Alom Shaha

I will have to try it.

That looks and sounds delicious

It'd obviously the BFG

A thoughtful response from @dermotcasey.bsky.social to an interview with @utafrith.bsky.social about the expansion of the diagnostic category of "autism"

Now he can afford another vowel for his last name

It was going on one, two in the morning, and we were shooting what I felt was an important scene for me, when he makes an attempt to be quote-unquote straight, in a suit, and at the end of it he gets emotional and locks himself in the other room. And I felt like, I’m not getting what I want—I’m not happy with it. Mike was happy with it. He called me the next day and said, “I know you weren’t happy with the scene last night. Believe me, we wouldn’t have gone home if I had felt we weren’t getting it.” And then he sort of became my psychiatrist and said, “You find it difficult to be happy, don’t you? You find it difficult to enjoy things.” And I said, “Well, sometimes. Last night was about feeling too tired and not feeling I was reaching what I needed to reach for the scene.” He talked to me then about when he was making, I don’t know whether it was Virginia Woolf or The Graduate. He said, “I didn’t enjoy it for a second. I was worried about so many things.” And then he said, “You know, this is never going to happen again quite this way. You should try to allow yourself to enjoy this more. Take a minute a day, and then add a minute the next day, and another minute. Pretty soon, you’ll have hours of happiness.”

The Birdcage opened thirty years ago today, so in its honor, I want to share one of my favorite stories about Mike Nichols that didn't make it into my biography. This is from an interview I did with Nathan Lane.

If you were investing in the future would you like to spend a billion or more dollars a day on a war for oil or would you like to spend that money to rapidly reduce your dependence on oil?

Now we get to see both of those approaches in real time.

Yes, you can chuck in pretty much whatever vegetables you want (I had some leftover green beans) and you can add whatever spices you want really. Pretty good one pot meal. I like some grilled halloumi with it.

Yes, you can chuck in pretty much whatever vegetables you want (I had some leftover green beans) and you can add whatever spices you want really. Pretty good one pot meal. I like some grilled halloumi with it.

Black beans and mixed vegetables - green beans, carrot, sweetcorn, cauliflower florets, mixed with bright orange grains of bulgur wheat

Spicy veggie bulgur: dice 1 onion, 1 red pepper fry in 2 tbsp of olive oil. Stir in 1 tbsp of curry powder when soft and golden, fry 2 mins. Add 2 tbsp tomato purée, 1-2 tsp hot pepper sauce, fry 5 mins. Chuck in tin of black beans, handful of mix veg, 200g bulgur, 500 ml stock. Simmer 13 mins.

Trying desperately to see ANY bright side -- it's never been a better time to be a decent hetero guy who wants a full partner and knows how to do his own laundry and actively likes women as people.

Hoping for a ‘perfect’ baby? Genetic testing startups lur... Fertility experts say strict UK laws are no bar to accessing a booming industry that has led to concerns about eugenics

My babies were completely perfect without any of this nonsense (which most parents would say, I expect)

Reminder that much of this would not be happening if cowardly/greedy states and institutions had frozen or seized the assets of a few key people several years ago.

Pretty sure Trump wearing a baseball cap at a funeral for dead soldiers means he’s got (more of) a problem with his hair and his vanity is such that he’ll happily wear a ridiculously inappropriate baseball cap to cover that up.

the reverse version of those “evolution of man” drawings

Bloody hell. That must have been distressing.

Ah, for you, but I’ll get I could show you how it glorifies war In some ways.

Thanks. Watership Down one of my absolute favourite books. From replies on here though, not sure rabbits would make good pets

Thanks. A pity you can’t “rent” a pet for a while

Boris Johnson says Keir Starmer has made us an irrelevance on the world stage...

Thank you

That’s a great idea

If you’re a (new) writer and haven’t heard or taken the advice that you should read your work aloud to yourself, just go and listen to some well-written audiobooks and compare them to some not-so-well written ones.

Thank you - will let you know once I’ve thought/researched more

Editors will often read an author's work aloud. It's great for revealing awkward dialogue, dodgy grammar, and errors at line breaks. It also brings out the voice and tone more than reading does, allowing you to be your own *audience*.

Thank you - I think that’s the first positive response about them I’ve had.

I’ve got a plan along those lines

Thanks. My wife had a rabbit as a child and loved it

Yeah, I took a long time off of writing and in the interim, went to acting school. Hearing yourself out loud is invaluable, imho. Helps find the lines between heightened dialogue and pretentious gibberish very nicely.

Hope it all gets better soon. Take care