Alpha Centauri's always nice this time of year

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

Obviously we all have different opinions/tastes/attitudes, but I am also a finale hater, and s2 is far superior to s1 for me.

S1 is lovely, but:

1) it’s not enough of an adaptation

I love the book, it’s been one of my favourites since I was a teen and I’ve read it probably 20 times. But it is a book. TV is a different medium and more changes were needed to make it work well in that format.

2) some modernisation was needed. The Them end up feeling really silly and artificial at times, because whilst it was believable that a very sheltered British child might scoff at 39 flavours of ice cream in the 80s or even the 90s, that just seems ridiculous now, when Ben and jerrys is in every supermarket. Yes the village was supposed to be held in some perfect ideal of childhood but there were a few bits that truly stretched believability.

3) some modern sensibilities were needed. The treatment of Miss Tracy, and Shadwell’s entire character, really do not age well. Their romance ends up feeling quite tragic. Newt comes off as a mild-mannered incel in our current cultural context. More thought was needed to go into all these characters to make them work for a 2019 audience.

4) there are too many characters that are not Aziraphale and Crowley. Now this one is not really a quality thing, it’s just that i fundamentally don’t care about the other characters as much as I do about a&c. When my wife and I rewatched in anticipation of the finale (🤮), we ended up fast forwarding all the sections with newt, and many of the Shadwell bits, because we were struggling to get though it otherwise.

Whereas, season 2 for me was a joy. I loved the humour, I loved the build up of their romance. Plus, the introduction of Whickber street and especially Maggie and Nina, meant a lot to me. It was so fun and interesting to see our angel and demon interacting with and engaging with normal, every day humans.

But most of all I loved the flashbacks! Job and Edinburgh in particular are some of my favourite moments in all of good omens. They deepened our understanding of our characters, and raised philosophical and theological questions that challenge the whole celestial system.

Yes, the shit kiss was shit and the finale fifteen were very painful. But as I was watching it, I expected/understood that to be a third act break up in a romance. The point where the fundamental conflict between the characters is finally articulated in full, so that it can subsequently be resolved satisfactorily. Narratively and pacing wise, that is honestly what it should have been. The fact we were left with the rubbishness of the finale is a failure to properly resolve that conflict - not a failure of the original conflict.

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

It's the same beef I have with Fallout. I know they excuse humans being so slow to redevelop society with all "knowledge being lost in the war" but that's just...not how things work. Humans figured out construction and farming very early. There's no way for humans to truly forget how to do this stuff, especially since people survived and could preserve and share what they know. But I just cannot fathom how in 300 years no one's figured out construction or fiber arts or soap making or anything humans have historically figured out super early in the process of being human.

And the only way I can see someone write a world like that is if they either didn't care (fine, it's not real and I get digging the apocalypse vibe) or were so divorced from the process of labor and creation that they actually think those things are way too hard for someone to figure out on their own.

If you think humans couldn't do these things without being taught or helped you have a very warped idea of technological progress and human ingenuity. No one taught humans how to build and create, we figured it out on our own, and it was not just smacking rocks together until something clicked either, ancient humans were just as intelligent as modern ones, they could use logic and reasoning to figure out how to do something new based on what they already know.

Archeology educator Milo Rossi in his Ancient Aliens debunked video (link under the cut)

eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun

You have Parker, who has been designated as bad and wrong since she was a very young child and who has let go of any expectation of being anything else, so that identifying and doing what she thinks is the right thing is consistently an overwhelming and scary experience for her;

Then there's Eliot, who can point to exactly when and how he became irredeemable in his own eyes and whose highest ambition now is to do the wrong thing for the right people this time at least;

Nate, who is clinging to all of these ideas about morality and legality and good and bad that are completely inconsistent both internally and with his behavior, because his very normative view of the world was shattered and he never put the pieces back together in any kind of coherent way;

Sophie, who sees right and wrong as primarily about relationships between people, like she does everything else: right and wrong is in how you engage and who you hurt interpersonally, anything more abstract is irrelevant. But within that, there's also this weight to how she engages, this sense of regret at how she's treated people in the past that we never really see the full scope of;

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

You will be dearly missed. 🩷