I think Shirley Jackson is my new Phillip K Dick. I can't imagine that I'll ever exhaust the horrifying subtlety and ambiguity of Hill House, or the distant, relentless unease of her work more generally. Don't fall asleep reading her. Or rather, actually, do.

My goodness, THX 1138 turns out to be right up my alley of slow and meaningful science fiction from the 1970s. How has it taken me so long to watch it?

This evening: I will revisit Silent Running.

I just finished Adam Mansbach's "The Golem Of Brooklyn" and it's funny and witty and serious and thought-provoking and kinda tragic. To conclude, I liked this book, and if you like books about golems, you will like it too.

It really is a brilliant novel, and I'm very happy to see someone besides me or my dad mention it!

I haven't heard much from qanon recently. I'm curious: is there anyone left who thinks that Trump's focus in office is going to be shutting down a lizard-worshipping liberal paedophile ring?

I'm thirteen minutes into what I'm pretty sure is my new favourite film: a black-and-white rock opera, called "The American Astronaut", set in a bar on the asteroid Ceres.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=COxh...

Over on Threads I'm seeing debates on the legitimacy of Palestine, based on the etymology of the words "Palestine" and "فلسطين". As though someone will say "See? It was a 'P' sound originally." and someone will respond "Oh silly me, the modern state of Israel has a right to that land after all!

I'm pretty sure there are no spoilers for Hereditary here, but please exercise your own caution if you haven't yet seen the movie...

The worst thing ever to happen to Science Fiction and Fantasy has been the obsession with world-building, and "lore", and "canon". It was the worst of Tolkien, and it ruined Star Wars. It wraps its leaden shackles around the wings of imagination and creativity and drags them down into pedantry.

اللغة العربية بحر كلمات.

Am I actually considering boycotting American goods?

In the sixties and seventies, a lot of people renounced their US citizenship as a protest against the war in Vietnam, and to avoid the draft. I wonder what it would take for me to renounce mine?

Something that is both heartening and scary is the number of social media accounts posting increasingly political content.

Solidarity ✊ and also, fuck fascism.

ALERTA! ALERTA! LONDON ANTIFASCISTA! Tomorrow!

I just discovered (i.e. looked up) the Arabic for "nutmeg" and I am overjoyed to report, for the benefit of English speakers who don't speak Arabic, that it means YUMMY NUT!

It's جوزة الطيب — maybe a more literal translation would be "nut of yumminess". But either way, that's pretty cool, right?

Does anyone else feel it's a bit weird that we talk about how we defeated fascism in 1945? Cos we didn't, did we?

I was young once. In fact, I was twenty in 1987, when this photograph of me and our friend Kirsty was taken by my friend Pete, in the living room (also my bedroom) of the flat we shared in Hove. That is, me and Pete shared the flat, Kirsty was just visiting.

I re-watched 1974's Dark Star last night. Is it a better film than Alien? It lacks women, and focus. But it has a kind of largeness of vision, whimsy, an almost mystical aspect that reminds me of East European and Russian sci-fi. It's funnier and more amateurish.

So, I'm learning Arabic, and for curiosity I went to look up the name for the country Wales. Google Translate gives me a word (ويلز if you're interested) but the definitions are from marine architecture, textiles and basketry, so I'm not entirely confident that that's the word for the country...