Friday, we said goodbye to Albert Hodkinson, who flew Halifax bombers over Berlin during WWII, and was the finest neighbor we ever had. Though his wife, Enid, came close.
floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2026/04/blog...
We just had five minutes of sleep, coming down thick as rain.
Cocktail Hour! Tonight, Boulevardiers, served with bagel toast rounds and kidney bean hummus with just a touch of hot sauce.
The web page says it's funded out of the budgets of the 30 agencies involved.
Without fanfare, we now have a National Police Force. Their webpage looks like Duke Nukem's wet dream.
hstf.gov
Cocktail Hour. Tonight, Little Narnias, served with bagel toast and fish roe pate.
Yeah, I lived in the Tidewater for a while, near Lightfoot. Magical place. I used to dig for seashells in the woods.
Once every 30 days, in accordance with Federal law, I post my mandatory cat-of-the-month club joke pic. Here's April's.
And we are all minorities if you dig deep enough.
Astutely spotted, by the way.
It is. Drawn by Robert Walters from a mockup I made and published in Isaac Asimov's.
Tonight is Yuri Night. So Marianne and I drank a toast of vodka to the first human being to leave the planet and all the others who followed, including those who died, and all the peoples of the Soviet Union who sacrificed so much to make it happen.
Weeding through old files, I came upon a clipping that notes, "Idi Amin says he wants to be the next Organization of African Unity leader and, if he's not elected at the July meeting, he will destroy neighboring Tanzania."
Imagine having a leader like that!
Her majesty, Lady Hypatia Hypatia of Alexandria.
Plus a stick with bird and lizard heads I carved for Sean when he was a little boy.
Cocktail Hour. Tonight, Mezcal Margaritas, accompanied by egg salad canapés.
We had friends over for the Artemis II splashdown. Here we are.
Still life with cat.
TIL that Louis DeJoy resigned from the USPS three weeks ago. Five years into his plan for fixing the postal service, his successor announced they've stopped paying into the pension system due to impending bankruptcy.
Did you feel a touch of guilt today, a sense that you weren't doing as much for the common good as you should? There's a reason for that.
floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2026/04/phil...
It turns out that Gregory Manchess designed the Artemis II mission patch. Pretty cool.
Not any papers anybody wanted. Back when, before the Internet, writers saved every scrap of information about the Solar System, or robotics, or whatever, that might prove useful for future fiction. Lots of ripped-out pages from Science News went into recycling.
Not any papers anybody wanted. Back when, before the Internet, writers saved every scrap of information about the Solar System, or robotics, or whatever, that might prove useful for future fiction. Lots of ripped-out pages from Science News went into recycling.
Locus 2026 Auction FRANK HERBERT'S Children of Dune (Putnam, 1976): First Edition, Signed WILLIAM GIBSON'S Count Zero (Easton Press, 2026): Special edition, signed and personalized TO YOU
Our auction has begun! It will run until 8pm on April 8, no fooling!
We have incredible things up for bid, like these signed editions of Children of Dune & Count Zero.
For first dibs on these extremely rare and beautiful titles, visit: https://twp.ai/9PcBJq (link in bio)
Way back when, my essay was what everybody was talking about and deploring. Yesterday, I wallowed in memories of that past.
floggingbabel.blogspot.com/2026/04/a-bo...
The president's Easter morning tweet was astonishing, even for him.
I just spent an hour wallowing in nostalgia. In 1986, I published an essay titled, "A User's Guide to the Postmodern." Today I went through a box of reactions, reviews, rebuttals, and the research that went into it.
Academics SO much want to read through it. But can't.
Blogpost on Monday.
Our resident house finches have offspring!
