Glasgow Central: Building collapses at station as fire causes major disruption - BBC News
Oh no! Glasgow Central! Also my brother and sister-in-law are here and heading back there tomorrow.
To the Arcola theatre in Dalston this afternoon, for Ukraine Unbroken, a set of five short plays about Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2014.
Powerful, moving, a reminder of a time we lived through and that the people of Ukraine are still living through it.
In a world of lies, we need the BBC more than ever, the headline to Polly Toynbee’s article says. It continues: ‘This week could be our last chance to save it,’ which makes for a very long headline, if a very good point.
My favourite quote is this:
The right’s peculiar patriotism seeks to demolish British achievements the country is most proud of: our public broadcasting and our NHS.
The truth is, those kind of people are loyal only to the country of commerce, of corporations, of capital.
The government’s questionnaire on the BBC’s future is here. We should all respond.
Started watching The Miniaturist Season 1 🎥. Very strange household they’ve got there. Big on atmosphere, costumes, and interiors. Not sure where the story’s going to go yet.
Currently reading: Red Menace by Joe Thomas 📚
This is the sequel to White Riot, which I read a surprising two-and-a-half years ago. Ongoing Hackney cop, criminal, and political shenanigans, starting on the day of Live Aid.
Netflix’s Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials 🎥, written by Chris Chibnall, was excellent. Really compelling story that kept us mostly guessing till almost the end.
I don’t know what Agatha did with it, or intended to do with it, but I see what Netflix and Chibnall are doing. They’ve set it up beautifully for an ongoing series. And I for one look forward to it.
We’re in the middle of watching Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials 🎥. Two episodes down, and the last one to watch tonight.
That Bundle is a great character. And Superintendent Battle seems a bit useless and annoying so far. I haven’t read any of the books about him.
Oh, damn, I just read in Ansible: Dan Simmons has died. The Hyperion Cantos are some of the best SF of the late 20th century.
Here’s his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry.
Sad. So it Goes.
Sometimes even the best software lets you down. This morning I dropped a quick note in Obsidian about something I wanted to blog about. This evening it’s gone. Not on my phone, not on my Mac.
Can I remember what the idea was? I cannot.
I know we’re not supposed to celebrate the death of another human being. But what else can you do when it’s Khamenei?
I mean, do you think anyone one didn’t celebrate Hitler’s death in 1945?
I just hope the Iranian people will be able to rise up and free themselves after this. Sadly, history does not hold many examples of this kind of thing working out.
It feels very strange to be supportive of the USA attacking a middle-eastern country (or any country). Even more so when it’s Trump in charge. But the chance this could bring down the Islamic Republic — that evil, terrorism-exporting, citizen-murdering regime — is much to be hoped for.
Of course, it won’t be as simple as that. Things never are. The desire to find simple answers to huge, complex questions, is at least partially the cause of many of our problems today.
But still. The idea that the Iranian people might have the chance to overthrow that monstrous regime: that is huge.
📚 Books 2026, 4: Caledonian Road, by Andrew O'Hagan
I really enjoyed this. It’s set in London (mostly), in a later year of the pandemic (2022, probably), and across just over a whole year. The characters are people from the upper-middle to upper classes, and some of the lowest classes in society, including criminals and illegally-trafficked people who have to work for them.
Some of the blurbiness on the cover describes it as a ‘state of the nation’ novel. It doesn’t quite seem like that for me (though I don’t know if I could give you an example of one that is), not least because the main characters exist at a fairly rarified level of society. They are things like academics, authors, journalists, MPs and lords. Or else they’re would-be drill rappers in street gangs. There’s nobody who’s just normal; whatever that means.
There are so many characters that O’Hagan provides a list of them, a dramatis personae, which I approve of.
Anyway, it’s very good, and I read it much faster than I expected to, which is usually a good sign.
Ed Zitron’s latest, On NVIDIA and Analyslop, is very good on the current state of some financial stuff related to ‘AI’. It’s also good on how much more complex software development is than the ‘vibe coding’ believers would tell you:
Software is a tremendous pain in the ass. You write code, then you have to make sure the code actually runs, and that code needs to run in some cases on specific hardware, and that hardware needs to be set up right, and some things are written in different languages, and those languages sometimes use more memory or less memory and if you give them the wrong amounts or forget to close the door in your code on something everything breaks, sometimes costing you money or introducing security vulnerabilities.
Fuckin hell, Apple Music! This is just what I was talking about a few weeks ago. ‘Camera’ and ‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville’ just aren’t going to play, for no reason.
A quick note just to keep up my streak of having posted every day this year. Is that stupid? Maybe. Will mentioning it jinx it? Time will tell.
Automatic Introspection
On texts created by prompts. If you can express your meaning in a prompt, why not just send out the prompt?
Watched: The Eagle Has Landed 🎥
if you’d have asked me I’d have said I thought I’d seen this back in the day. But no. Very much not. It’s a very odd film.
I thought it was going to be about some allied mission into or over Germany during WW2. It was actually the opposite: a secret German mission to kidnap Churchill from Norfolk. Including an IRA member helping them, and a traitorous English villager providing them with information.
it’s so totally not what I expected, but it’s pretty good.
Fun Minute Cryptic clue today.
Minute Cryptic - 20 February, 2026 “Dropped Jacksonville’s latest quarterback after non-pass?” (4) 🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🏆 0 hints – 2 under the community par (71,660 solvers so far). www.minutecryptic.com
Watched: Ludwig Season 1 🎥
This was unexpected, and surprisingly good. David Mitchell playing a semi-serious (but still fairly comic) part, as a puzzle-setter whose twin-brother police officer goes missing. Anna Maxwell Martin as his sister-in-law. Good stuff.