿
Caught Bruce Springsteen's homecoming show in Newark last night, part of a tour designed as a musical cavalcade of protest against the rise of American authoritarianism. I have to say that as a brash and sincere act of dissent, it was one of the most genuinely patriotic things I've witnessed.
My mum says the Victoria line’s working… 🤞
Would immediately buy the mid-century novel that began with this sentence.
"We accidentally made an animated graphic for Reform and then did a party political broadcast for them by mistake."
Netanyahu claimed last week that Magyar invited him to Hungary.
Today Magyar said that Netanyahu will be arrested if he enters Hungary:
“I made it clear to the Israeli PM — we will not back down... If a state is an ICC member and a person who is wanted enters that territory, they must be detained”
OMFG I had to go and check that this ACTUALLY happened.
Since when does the BBC ever do chyrons with a political party's branding, rather than their own? Not to mention this is during a pre-election campaign purdah.
(h/t @iainsol.bsky.social)
The best advice I ever got on this was that no one would ever write anything if they waited until they felt ready. The writing is how you get there & all writing is a provisional record of its moment. Practically tho, I often start by writing as if explaining to someone what I'm trying to write.
We have an announcement.
WE HAVE CHERRY BLOSSOM! 🌸❤️
Thanks once again to the Orkney Japan Association - our tree is one of 30 cherry trees planted across #Orkney as part of the Sakura Cherry Tree Project. 🌸
may write about it at some point but god I loooooved working at the Evening Standard in the mid 2010's, it wasn't a perfect paper but we had such a good time, still feels so sad and stupid that London doesn't have its own newspaper anymore, for no obvious reason beside "greed and stupidity"
The Evening Standard employed 364 journalists and staff when Lebedev bought it for £1 in 2009.
It now has 16
pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/r...
Anyone know whether today is a ‘ceasefire’ day or a ‘destroy your civilisation’ day yet?
this is it right here. AI violates Vonnegut's number 1 rule for writers: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." AI shifts the burden of effort from the writer onto the reader/audience and that is unacceptable
It feels like yesterday that online-engineers-of-a-certain-age were saying that heavy freight could never be electrified. To quote William Gibson, "The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet." Fossil fuel interests want to keep it that way.
"transparency goes a long way toward rebuilding trust when it has been eroded or frayed."
Sunset with red sandstone buildings and lamppost
Looking westwards on my street right now ❤️Glasgow
Narrator: in fact, he had quite a lot of cards.
Chop Suey. Edward Hopper, 1929.
Remember to occasionally cancel plans so your introvert friends don’t have to.
It will make them love you more.
It’s a mark of how completely normalised the corruption & depravity have become that we barely bat an eyelid at the thought of two *property developers*, one Trump’s nepo baby son-in-law, being sent to represent the USA in peace negotiations with Iran. Sometimes it all hits you afresh.
