Obsidian and Award News
Hello everyone Long time, no post, but I am very excited to share some very exciting news with you. First of all, huge congratulations to Rick Danforth, whose short story "One Step at a Time" from The Slab Press's solarpunk anthology Vivid Worlds has been shortlisted for…
The page that bears the exquisitely illuminated chi-rho, a monogram used to symbolize the name of Christ.
Mar 6: Feast of Billfrith (Billfrid), 8thC hermit and goldsmith who adorned the binding on the Lindisfarne Gospels, as the inscription in it states, with gold, silver and gems. The book survives, but the precious binding is lost. #medievalsky
I guess we have that to look forward to…
Huh. Imagined you’d all be pottering about in t-shirts there!
“The lives of American heroes may be lost” but not yours eh Bonespurtacus?
Very odd day. Freakishly warm.
The same clump of daffodils as this morning except all the snow has melted and the one in full flower is no longer bowed over onto the grass.
Important announcement: Spring has reloaded.
Look, I got me one of those tropegram* things! You could stick "enemies to deeply uneasy friends" on that too if you wanted, that's got to appeal to some of you
* I don't know what they're called
Now I want to go digging through all the scripts to see who wrote my favourite bits!
That seems fair. It's what - just over 20 years ago now? Maybe the fact we're lukewarm about the prospect is entirely down to the strength (or otherwise) of Whedon's character development. So many snappy one-liners though...
Looking back from current vantage point, I feel like it mined out its particular seam pretty thoroughly first time round.
I'd probably be more enthusiastic about a live action take on something like Outlaw Star.
I guess now we'll see just how much of its soul the Labour party has sold to big tech.
Drafting an email to a solicitor that I might not need to send*. If I phrase it "I feel I have been denied critical need-to-know information" will it be obvious that I'm channelling Burt Gummer from Tremors? And would this necessarily be a bad thing?
*This is weapons-grade optimism doing its thing.
In the FT today: UK to delay difficult decisions on AI copyright rules. It may be behind a paywall, sorry, but confirms the consult results upended their original proposals. @chronicleflask.katday.com of interest - not gone away but means there’s more opp to influence final outcome
A clump of daffodils, stems weighed down by snow, one open flowerhead sunk into snow in the ground.
Closeup of daffodil flower weighed down by soggy, melting snow.
Our first, bravest daffodil is experiencing regret.
View from upstairs, north-facing window over a couple of inches of soggy snow covering a garden with drystone wall boundaries, under a grey sky. A couple of skeletal trees are visible at top left and right of the image and they look, frankly, unimpressed. The image isn’t monochrome, but there is no discernible colour.
View from an east-facing, first-floor window over snow-covered garden, with tin-roofed agricultural shed beyond which is gradually losing the battle against gravity.
View from west-facing window over snow-covered garden. Skeletal oak tree with snow sheeting To branches, beyond beyond small stone barn with snow-covered roof.
Looking out from ground-floor window at snow-covered garden between the budding stems of an old climbing rose.
Wut?
Christianity and I have long since gone our separate ways so I’ve no idea what’s in vogue these days but Hegseth seems to be begging for a proper smiting.
I recall a deep discussion here of the logistical problems inherent in maintaining the beacons in LOTR and this sounds super relevant.
New from 404 Media: Proton Mail, the privacy-focused email service, gave authorities data that let the FBI unmask an anonymous 'Stop Cop City' protester. It was payment data linked to the anonymous email account. From that, FBI ID'd them, then tracked their movements www.404media.co/proton-mail-...
This is heartbreaking but life-affirming all at once.
That's going to put a blip in a lot of stats...
Scratch Moss deserves all the stellar reviews it's going to get. I read it last year and was blown away. It is, as suggested, evidence of a writer hitting their stride and carving out a landscape all of their own.
Buy a copy today. Buy a copy for a friend too.
Last week, official statistics were published which showed a 0.3% fall in in China's CO2 emissions from energy and industry over the last year, which analysts suggest is the first fall predominantly driven by clean energy growth.
eciu.net/media/press...
Remember, no matter what happens here this rock will be fine.
Yeah. Seems to be leading nowhere good.
A masterpiece. Sign me up.
I wonder who got the future with flying cars and jet packs...
Oh, wow - that used to be a must-see for me.
But my needs aren't elaborate, and at present I have no external constraints.
My MacBook nagged me for months and months to upgrade to Big Sur. I finally had to clear out a load of photos to external drives before I could upgrade, then a couple of months later they announced it was obsolete and there'd be no more security updates. They made it an easy decision...
