So, Cory Doctorow tells us that Bruce Sterling has a sideline as Bruno Argento, producing work in Italian set in and around his adopted city, Turin: I am no expert on fantascienza, so I don’t know if these are representative of the field, but I am here to tell you that they are completely different… Continue reading What’s Italian for ‘Chairman Bruce’?
Month: April 2021
Punchline
From Dirty Feed, a magnificent, thoroughly documented deep dive into the history of one of the greatest punchlines in the history of British television: Sad to contemplate that none of the three actors involved is still with us, but what a memorial to their work together on a programme that shaped a generation’s view of… Continue reading Punchline
For All Mankind season 3
So, For All Mankind dropped the season 2 finale and gave us another end-of-season peek at what’s to come in the next season: someone’s going to Mars. Despite being convinced that that’s a Soviet boot treading the Martian surface a decade on from the season 2 finale I think that’s wildly premature. Given how season… Continue reading For All Mankind season 3
Worth<1000?
Dan Hon reminds his readers of Layer Tennis: Ben Hammersley [tweet] and Anil Dash [tweet] both chimed in later to remind me about Layer Tennis, which used to be both a website (perhaps initially community run, and then unsurprisingly and smartly sponsored by Adobe) and then a live event (Ben’s got a photo from 2009).… Continue reading Worth<1000?
Apple TV+ quality
If it turns out that Apple TV+ has the highest-quality content out of all streaming services… A new study reveals that Apple TV+ has the highest-quality content when compared to Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Disney+, and Hulu. […] In terms of their libraries of content, Apple TV+ has the highest percentage of “good” and… Continue reading Apple TV+ quality
Transpacific
A tale of a chain of miracles and the sea goddess of Okuki in the wake of Japan’s 2011 triple disaster: When a pair of Oregonians stumbled upon what looked like debris on a beach, it precipitated a chain of events that culminated in an emotional reunion some 7,000 kilometers away. Fascinating that the specific… Continue reading Transpacific
Comics are weird
A couple of minutes into his video speculating1 about a new-to-the-MCU appearance by a guest character in this week’s episode of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, , which storyline the Power Broker first showed up in Jack Kirby’s comic adaptation/expansion of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mind BLOWN! Comics are, as MovieBob says, Weird… I’m… Continue reading Comics are weird
Varley’s Worlds
Cory Doctorow brings sad news that John Varley, a writer whose work from the 1970s onwards gave me faith that the world of speculative fiction was not doomed to be swallowed by interminable multi-volume epic sagas about future galactic empires and their fall, has been having health problems. John Varley, a beloved, versatile, funny, and… Continue reading Varley’s Worlds
Time travel
I really wish I’d read Craig Mod’s piece on The Healing Power of JavaScript earlier: [As we join the story, Mod has decided to use some of the time afforded him by the pandemic to rebuild his personal web site…] In that spirit, as I moved my homepage I also rebuilt it as a so-called… Continue reading Time travel
Radio Silence
Radio Silence, a short but very creepy story… 36,400,000. That is the expected number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, according to Drake’s famous equation. For the last 78 years, we had been broadcasting everything about us – our radio, our television, our history, our greatest discoveries – to the rest of the galaxy. We… Continue reading Radio Silence