The year is 1969. Man lands on the moon. Back on Earth, the Concorde flies its first test for a commercial supersonic airline.
The year is 2026. Man circles the moon and will, a few years later, land. Back on Earth, there is a concept of a plan for commercial supersonic flights.
We got the Littlewoods catalogue when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time with it. After about a month I called up and asked for the newest catalogue. I was distraught when it arrived and the same as the last one. As a 13yo boy I didn't really understand seasons.
Yeah exactly like, you really do need to be a very particular sort to both *be living in LA* and *be doing the kind of networking needed to get a TV writer gig* and that sort of person kind of fucking sucks!
Sadly, most writers are writers. Tragic circumstance. Really biases art.
One of the things that has always bothered me about TV. Everything is fundamentally filtered through how a TV writer sees the world. It's a very...*particular* sort of worldview — only a very particular sort of person lives in LA and gets work as a TV writer — and once you see it you can't unsee it.
Stanisław Lem wrote a short story about an AI which goes silent. To find out why they visit another AI who tells them that intelligence is stratified not linear.
If humans are level A then the AI they are talking to is B. The one which went silent had evolved to C and couldn't talk to us anymore
i once missed my stop on a train and it still makes me wake up in a cold sweat
My god, when even IDS can put a cogent critique of you together, how badly are you doing?
jack absolutely demolished a poor innocent crab for his birthday at the urchin (the seafood pub in hove that is always booked up because jay rayner recommended it)
Best enjoyed with a MASSIVE BOX OF CHOCOLATES
Barbara is coming … and here’s the cover. Out September, available to preorder now. www.amazon.co.uk/Barbara-Cart...
C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Advent on Channel Twelve” (1958) come to mind! Would also be amazing seeing art for Kornbluth's final short fiction before his untimely death. sciencefictionruminations.com/2022/09/26/f...
Can confirm. Back in my days working for a certain independent bookshop we’d be sent to the big chains undercover to buy copies of (say) the new Happy Potter at their insane mark down prices, and pay for them with book tokens. The only way to make selling them profitable for us.
This cat does look like the building they're walking away from is about to erupt in a massive explosion... and they won't turn a single hair as it happens. Just keep walking.
Dodds and Justin Madders. Collapsed: The fallout from the whole saga also destroyed the lobbying firm Mandelson set up 16 years ago with Ben Wegg Prosser. Global Counsel, whose clients included Palantir and TikTok, tried to cauterise the wound by cutting ties with its founder in February, but it was too late. The firm, which employed more than 100 staffers, entered administration that month.
Briefly thought that this, in today’s Observer, was a poem by Dodds and Justin Madders
"AI models, AI models, were given by the mighty hand of God"
WIFE: *cutting sandwich* do you want half of my sandwich
ME: sure
WIFE: which half
ME: no the sand half
Loved it. Watched it on the black and white portable in the kitchen 👍
#OnThisDay 1980 : The first edition of the US Sitcom Taxi was broadcast in the UK on BBC1. It would later appear on various ITV regions throughout the 80s.
#80s
This is a genuine 1975 recruitment ad for South Wales miners. I guarantee that you will *not* expect the direction it takes (unless @cooraysmith.bsky.social has got it to you first).
Other numbers:
All the Stars were Silver: a touching love duet.
Terribly Nice: an exposition patter song for the Doctor and the Keeper.
Kassia is as Good a Name: the Devil’s bargain is exposed.
The Power of the Source: a rock ballad for the heroes to save the day.
A New Body At Last (spoilers)
Picture it: the other Consuls taking the piss out of Kassia in Act I “Don’t mock Melkur/No Melkur mockers you!/Don’t mock Melkur/That’s not the thing to do!”
Then Act II has *The Dark Reprise*
At the turn of the century, I used to like wandering into random places.
I got into Broadcasting House, which at the time had big, heavy, doors.
I opened the door with all my might and let it fall, accidentally smacking the guy behind me.
As I fled, I turned and saw who it was.
Henry Kissinger.
Is there one of Lady Adrasta from The Creature from the Pit? Just asking, no reason.
Disney promising to stream this series that it paid for with all the enthusiasm of me swearing I'm going to finish the leftovers that have been in the fridge since last week
Doctor Who always goes off the rails when it doesn't have a precocious ten year old who asks their parents too many questions about everything as its core audience IMV.
'So for the finale, were you thinking the Daleks or the Cybermen? Oh, you want to do a....a dog of death who shares a name, but not in any way a backstory, with a one-off story from 1975. Ok, ok.'
'So the second episode - it's about the Beatles? Do you have the rights to use any of their music in the show? Oh, right, no, okay. But do any of the actors in it look or sound like the Beatles? Oh, also no. Ok. Cool, cool.'
The Disney Doctor Who deal continues to be so funny to me. Imagine being Disney and having negotiated an agreement with one of the enduring classics of sci-fi and kids entertainment and your reward being 'a lore-dense introduction and fish erotica'.
(En español abajo) Vertical Milky Way over the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Image obtained on 30th June 2016 at 22:04 AEST (14:04 UTC) using a CANON 5D Mark III with a 14mm f2.8 wide lens. Single 30 seconds exposure at 3200 ISO. Besides the conversion from RAW to JPEG, no further image process was applied. Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO/MQU) La Vía Láctea vertical sobre el Telescopio Anglo-Australiano. Imagen obtenida el 30 de junio de 2016 a las 22:04 AEST (14:04 UTC) con una cámara CANON 5D Mark III y un objetivo de 14mm a f/2.8. 30 segundos de exposición a 3200ISO. No tiene ningún procesado, salvo la conversión de RAW a JPEG dada por el programa de CANON. Crédito: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO/MQU)
Vertical Milky Way over the AAT / Vía Láctea vertical sobre el AAT - From Ángel López-Sánchez - https://flic.kr/p/JeKHHQ