Monkey Buckles

"My fave RPG rules ever are the 1980 Wyrm's Footnotes Index rules for accurate disembowlment in Runequest" "That's a deep cut"

This has to be the first time that I have visited London in a long time when I've left without buying a book. Then again, I've experienced 3 steam powered pumps running in 1 room, got to catch up with an old friend and saw dozens of pieces by Richard Dadd. Which was nice.

There is just something about the motion and noise of a steam engine that talks to the childhood wonder still clinging on to your soul.

I highly recommend this to any Brits. Its full of humour, trauma, hope, coping with grief, and snarkiness. A great introduction to John Wiswell's brand of fantasy.

A good demonstration of how absurdly small insects can get. I was looking at a relatively small (2.5 mm) pteromalid wasp and noticed something stuck to its wing. It was an even smaller wasp.

Bluesky, please fix your alt text box. It is impossible to delete and retype things exactly where one needs to without either making a scrambled mess or deleting the whole thing and starting anew. This is a wholly new and extremely puzzling development.

Will I ever visit the Cerne Abbas Giant and not remember the shaman I met who told me her friend had recently climbed over the fence and slept on the Giant’s 36 feet hard-on and had “the most erotic night of her life”? It seems doubtful.

Escape from New York, the glider scene. It's '81, a year before Tron revolutionised CG and Carpenter has 1/3 of Tron's budget...so how did he pull off an absurdly sophisticated wireframe simulation?! It's actually a cardboard city painted matte black, lined with reflective tape and lit with UV.

Today I decided to support The Broken Binding by visiting their recently opened shop in Stratford Upon Avon and buying some books. A lovely shop, full of lots of choice with paperbacks, harbacks and, of course, their VERY pretty spscial editions.

Another one! Here’s my ranking of 50 recurring characters from “Star Trek: Deep Space 9.” For characters who appear in multiple shows, I’m only going off their DS9 appearances — in any case I’ve only seen a smattering of TNG and most, but I don’t think all, of TOS.

I'm sure many of my followers are familiar with the popular MCM Comic Con events in the UK. But I imagine that few of them know that MCM stands for "mirror, cosplay, manoeuvre".

Was watching Buffy’s Anya backstory episode. Friend asked why I sighed. “She’s not of a sufficiently high social class to have domesticated rabbits that far north in Europe in that century, but the writers couldn’t know, the paper was only presented at a conference yesterday.” Accuracy is fleeting.

The most David and George podcast to have ever been made. I will give you 3 words and then imagine what these 2 would do with that... Birthday top trumps.

Steve Corino on @btsheetspod.bsky.social talking about his relationship with Hashimoto is a must-listen

Executive: so we want an amazing island-scape and wind farms and the SEC building and a castle and a dude on a horse and f’ing Nessie and everything! Artist: ok sure, remind me what your company does. Executive: laundry, obviously.

When I first saw this photo, I thought that the crowd were carrying the plane like it was crowd surfing...

Cat and kitten door knocker, Clun, England

I have realised that I am the Mr Tulip of eating meals abroad. In cities renowned for culinary excellence and good cuisine, I will almost always end up accidentally eating in chain restaurants or places that cater to tourists.

Fantasy murder mystery is a strong subgenre these days, but Premee Mohamed's Wickhills feels like the torchbearer for "fantasy spy thriller." Excellent stuff with great characters, a fascinating setting, tension and the kind of story that stands out in your memory. Well worth reading.

Man: This toilet is out of order. Leslie Nielsen: You have to flush first?

Genuinely concerned about what's happening to the space-time continuum in this toilet.

The last two times that I have done my weekly Tesco shop, they have been playing songs from The Little Mermaid. At least it wasnt playing while I was in the frozen fish section...

Sister Mary Kaiju of Our Lady of Perpetual Devastation.

If you wanted to hear two.people praising and examining what made Pac special as a wrestler, then I'd recommend this. It was recorded in 2024, so there are more tangents than you would expect. But it looks at how Pac evolved and how good he was at elevating others. A true veteran for the modern era

JRR Tolkien: You paint that picture of the key scene from the Two Towers where Frodo and Sam fight Gollum? Donato Giancola: Sure did, Ron, real fuckin' sexy just like you asked. JRRT: What.

Armed & dangerous! Lobsters have a early life stage called phyllosoma, wherein they drift through the open ocean, and have the coolest habit of taking stinging siphonophores prisoner for defense Shot on scuba, while drifting in the open ocean, out over the deep abyss, at night, far offshore

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents episode of Discworld Order is out now. @iversen83.bsky.social talks about the novel that made him a Discworld fan & how Pratchett adapted the Discworld formula for a children's book. 📦 bit.ly/4z8SfMc 🍎 bit.ly/3Vk0iap 🟢 bit.ly/3TbXSdm

Pac was on the first wrestling show that I saw live. He was in the headline match for the first Britwres show that I travelled for. He was just there. The kind of wrestler you took for granted... I can't believe this. Younger than me.

*blackadder theme* His head is bigger than a fence He breathes, and everything gets warmer His urge to trample represents A nation's nuclear war trauma Godzilla! Godzilla! The scourge of beast and man! Godzilla! Godzilla! He's flattening Japan!

The British Opinion Columnists make sense when you realise they're a clique of Year 10 girls who've all decided to call Kelly From Maths a bitch and a crybaby and a virgin and a slag until she leaves school (one way or the other), except they're 55.

This is what I've been waiting for! It sounds like it has the wild concept sci fi of the the Machineries of Empire, the destruction/weaponised theft of culture from Phoenix Extravagant and Lee's usual themes. I need to pre-order this.

I have some very unorthodox views about seabirds but I'm aware that I'm new to ornithology so I'm keeping quiet. I don't want to talk out of tern.

Did you ever wonder what the dragons are thinking in all those dragon rider novels? Well I wrote a story about exactly that. One curmudgeonly dragon has snuck into the academy and has to keep his identity secret. That means pretending to be tame. No matter how much he wants to devour his rider.

Is Takayasu being sponsored by a Lazy Susan manufacturer? Every time I see him this basho it seems like he does a 360 spin.

Norwegian humor is on another level. Here's how the Norwegian Consumer Council explained @doctorow.pluralistic.net's concept of 'enshittification':