Rob Hague

Alas, if there's one thing guaranteed to drive my children into the arms of the AI slop machines, it's my singing.

Serenity: dizzying video-within-a-dream-within-a-recording quickly followed by a long single shot introducing all of the main characters and the ship, setting the stage without feeling clunky or expositional.

Watchmen: so many details and Easter eggs set to Times They Are A-Changin'.

Great reviews — I'll give the Clegg one a miss (it just sounds depressing), but have ordered the Tim Berners-Lee.

I've been programming Python for 25 years and I didn't know you could pass a tuple of strings to .startswith. (When was it added? Maybe I didn't know BECAUSE I've been programming Python for 25 years...)

USBORNE INTRODUCTION TO MACHINE CODE FOR BEGINNERS

I loved all of the Usborne picture fact books (wildlife, paranormal, everything), but this one sticks in the mind due to the combination of kiddie presentation with surprisingly hardcore subject matter:

The wonderful Stanislaw Petrov Day xkcd cartoon [Megan is looking at her phone while Cueball stands in front of her.] Megan: Hey, Wednesday was Stanislav Petrov Day. We missed it. Cueball: Oh, shoot! Cueball: I got a calendar alert for it, but I assumed it was a false alarm. Alt Text from the incomparable: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2052:_Stanislav_Petrov_Day

Just checked, and yes:
26th September is indeed Stanislav Peteov Day!

Thank you, Stanislav…you’d probably have views on current use of automated systems

🖤

xkcd.com/2052/

My hands down favourite is Lords And Ladies, which *could* work as a standalone, but you're probably better off starting with Wyrd Sisters to get in to the witches on the ground floor.

"I don't care what anyone says, I like that movie."

Humble Book Bundle: Martha Wells' Murderbot and More by TOR Fall in love with Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series—the engine behind the hit AppleTV adaptation—and help support World Central Kitchen.

Humblebundle to support World Central Kitchen, and get a bunch of my books from @tordotcom.bsky.social including Murderbot and Witch King! #booksky

www.humblebundle.com/books/martha...

"Do you like horses?"
A) No
B) YES!
C) How many legs does it have?

Everyone has their own favourites, and Lords and Ladies is definitely atypical, even compared to the rest of the Witches books. When it comes down to it, hard to go wrong with any of his.

+1 — Our eldest (now 12) recently started these and loved them. She's now picked up Wyrd Sisters, which is all part of my master plan to get her to the best Pratchett book, Lords and Ladies.

Mrs Mangel

@patrick.risky.biz Google-Mandiant portmanteau? "Mangle"

The mistake here is applying a theory of mind to Wall Street Journal headline writers

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy - Reactor Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in the throes of a hostile takeover… Novelette | 7,540 words They were still three hours out when Perihelion...

The new Murderbot short story is up at Reactor Magazine: reactormag.com/rapport-mart... Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.

Correction: it was actually Grok 3 that had spent the day endorsing Hitler. I'm sure Grok 4 is fine.

"And more" is doing a lot of work in this sentence.

The 4th of July has put a big dent in my podcast queue. Any suggestions for things to bridge the gap?

🎶 Ther ys a place biyonde the wyrmhole
A place onlye to loveres knowne -
The brave, the hopeful, the lost, the worthye,
Peraventure me and thee!
Will not thou wende wyth these fooles and dreameres
To the planete we calle home?
We hope we wil greete thee soone
On Sanctuarye Moone 🎶

"Chapter 1: Introduction to Class Hierarchies"

Perhaps one factor is *because* it was less of an everyday occurrence and thus less familiar, in the same way a modern book might go into the details of how to work a rotary dial phone.

Happy 40th birthday, ARM1.

The chances are you're reading this on an ARM-powered device. I'm writing it on one.

ARM is a massive UK success story – and likely wouldn't exist if not for the BBC Computer Literacy project. clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/history

Wait... So trump sunk the stick market, now the pope dies just after meeting JD Vance... American politics is just a big budget remake of Liz Truss. (Which, to be fair, like most UK series didn't run for long)

Watch Murderbot - Apple TV+ In a high-tech future, a rogue security robot (Alexander Skarsgård) secretly gains free will. To stay hidden, it reluctantly joins a new mission prote…

If you're going to watch Murderbot on Apple TV, consider adding it to your watchlist. It's kind of like pre-ordering a book, it tells the streaming service that you're there for our show.

Link for US viewers: tv.apple.com/us/show/murd... (You can also search for it on the app.)

A light blue diagram depicting the sea, with the water's surface at the top, and just below it is an outline of the Mary Rose, with the depth (12m, 40ft or 6.7 fathoms). There is a line showing the seabed, which takes a rapid dive into the vertical...

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked,

"If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?"

Allow our scaled diagram to explain...

I heard a Polyphemus joke, but I didn't see the point.

This is high art

Picture of Morrison's "Mrs Unis Haggis Pakora with a spicy chilli dip"

I defy anyone to look at this and still say integration isn't working in the UK.

Everyone knows that the big rock in the desert is the one from the Star Trek episode they're watching a few scenes earlier, but back in the day I never noticed that Bill & Ted University is Star Fleet Academy. (And also Planet of the Nymphomaniacs from TNG Season 1.)

Wanted something non-taxing to watch for half an hour before bed, and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey popped up on Netflix.