Richie Black

I'm sorry, if you're going to make a big show about how you've got a Department of WAR helmed by a Secretary of WAR and staffed by WARfighters, it's totally inane to then claim that your massive bombing of a foreign country constitutes something other than a war.

had a death in the family and was almost completely off the internet for a few days & my observation is that there is too much happening too fast such that basic facts abt the world are difficult to ascertain unless you are mainlining info all the time & doing that seems to drive people insane

i know that projection and idealisation of celebrity has a lot to do with the mess the world is in right now, but screw it, i'm all in on Harrison Ford worship right now.

She’s Been Anti-Immigrant for Decades. Now Her Popularity Is Soaring.

Pauline Hanson’s ‘surge’ has made the front page of the ‘New York Times’, but even in their reporting, not one word is said about what her non-immigration-related policies might be. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/w...

'Red Dwarf' co-creator Rob Grant dies, aged 70 Rob Grant, one of the creators of the cult sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, has died, his family have announced. He was 70.

joining the collective outburst of "ah, smeg. 😢" www.nme.com/news/tv/red-...

what no, of course i don't mind you posted that dishevelled photo of me on insta and tagged me; cool to be reminded of the inescapable ravages of time on a Thursday morning

Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking

this superb article reads like tragi-farce, a Doctor Strangelove reboot where the "war room" is now some silicon valley corporate frat house & its assembled tech-bros are insisting that the smartest way forward is to be aggressively thoughtless, all the way to the apocalypse

Imagine thinking it's a good time to shit on Lakemba while all of Sydney plans to hit up the amazing food and atmosphere at Ramadan Nights

It's wild to me the media keeps printing articles about how Hanson has her finger on the pulse

i love me a character actor who commits to a kinda thankless role to serve the story & Robert Duvall in M*A*S*H is one of the greatest examples of that: the way he plays Frank Burns dead straight, without winking at us or sending him up, gives the satire real edge. RIP to a great one
#RobertDuvall

watched After Hours (1985) last night, a film I've (until now) had a blind-spot about, but then it is a weird beast: a screwball comedy, with the heft of Scorsese's trademark dynamism - smart, urban, mean, anxious - and a glorious bit from Catherine O'Hara, to boot.
#MartinScorsese
#CultFilm

50 years in, Cheap Trick might not be friends, but musical glue binds them Cheap Trick's Robin Zander on Anglophilia, AC/DC, and the song no one else wanted on the album

Robin Zander recently claimed that the fact the band were "never friends" has been key to keeping Cheap Trick together, at least as far as the three remaining original members. Altho, as is often the case with those guys, it's likely he wasn't being entirely serious..

i quite like Las Palabras too, but yeh a lot of the album sounds like Queen is breaking up. I think it says quite a lot about them that ofc they didn't - uh, their "staying power", if you will ...

stayed in with my partner over the weekend and we watched that Together horror film, and afterwards while we did the washing up (me washing, she drying, as usual), we agreed it was some kind of metaphor

shout out to the great John Abineri who commits with a totally straight (and green) face to giant-squid zealot Ranquin in "Power of Kroll" and is therefore very funny
#DoctorWho

i love character actors who pop up in a show and just nail it; so here's 5 guest performances from classic Who that rock deceptively tough gigs:

-Mark Jones - Seeds (of Doom)
-Nicholas Parsons - Fenric
-Terry Scully - Seeds (of Death)
-Simon Rouse - Kinda
-Cynthia Grenville - Morbius
#DoctorWho

go off jack white

🚨🚨Poland to examine “increasingly likely possibility that pedophilia scandal was co-organized by intelligence services” in Moscow.

Read the full story below. 🖇️
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...

YouTube video by LBC 'It is jaw-dropping': Ian Hislop on Mandelson and Epstein

amazing how it turns out real-life villains operate on a level which is pantomimic, almost comically stupid: "stranger" than fiction, but only in respect to the imperatives (incl. blithe entitlement) at play being dumber & more banal
#writingcommunity
#Epstein
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CyD...

finished a reread of this one last night, still a fave, still bites esp with its themes of mob cruelty & social isolation, the way they create unreliable narrators; amazing how the significance of great writing echoes down the decades
#writingcommunity
#ClassicLit
#GothicFiction
#LiteraryFiction

Jean-Paul Sartre: “If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company ... or at a screening of Melania."

Yes for the Seeds of Death love. Superb direction, pacy story, the three leads are adorable (as usual), and the soundtrack is fab.

needed an excuse to procrastinate and in the nick of time my computer asked me if I wanted to install updates, how sweet
#writing
#writingcommunity

if he really wants that peace prize, he has to reconcile the Beckhams

‘E-bike cowboys’ swarm Sydney northern beaches golf club Mass rideouts of young riders on e-bikes have taken over public roads and golf courses as the government grapples with how to respond.

Now we've banned them from SM, we need to inspire the yoofs into offline pursuits that are more community-friendly like Hungry Hungry Hippos or Jenga www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

JD Vance gaslights more than snicko
#Ashes

Rik Mayall had this kind of glow-up prototyped back in the 90s

ah yes, number 1 in The Goodies Hit Parade ... (and 2,3,4,5...)

critics of Kermit's voice forget that herpetologists say frogs' croaks deepen with age; cut him some slack, the green guy is now 70 years old
#muppets

me going off to work on Monday feeling fresh n' chipper after a nice weekend, then turning into a monster about lunchtime
#DoctorWho
#Inferno
#writingcommunity

paying homage to Lawsie, i've dug up an article where I reviewed his show one morning in 2021. From his latter-day, post-retirement iteration at 2SM, the king of talkback had by then kinda entered his King Lear phase #JohnLaws web.archive.org/web/20210618...