Scurra @scurra.com · 13/10/2026Sure, but there's always room for modern musings on the state of authoritarianism and how it can look attractive, and how privilege can blind you to problems? That doesn't feel like a theme that ever gets dated (alas.) 020
Scurra @scurra.com · 13/10/2026My speculation is that the intent was to move TLTW&TW etc. to the "present day". This would make Diggory 80 or so (which seems perfectly reasonable) but would make the rest of the films far easier to sell. (It wouldn't be hard to send the kids away from home for reasons other than WWII.) 110
Scurra @scurra.com · 12/10/2026Also, nobody is saying it was a "successful" intervention? They intervened, sure, and they got the outcome that they wanted, but it clearly wasn't down to that. Is Boris saying they didn't intervene at all? No, of course not, because he chooses his words carefully (like Farage.) 4947
Scurra @scurra.com · 12/10/2026I loved it too. There was so much going on in the first part that was seeding the second. I even enjoyed the weird acting, although it's always hard to separate "bad" acting from a specific choice by an actor! 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 12/10/2026A related thing is, I think, how folk keep saying "look, people have stopped going to church so they obvious don't believe any more", but there's been an equal decline in pubs, and groups like the WI etc - even youth clubs! So there may be some resentment involved too? 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 10/10/2026Superb work! Took me an embarrassingly long time to work out what you'd done and then I laughed far too much. 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 09/10/2026Just because you could, you didn't stop to consider whether you should. (Although I laughed. So shame on me.) 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 09/10/2026I think this is the core reason why people are considered to get "more conservative" as they get older. The world changes /all/ the time, but we wish the world as it was when we were 12 or so. For me, the smart people are the ones that accept that things change, even if they themselves cannot. 130
Scurra @scurra.com · 08/10/2026One side effect of being a regular churchgoer is that I count the weekly offertory, which is one of the few places cash is still, ahem, king. So I've seen King Prince Charles notes and coins of all denominations and values now (all the way up to £50!) 030
Scurra @scurra.com · 03/10/2026For me, the classics for this are Richmal Crompton's "William" books. They are a lovely dissection of the middle classes (and, of course, the Botts who are "working class made good") but it isn't overtly emphasised because it's YA fiction! But it's all there, mocked and respected equally. 020
Scurra @scurra.com · 02/10/2026Also, it's clear that 221b is the first floor flat (presumably, Mrs Hudson lived in 221 - perhaps that was labelled 221a.) But visual versions keep making it the whole building even though everybody understands how flats work! 040
Scurra @scurra.com · 01/10/2026That's fair enough. I really wasn't trying to suggest that your column is worthless in that respect. :) Lots of folk will have discovered lots of things that way (and that's good.) I was originally responding to that despairing cry from Robin about "how do people find me?" 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 01/10/2026Do not all the papers have a podcasts column? In some ways, this may still only count as "word of mouth"? (Meaning that it's not a specific 'promotional' exercise.) 100
Scurra @scurra.com · 01/10/2026The audience is there. The dilemma - as always - is whether the time it takes to find them, especially amidst the noise of the big companies, is too much. Please know that some of us are listening and enjoying (and I will note that I don't listen via an app, so I may not show up on statistics.) 030
Scurra @scurra.com · 01/10/2026The way people find out about worthwhile podcasts is almost always (as e.g. @andrewhickey.500songs.com tells us after every edition of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs) via word-of-mouth. It rarely happens any other way. And, alas, word-of-mouth takes time. Even with the help of social media. 340
Scurra @scurra.com · 30/09/2026True, but then they'd have to be the nerds and the geeks, and as a nerd and a geek I'm pretty sure we don't want them either. 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 29/09/2026Also, SI has a long-established meaning in STEM (System Internationale) although I bet nobody in the Trump admin knows that which will create all sorts of 'hallucinations' when the LLMs get their tokens in a twist. 051
Scurra @scurra.com · 29/09/2026Especially since they've got perfectly workable plans for most of them (even if they weren't 100% ideal.) Shades of Yes, Minister and Sir Humphrey pretending that they had to start from scratch every time. 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 29/09/2026I was sure you probably had! It's one of those projects that I do keep wanting to tell people about - but it's not exactly a mainstream piece of work. 😉 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 29/09/2026Have you been following @eruditorumpress.com Last War In Albion? Which is an epic (on-going) work exploring exactly this - Moore and Morrison's similarities and differences and how that has shaped comic book writing (and writers) in all sorts of ways. 110
Scurra @scurra.com · 29/09/2026But we're told that 80% of their code is AI generated now, so how could this be? Surely these systems would be getting more efficient rather than less? </s> 040
