Kate Orman

Brian Cox: *lyrically describes the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* devouring an asteroid*

Jon (Sag A* voice) SEND MORE ASTEROIDS

I could not stop reading that

The small pleasure of discovering you never actually pressed send on that boring remark

I am old and wise and tired enough now to respond to stupid Reddit comments (including the "I didn't read the other responses first" ones) with a dignified silence my younger and incorrectly medicated self could never have achieved.

Hooray!

I'm studying in hopes of becoming a librarian. When I saw mentions of AI in the coursework, I was wary. But librarians haven't been taken in. Their task is to warn people about the limitations and hazards of AI, and to show them there are better alternatives.

Merci!

We also played the tape of Jesus Christ Superstar upsidedown and back to front and Dad said we'd broken the player. We hadn't, but he quite reasonably didn't want us destroying it with further experiments.

Sudden remembered the fun my small brothers and I had with my parents' reel-to-reel tapedeck, imitating the testy Peter Tuddenham announcement from The Ark in Space by experimenting with speeding up our voices. "This is a sterile area! Keep out!"

Just have to busk it, then. 😂

*smarty

... I'd quite like to write a book without a read-alike. (I'm easily bored, and I'm a smaty-boots to, er, boot.)

I wonder if I have in it me. I don't think my hypothetical agent or publisher would be pleased...

Today I learned the term "read-alike", which seems similar to how you're supposed to pitch your book as "fans of Greg Egan's "Diaspora" will love this!" In the flood of words, it's not a bad way to connect reads with readers. But...

Extraordinary language! I spend a lot of time on cryptic crosswords, and my brain keeps looking for anagrams or other hidden meanings.

At the risk of unserious responses, why no "d"?

Moved around some words in the first line of the story I'm working on and couldn't quite figure out why it sounded better that way. Realised the rhythm now loosely followed a couple of lines from "Blinded by the Light".

I'm keen to have a look at the original now!

Oh Jonny, she cried / Oh Jonny, I tried

Made it through half an hour before I gave up and watched Cat People (1982) which I also DNF

I think I'm allergic to Irwin Allen

I think the devil will not have me damn’d, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire

In a Larry Niven alt universe, werewolves with a sensitive sense of smell put a quick and violent end to the internal combustion engine.

I've just been watching footage of the black rain falling on Tehran, fallout from strikes on oil facilities.

We've been marinating in filth for over a century.

for me “doom scrolling” is actually just the pathological hunt for the first piece of news that indicates this whole unbearable moment is about to unravel

Soviet realist painting of a woman operating a port crane. Our perspective is from behind her so we see the lofty view of the port out the window of the crane’s cab

“From the height of the port crane” Rudolf Baranov, 1974

Is this the sequel to Grabber

I wondered about it for years, and then one day 👀

Maybe that's what happened with Mr Smith - but why on Earth did he move your tee??

I travel with a door stop.

A couple of years ago I was booked into someone else's room. Walked in on them and scared the heck out of them! Apparently there was a timing issue with their booking system which left a gap between assigning a room and flagging it as unavailable.

What's awful is that this outbreak will warn the next generation, who'll get their jabs; but then everything will seem safe and fine, so the next generation *won't*, and round and round we go.

Well, the Thing, obviously.

Your mention of LLM foibles made me think of those stage magicians who could amazingly make psychics' powers disappear.