Alex Epstein

Least classy Oscar speech ever, too.

But most of all David Alderton. We wouldn't have got the Bouzou Dog (may his memory be for a blessing) without The Right Dog For You, or Coco, our poodle.

and John McWhorter (Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue)

...and I haven't read ten of Farley Mowat's books, but Westviking, Never Cry Wolf and The Farfarers were amazing.

But some of my favorite authors haven't written ten books.

Charles Mann (1491 & 1493)
William Cronon (Changes in the Land)
James Scott (Against the Grain)
Ian Morris (Why the West Rules - For Now)
TH White (The Once and Future King)
Ernle Bradford (Ulysses Found)

OK, 10 authors I've read 10+ books from:

Spec Fiction:

Isaac Asimov
John Brunner
Larry Niven
Charles Stross
Ben Aaronovitch
Tim Powers
Leslie McFarlane (writing The Hardy Boys as Franklin Dixon) - musta read 50 of these
Raymond Chandler

Non-Fiction
Michael Lewis
John McPhee

DHS reverses course on suspending TSA PreCheck after outcry The reversal came after discussions with the White House and TSA, an official said. DHS will still suspend the Global Entry program as the partial shutdown continues.

You can expect the government to keep working at all costs any services that Congresspeople use.

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

"Stick close to your books
and never go to sea
and you may be the leader
of the Queen's Na-vy!"

seems particularly relevant to recent video game news.

Hey @adobe.com, how about a UI font size option in Premiere? For those of us without absolutely perfect eyesight? Menu text is really very, very small.

(Fun fact: there was a way to do it through the debug menu, but they removed it. Discouraging.)

Nonplussed. It's when you don't know how you feel. Right? Right? Like when you're bemused.

Oh and, in Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock was clearly set up for a reveal that she's Stallone's daughter. I can't help it, a story has a certain shape that it wants.

I feel positive that the original draft of What Lies Beneath revealed that the husband murdered his first wife, but then they got Harrison Ford.

I kinda wanna know if in the original script for Bound, Jennifer Tilly betrays Gina Gershon, as she had planned all along. But then someone thought that was too dark.

If your stories are about true things, they will always be timely. Unfortunately.

YouTube video by Indie Asylum Quebec Games Celebration Showcase 2026

Finally it can be known: Lisa and I wrote two of the games in this showcase, Rainbow Billy 2 and The Caribou Trail. (Lisa did the heavy lifting on Rainbow Billy.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrrr...

No, don't do it. That way lies madness!

Medieval painting o three people talking. Caption reads "An enemy will agree but a friend will argue -- Russian proverb".

An argument is the shortest path to the truth.

So The Sticky is pretty fun. Fargo with a Québois accent.

Watched Downfall last night, a movie about a group of people who maintain their slavish adoration of an obviously delusional maniac long past the point where anyone with any sense of self-preservation would run for the hills.

Timely.

The peculiar thing about film school is it teaches you to direct, which is not what you're gonna do coming out of film school, normally.

(I'm on the board. I told them I can't call up friends and ask for money, but I can help you communicate...)

Using that ole UCLA film degree to cut a small ad for Alink, a charity creating homes for neurodivergent folks to live on their own.

Back in the day, cutting literally meant slicing the 16mm film. You got rid of blips on the sound reel by rubbing off the oxide with a Q-tip and acetone.

Ideally that's what management is, or part of it.

imagine if you were a vampire that lived for 100s of years but you just had a regular guy's memory. Like a normal person. "What was Venice like in the 14th century" Ahhh, I don't...I don't fucking remember. There was a guy, Vincenzo? Maybe that was the 15th century. Wait, did I live in Venice?

Fun fact: operas played with the lights up, and people talking, till Wagner got the lights turned off so the audience would shut up.

Same question really: was Mozart composing with a talky distracted audience in mind? Or was he composing for the quiet respectful audiences of the future?

I've heard that moviegoers used to come in whenever and watch till the end, then stay till the point at which they came in. Hitchcock got theatres to stop that so Vertigo would work.

So Q: was storytelling different in some way that we don't notice, since we now watch movies start to finish?

Happy Fat Tuesday!

It's a DECK BUILDER? why didn't anyone tell me?

(I had already downloaded the demo.)

All Will Rise: a narrative courtroom deck-builder A game about taking a billionaire to court for the murder of a river.

14 years ago we accidentally hired a genius to write the script for 80 Days. Now she’s narrative director on a deck-builder about billionaire busting.

Check out All Will Rise:

I think Zohran may be the first mayor since Ed Koch to have fun mayoring.

Apple: Hey, remember all those movies and tv shows you paid money for? You can't watch them on an Android phone. The Apple TV app for Android does not have a "library" tab. Nyah, nyah.