Hello, hello. Here are some things.

1. Wonderfully, parasocially proud of all the Widow’s Bay Emmy winners – especially sort-of-local lass Kate O'Flynn. To celebrate I might need the show's deluxe soundtrack, complete with RUN card game and a copy of Your Turn by Lucy Fours.

2. Mike Monteiro on his favourite pinball machine, and what it can teach us about life in general:

   “The amazing thing about pinball machines is that, even if they all came off the same assembly line, eventually they all become their own unique device. Of the 20,270 units of Addams Family in the world, I guarantee there are no two alike. A pinball machine is a complex collection of interwoven parts, and they tend to break down a lot. Like me and you. We’re all born roughly the same, we all get Apgar scores from the wee human QA team, and depending on our score we’re handed over to whoever agreed to take us home. Over time, we need servicing for things. We get ear aches, we fall out of trees, we find out our hearts beat in strange ways, we find out our brains are several flavors of spicy, and we become us.

   “Over time, pinball machines become something other than what rolled off the assembly line. They do time in arcades, movie theaters, bars, etc. Sometimes getting serviced by people who know what they’re doing. Sometimes getting serviced by people who have more creativity than sense, and sometimes getting serviced by people who know just enough to be dangerous. (Feel free to map these categories to medical professionals you’ve interacted with.) What I’m saying is that no two pinball machines are alike”.

   Thanks to Pinball Map, I’ve discovered a couple of Addams Family machines still in active service in Yorkshire. Time to crack open the coin jar.

3. Two years into the world’s most complicated board game, masochist gamers “still don’t understand what the camels do”.

4. Loving this timeline of Syd Mead’s career, which has a few surprises. 1985: designing for Aliens, Short Circuit, Gundam … and judging Miss USA?

5. Another excellent post from Animation Obsessive, this time diving deep into the talent behind Warner Bros’ 1957 classic What’s Opera Doc.

6. Rob Turpin is drawing a spaceship a day throughout Shiptember (a word it’s now taken me ten attempts to spell correctly). I got to name one of them, pinching the title from an old Jonny Boy single.

7. For when you absolutely need a complete nerd-out break: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail.

8. While talking to IndieWire about his new film Bucking Fastard, Werner Herzog had this to say about a partly AI-generated hybrid documentary that tries to recreate the atmosphere of his films:

   “The intention of this young filmmaker was never to remake any [of my films], but making something in the spirit. And I immediately said, “You will fail. It is such a stupid idea. It’s phenomenally, abysmally stupid. I will not take part in it.” He wanted me to explain things and have my voice in it. I said, “You are alone. There’s such a thing as free speech, which I respect. So go ahead and fail.” And it is a failure, period.

   “It’s so standardized that AI can step in because there’s not real storytelling. It’s mimicry of something that has happened before. And I welcome AI to replace all the idiots who are into nothing but repeating, repeating, repeating until it’s ad nauseam. When it’s ad nauseam, please, please, please let AI step in and do the job.”

   He really is the best.

9. 2000 AD are (is?) celebrating next year’s fiftieth anniversary of Judge Dredd with a massive omnibus edition, featuring some of his greatest stories. Only forty of them though, which feels like a missed trick.

10. Still furious at myself for not buying that ticket for Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Royal Albert Hall, so it’s jolly nice they’ve released the show as a live album, Hidden in Pieces. Hopefully some new music and a proper tour soon.

That is all. See you at Sunset Cocktails.