Shelley Hepworth

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.

Pauline Hanson’s daughter employed in taxpayer-funded job with NSW One Nation senator Exclusive: Tasmanian Lee Hanson employed as senior adviser to Sean Bell in role worth as much as $180,000

Pauline Hanson’s daughter employed in taxpayer-funded job with NSW One Nation senator

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases

'Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This App Warns You if Someone Is Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to ...

NEW: A hobbyist has created Nearby Glasses, an app that warns you if someone close by is wearing smart glasses. 404 Media spoke to the creator who said he was inspired by our coverage that uncovers how men are wearing Meta's Ray-Bans to covertly film massage parlor workers.

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases

AI keeps recommending nuclear strikes when put into wargame tests, a new study finds... which is... alarming. By me for @newscientist.com
www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

is life just a series of days where you're tired in the afternoon and wide awake at night, running behind on weekly deadlines, and seeing pants get slim and big and then slim again over the years until you die?

In which @readfearn.bsky.social subjects himself to extreme heatwave conditions, the likes of which will be far more common in our future

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

say the line bart meme, Angus Taylor edition. "Fantastic. Great move. Well done, Angus"

Thanks for flagging 🙏

Guardian Australia reporter Jordyn Beazley filmed this video not long ago of police moving towards protesters down Elizabeth Street in the Sydney CBD following the rally at Town Hall.

Shared with us from Sydney happening now. He had his hands up.

About thousand people are marching from the protest at Town Hall down George Street in the Sydney CBD with no police escort through traffic, which is not blocked off | 🎥 Blake Sharp-Wiggins

What seems to be happening here in the US in response to the ICE violence a switch from 'will the police protect' to 'we will do without police'.

He Was Laid Off at The Washington Post After Working There 60 Years

AI will never replace the institutional knowledge and memories of an absolute legend who was *listening to the police scanner the night of the Watergate break-in.*

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/b...

I realized that a lot of the guys who have been found in the Epstein files are probably really struggling because the guy they would have gone to for advice about being discovered in the Epstein files was JEFFREY EPSTEIN

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

Feds Identify “Leader of Antifa” The list they're creating says so, anyway

🚨 Documents leaked to me reveal a federal watchlist of American protesters suspected of being Antifa - including its supposed leader.

One Department of Homeland Security document says a 29-year-old resident of Portland "is the leader of Antifa":
www.kenklippenstein.com/p/feds-ident...

Co-writer of Oscar-nominated film It Was Just an Accident arrested in Iran Mehdi Mahmoudian detained after signing statement condemning Iran’s supreme leader for recent bloodshed A co-writer of Oscar-nominated film It Was Just an Accident has been arrested in Teheran just weeks before the Academy Awards, after signing a statement that condemned Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, for the recent bloodshed in the country. Human rights campaigner Mehdi Mahmoudian was detained on Saturday after putting his signature to a statement that said “the primary responsibility for these atrocities lies with Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, and the repressive structure of the regime”. Continue reading...

Co-writer of Oscar-nominated film It Was Just an Accident arrested in Iran

Teenager makes 'superhuman' swim to save family swept out to sea A 13-year-old boy has been hailed a hero after swimming four hours through rough seas to get help for his mother and two siblings, who were swept out to sea on an inflatable paddleboard in WA's South ...

Incredible story

How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

“We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.”

Props to Anthropic for studying the effects of their creation and reporting results that are not probably what they wished for
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week | Louise Adler Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation

'The arts have allegedly become “unsafe” and artists are a danger to the community’s psycho-social wellbeing. But, let’s be quite clear, the routine invocation of “safety” is code for “I don’t want to hear your opinion”.'
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

A flow chart shows 17.4 million leave voters in 2016, vs 16.1m remain. In 2025, 5 million of those people have died, and 3 million new voters have come of age. The result (plus some people changing their mind) is 19.8 million voters now back rejoin, versus just 11.7 million wanting to stay out.

Absolutely amazing chart from @peterkellner.bsky.social's piece in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social today:
www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...

Everyone’s excited about Google's AI‑powered coding – until your hard drive disappears A dev lots everything after trusting Google’s AI agent to “clear the cache”

Google’s Antigravity AI deleted a developer’s drive and then apologized www.techradar.com/ai-platforms...

Today’s xkcd made me cry.

In a good way.

xkcd.com/3172/

Incredible work by the whole team – particularly Ben Smee, @lisagrace.bsky.social, @milespherbert.bsky.social, @marni.bsky.social, Hannah Parkes, Molly Glassey and Yuji Shimada

Meet the whistleblowers who exposed Queensland’s domestic violence failures: ‘I was warned they would pulverise me’ Exclusive: The women who made Guardian Australia’s two-year investigation possible on why they decided to break ranks and speak out

Two whistleblowers from within the Queensland police and the Queensland coroners court have spoken to Guardian Australia in the hope their revelations will change the way domestic violence cases and deaths are handled.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Broken Trust: how police failed Hannah Clarke and her children - podcast In the first episode of this special Full Story investigation, Broken Trust looks at serious police failings, in the lead-up to the murders, that were overlooked by the coronial inquest and not invest...

It also examines how police failed them again after they died by not properly investigating those failures.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Hannah Clarke murders: Queensland police made potentially critical mistakes, new evidence reveals Exclusive: Detectives investigated ‘veracity and motive’ of Brisbane woman’s allegations of domestic violence and coercive control – even after the horrifying attack that killed her and her children

Broken Trust looks into serious police failings in the lead-up to the murders of Brisbane woman Hannah Clarke and her three children, Hervey Bay woman Gail Karran, and Kamilaroi and Mununjali woman Kardell Lomas.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...