Tealin

I like your thoughts! There's just an even chance that I wouldn't have any awareness of the piece of culture you're writing about ...

Casting call! Looking for a woman voice actor, 50+ who is versatile and a vocal chameleon / can play many different bit parts in an audio comedy.

We’re recording in London on 13th & 14th April. This is a paid opportunity. Actor does not need to be autistic!

1/

Well, that's one way to accelerate the switch to renewables.

1967 - Dystopian Sci-fi novel, Don’t Create The Torment Nexus published

1974 - Cult classic BBC mini series

1997 - BBC remake

2002 - Hollywood movie, upbeat ending added

2019 - Nexcon - A Torment Company IPO’s, $324 Billion market cap

2026 - Polymarket bets on who will be tormented next

This is why the American right keep blathering on about Hollywood Liberal Brainwashing. Don't look behind the curtain!

This is the point at which the destructive brain virus got in. Sometime around the development of file sharing and piracy as a “political act”. It will eventually ruin everything. Shop well and resist.

Not only awful things have a price ticket. Lovely things do as well. Pay the nice people.

[Scene is THE OSCARS. On stage a PRESENTER CELEBRITY is about to announce Best Director.] PRESENTER: And the winner is Mr Director, for… Let's Just Bung It On Streaming. [Huge applause. On the screen behind him, a movie poster comes up. It is a Cinema Paradiso-style poster capturing the romance of cinema - a young boy beneath a movie projector beam, his rapt face illuminated by the image onscreen, while a design of movie film loops around behind him. The title is LET'S JUST BUNG IT ON STREAMING.]. [A typical grey-haired, bearded DIRECTOR comes on stage to accept the award. The rapturous applause stops as he goes to speak, pinching his fingers together meaningfully as he goes to speak]. DIRECTOR: Thank you. Thank you. Y'know... When we were making this picture I said to the studio, "I'm not making a movie here. I'm writing a love letter... ...to bunging it on streaming." [HUGE BURST OF APPLAUSE] DIRECTOR: I want people to experience this like real cinema. A communal thing... Where you pause it every time someone needs a wee Or mum wants to look up "what's that man been in". I want this movie to just turn up one day on your TV And you don't even know whether you're watching tellu or a film for the first 30 minutes. I want to make literally one promotional poster... And put it on one bus stop... Behind the Screwfix in Bedford. [HUGE APPLAUSE] [Ends]

Sorry I'm not more open-minded about LLMs, it's just some fucking maniacs shoveled out a bunch of useless bloatware featuring that technology, did not give me any chance to opt out, reorganized the entire economy around it, zeroed out gains made by green energy, and made it impossible to buy RAM

Who bombed a girls' school in Iran? A visual investigation | CBC News CBC's visual investigations team analyzes satellite images and video of the bombing of an elementary school that Iranian state TV says has killed at least 165 people.

A fact-checking org run by Iranian expats in Toronto has investigated the school strike:
www.cbc.ca/news/world/i...

Anyone with a published book is getting inundated with this stuff these days. A lot of it comes from burner Gmail accounts. Forward the email straight to abuse@gmail.com and then delete it. Wasting your time otherwise.

It's so subtle :D

Alt text: it's a screen shot of a post by @bethanyblack.bsky.social, who unfortunately, though no doubt wisely, has quote-sharing turned off.

I remember thirty years ago when the feminist position was de-segregation in everything! The idea that the shape of your genitals shouldn't determine what you can and can't do seems to have been a historical blip, which makes no sense to me at all.

I haven't had that problem yet! At least I don't think so ... Usually it's pretty clear that the writer hasn't actually read my book, or even knows what it's about.

There's also impersonation scams ('Hi I'm a big-name author and I just want to know, how are you so fabulous?') and I've recently got one promising to promote on BookTok. Look at the from: address and use your judgment. (And if you want to promote something on BookTok, just do it.)

Anyone with a published book is getting inundated with this stuff these days. A lot of it comes from burner Gmail accounts. Forward the email straight to abuse@gmail.com and then delete it. Wasting your time otherwise.

Almost every other Windows OS update is rubbish. Hoping I get to hold onto 11 long enough that they see the error of their ways and 'fix it' for 13 or whatever they decide to call it.

'It takes more then a piece of paper to make someone British' well yes it does. It takes years and years, lengthty piss taking application forms, a test, qualifications, employment and £££££££. What did Goodwin do other than be born here?

I'm beginning to wonder if they're getting a kickback from Big Smart Speaker ...

An expat in Dubai has a startling revelation: the Stephen Collins cartoon Reality check …

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

TRUMP: in the UK you have to marry windmills now. it's illegal not to. I asked my friend Nigel about the sexy windmills and he said "sorry Mr President my name isn't Nigel now, it's Mrs Windmill." Why? A certain Prime Minister called Sharia Law. Very bad.

BBC NEWS: Trump urges UK war participation

Update: February | Worst Journey Graphic Novel Get more from Worst Journey Graphic Novel on Patreon

My always-free, always-public Update is up on Patreon! What was I up to in February? Find out about German forests, Danish education, and the British property market! www.patreon.com/posts/update... If you want these updates straight in your email when posted, you can sign up – also free!

Up in the moneysphere, things look calm, profitable, stately and stable. Down below, where we live, it’s a scrabbling mess. Nothing actually working. But always changing. Not for the better, just for the sake of it.

It’s like being colonised by an alien species who breathe our discomfort.

b&w line art of a girl riding a horse through a stand of treeeeees

The short answer is, though, that if you want to read Chapter Six as I finish the pages, you can do that over on the ol' Patreon…

📖 www.patreon.com/tonycliff 📖

As always, thank you to all the lovely patrons who make this giant project possible.

Practical Defence Against Piracy Production Diary Roundup, March 2026 Edition — Tony Cliff Wondering what’s been happening with the fourth DELILAH DIRK book? Follow the ups and downs of its progress over the last year or so by diving into the Production Diary!

"Hey TC, where's that comic book you've been working on?"

ALL THE ANSWERS AWAIT YOU
within this whopping great update to the Production Diary, stuffed with links to all of the great posts from the last year.

👉 www.tonycliff.ca/blog/product...

#DD4 #PDAP

This public consultation which they evidently had no interest in taking onboard ... how much did it cost?

This - after a public consultation that came down c95% against corporate copyright theft - is a hearty move towards this government’s spineless purchased representatives needing to be hoofed in the crotch by us all, in a big queue until they get the message.

Oh, I've been keeping up with the *news*, just catching up with the quiz. It feels like I've been gone three months, so hearing it all over the course of four 28-min episodes brings home how crazy it's been.

Just caught up with four weeks of the News Quiz in one go. Whoof. It's been a month, eh?

This reminds me of that Frankie Boyle joke about how Americans not only come to your country and kill your people, they also come back twenty years later to make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers sad.