@puroandson  Developers: I hate ’em. 🙂

Me too, but *without* the smiley face.  Stop me if I’ve told you this before (I may well have, but it’s way too late to go hunting back for it): we’ve got some slimy creep from Arkansas who moved here to fix up (into “condos”) the handsome old High School buildings that the city was at loss about and wou…[Read more]

@countscarlioni  Thanks, yes, I think so too.  I have a friend in Bristol, a publisher (years ago) of a feminist press in London that put out some things of mine in the UK.  I really need to visit her, before we (the crowd that was so active in these sorts of things in the genre) all croak . . . !

@missy  Oh, I think there’s no problem theorizing.  Sometimes I think that’s all that politics is really for!  Well, that and exhibitionism and about a hundred other things, so . . . What we can’t do, at this point (or maybe ever, with real accuracy) is test a theory against hard data to “prove” it one way or the other, as is so often the case wi…[Read more]

@countscarlioni  Thanks for the link to the interview with Sarah Dollard — liked it very much.  In particular, love the idea of going back in time in her Tardis to see great theater performances, which reminded me of historic ballet performances and other “lost” moments in the ephemeral arts — yes!  Of course!  “Hamilton”, wow, that would be gre…[Read more]

@miapatrick  I should also probably just shut up and be happy with my distinction!

Oh, don’t shut up — but yes, be happy!  Congratulations.

(from a later post, re Brexit and somebody’s boyfriend):   he voted out because he wanted to scrap the human rights stuff. That was the only reason. Then she pointed out to him that the convention on hu…[Read more]

@mudlark   I hope Living & Dead is shown here, too — my husband and I both loved Life on Mars, found it wonderfully refreshing, so anything by the same writer is of great interest to me!  Is this a one-off show, mini-series, or some other format?

@missy    Michael Dibdin — that’s the guy I’m thinking of — has written a line of crime novels set in Italy?  I’m pretty sure I read this Holmes one, but I’ve read a half dozen Holmes things in the past year, so can you talk a little about the story?  Now that copyright is no longer controlling what people write about Holmes, some int…[Read more]

@kharis  Why, thank you — I hoped it would be coherent, at least.  I do sometimes write to the local newspaper (owned by a bunch of starchy liberal-haters) about various issues, usually local ones though, and I like it that they always print my letters — they don’t even phone me any more to make sure I’m really the person who wrote them, and n…[Read more]

SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER...

@puroandson  Closing off borders and creating small governments isn’t the answer. I’m in favour of government -the bigger the better. The era of big government isn’t over (as Toby Ziegler famously said).

Far from over; I agree.  In fact, the wreck we’ve made of our planet’s natural equilibrium actually *requires* Big Government, to martial…[Read more]

@pedant   Thanks for that clarification of specifics.  Do you think there’s a chance of back-pedaling from this insanity?  Sounds as if Europe is entirely ready and willing to just step up and fix *their* end, leaving England to wallow in its own self-made nightmare, and I don’t see any eagerness from Europe to help stop the bleeding by en…[Read more]

@jimthefish    I suspect the fundamental changes in the way we are living our lives now is going to require a fundamentally different politics. I just have no idea what that is going to involve. I suspect no one does yet.

Exactly.  It’s as if  “the Singularity” has indeed come upon us, only it wasn’t about cyborgs or contact with space alie…[Read more]

@kharis  I’ve always been completely at sea with regard to the damn cracks and have just gone with it without figuring it out; Tasha Lem is a blank to me — Star Trek?  Star Wars?  Battleship Galactica? Babylon 5? —  So I can’t comment on your theory — sounds like a fun one to play with, though.

I hope the FBI comes through for you.  I just…[Read more]

@nerys   Oh, there are lots of sane people in the States who share my feelings about the political scene, including (it seems) some self-styled “conservative” big mouths (latest, George Will, one time political columnist and backer of the very Rethug strategy that has brought us Drumpf; he has announced that he’s leaving the Thug party because he…[Read more]

@missrori  @puroandson  I also think of “Husbands” as — not exactly the S9 finale, but it denouement or coda: here is the fully developed result of the massively painful and wrenching events of S9, some time after the dust has settled and the final departures have been made.  Here’s the Doctor showing his acceptance of those departures, not in th…[Read more]

@kharis  I’m saying Clara’s death was orchestrated, needed, and meant to happen by the people closest to the Doctor. It was always her destiny, that’s why the name Ravenwood and the necklaces.

This is intriguing and I want to give it some thought, but I can only make very limited sense of it, myself.

You aren’t positing an actual conspi…[Read more]

@jimthefish  Thanks for the info.

@nerys  Ye gods, why are we still allowed on the internet?  Anywhere else, we’d be trying to tear each other’s throats out over the ending of Penny Dreadful (or something else equally ephemeral and largely weightless).

Not really laughing.  A pal of mine with an unsettling habit of being right about the future said to about 2 weeks ago, “We’ve go…[Read more]

@blenkinsopthebrave  Thanks for those recce’s.

@jimthefish  Um — who’s Maxwell Edison, for those across the pond?

@stichintime  Maybe a “fudrick” is what just happened in Britain?

@nerys   Wish I felt the same, but instead I was let down by the final two-parter.  It felt rushed and rather chaotic to me, and I am so weary of the exceptionally gifted woman of strong will and character sacrificing herself and leaving the men who were swept away by her mournfully grieving and then resolving to get on with their lives.  True to…[Read more]