Scurra @scurra.com · 28/09/2026I always buy the "Now That's What I Call..." releases. I get to know what all the biggest selling songs of the current period are in one quick burst. Sometimes I even quite like some of them. 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 27/09/2026Yes. Absolutely. That's why people buy replica kits to go to football matches. It's about tribal association. It's just that in LARPing, we don't have a standard 'uniform'. (Ben Elton did a great joke about that, noting that it was those football fans that often mocked "Trekkies" for dressing up!) 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 26/09/2026I understand that dilemma. OTOH you have got the first one to use to show people "the idea". When you posited the original idea, I think we definitely needed to see examples. But now you have examples - and perhaps an extra selling point of not revealing the 'new' ones? 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 26/09/2026Please keep as many of them secret as possible! I know seeing a lot of them helped with selling the first one, but I think people now know the idea so the fun is in the surprise. (This was definitely true with the book.) 110
Scurra @scurra.com · 26/09/2026They will argue that the 'carriers' can't be held responsible for the content? (As with e.g. social media companies.) I mean, I don't think this is quite right in either case, but their very, very expensive legal teams amongst other things may convince people that it does. 100
Scurra @scurra.com · 25/09/2026Look, over here in Europe we had Gisele Pelicot. I'm not sure anything can make my blood boil any more because it's probably all vaporised away by now. (But, for clarity, yes, this is beyond appalling. Way beyond.) 0392
Scurra @scurra.com · 25/09/2026And that nobody has replaced her as Press Secretary yet? That also says a lot about the tensions within the system right now. 050
Scurra @scurra.com · 23/09/2026And all the dead-ends and blind alleys along the way, and the failed versions (I write puzzles; this happens *all* the time) but none of it is wasted because it all contributes to both the final product and things in the future. 011
Scurra @scurra.com · 23/09/2026I still love Jeremy Hardy's gag, which was that if Scotland left, and Wales followed, then England should apply to leave too so that Northern Ireland could be left to be the 'true' UK. Of course, this joke is now rather outdated. 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 23/09/2026You want models that didn't catch on? I had a Camputers Lynx. (It was a pretty decent bit of hardware for the time, but no real software support of any kind.) 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 22/09/2026I want Mackenzie Crook to take over as showrunner on Doctor Who. That is all. 030
Scurra @scurra.com · 20/09/2026Given how often 4Extra has repeated The Burkiss Way (which is in with a shout of being Best Radio Sketch Show Ever), it's amazing that this hasn't had a proper repeat in recent years. Whilst I love End of Part One, it's Stuff that shows Marshall&Renwick at the top of their game. 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 20/09/2026(which then harkens back to Charlie Stross' assertion that we've been run by AI basically ever since double-entry bookkeeping began, it just that it used to be on paper.) 110
Scurra @scurra.com · 20/09/2026Yes, it's a very good list. And yes, we're all going to have ones that "should" have been on it. OTOH I sort of agree with John Scalzi that "classics" aren't necessarily a good place to start (but that's true of literature in general, isn't it?! 🙂) Anything from the last century is harder work. 110
Scurra @scurra.com · 20/09/2026I have a vague memory that Lewis wrote back to someone saying that it's entirely possible that Susan rediscovered her faith later in life (after all, Lewis was a late convert himself!) but that this was no longer his story to tell. 011
Scurra @scurra.com · 19/09/2026Yes, this is partly why I was speculating that it was deliberate - in order to 'prove' this was an actual AI project, which I think it probably did. But it also strikes me as being slightly too convincing an error, especially in such a high-profile context. 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 19/09/2026Yes, that was partly why people thought it was just a motion-capture thing - we know that someone reading a script can be CGI'd relatively easily, and some of the earlier examples were not live enough to disprove this. I think this one (and a couple of other recent ones) do seem to show it's "real". 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 19/09/2026That part I accept. My contention was that this appeared to me to have been an attempt to prove that it is, in fact, a "photocopier" rather than merely a "person being hidden behind a screen" which is what some early discussion speculated. Both types of tech break down a lot, but in different ways. 120
Scurra @scurra.com · 19/09/2026Yes, but it's also effective hilarious shit, because we're all posting about it. (I also wonder if it is a deliberate attempt to refute arguments that it is just a "mechanical turk"? If it can 'glitch' like this, then they would say that this proves it is clearly autonomous and not just a puppet.) 350
Scurra @scurra.com · 18/09/2026I mildly disagree with you? If SNW had properly leaned in and been a full-on 'gimmick of the week' show, then it would have likely felt more like the original series! As it is, I think it suffers from the modern tv need for serialisation. And Discovery and Academy were doing that just fine. 000
Scurra @scurra.com · 17/09/2026The bit that irks me the most is that its the "uses with the highest impact" that is the exact reason we are on the verge of losing essentially the entire Humanities sector of Higher Education. (Also, they are not sci-fi nerds. The nerds actually bothered to read and understand the stories!) 170
Scurra @scurra.com · 17/09/2026I think that's the cursed legacy of the (not-accurate-but-generally-understood-version of the)Turing Test of course. I don't necessarily think the OpenAI (et al) engineers did this especially deliberately; it was simply "the norm" for that sort of interaction, which is a separate problem? 010
Scurra @scurra.com · 16/09/2026Yeah, this wasn't a great line to read: "Neso said the original Palantir contract did not need to be disclosed because it was not publicly owned at the time. Neso became a public body in October 2024." 011
