It is a brave children's show which starts with the song "I'm a smooth muthafukker"… This is sort of a live-action XKCD cartoon. A frenetic troupe of performers are decked with hand-drawn portraits and then… well, it is somewhere between a Sesame Street animation and the stick-figure kung-fu Flash animations of yesterday. The whole design is technically impressive. An endless stream of paper lit…
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Last year, I reviewed a new type of Clip-On earphone - the Soundpeats Clip1 Cuff. I was a bit sceptical, but was won around by their comfort. The good folks at Soundpeats have sent me their new version to review. I had a few niggles with the Clip1 - so let's see how the UU2 Clip2 compare. Design The "cuff" design is fairly new to the UK - but is already popular in other parts of the world.…
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Sex work is work, so we're told. There's no difference between picking up a night job stacking shelves and a night job jacking-off on screen. Right? Perhaps a couple need a little bit of extra cash and the siren song of OnlyFans is right there. Let's fire up the webcam and release ourselves from financial drudgery! Then reality hits. The script by Sean Stillmaker sounds like it was ripped…
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OMG! If you remember A/S/Ling your way through MSN to fill in your MySpace top 8, then you'll love this show. You're also over 30 and, therefore, old. Ew. The stage is littered with a Nokia 3310, Bliss Magazine, and Charlie Red. Katie (15/F/UK) talks us through the complexities of her nascent love life, what shag band colours mean, and which quotes sum up millennial angst. All the while…
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The terror of AI has come to comedy. There are a dozen shows this year about the threat that technology poses to the way we live, laugh, and love. In this case, AI stands for Austrian Imperialism and the fight is for Switzerland's independence. Well, sort of. It gets a bit lost in an endless stream of rambly diversions. There's a fine line between surrealist comedy and utter nonsense. If you…
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My mum's friend Rachel has a one-woman show on at the Fringe. As, apparently, the only orthodox Jew on the UK comedy circuit she has constructed a fully interactive Jewish Mother experience. Like several shows on the fringe, it relies on the audience writing questions on cards and the comedian riffing on them. Unlike other shows, Rachel has a huge stream of anecdotes and songs to weave into her…
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Fancy a quickie in Scotland's most haunted pub? Smut Slam is a (mildly) interactive performance where a handful of speakers get to tell their dirtiest stories. The audience fills in cards with their questions or confessions which may be read out. The format mostly works. There are different stories every night, so maybe we got a slightly uninspiring batch. Tales of sex parties, STIs, and broken …
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By my count there are at least three "Heated Rivalry" musical parodies on at the Fringe this year. The zeitgeist skates to where the puck was six months ago, I guess! There's also a live version of a HR podcast if you just can't get enough of their wacky ice-capades. Just how much sexy-hockey can one city take? Produced by Quick and Funny Musicals, an American company specialising in cash-ins …
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Our first show at the Fringe! Caught by a rainstorm (in Scotland?!?!?) the app said this was the nearest comedy show to our sodden carcasses and it was free pay what you want! This is bang-average stand-up. That isn't to disparage it at all. Four Australian blokes each doing 15 minutes of material - nothing particularly avant-garde or challenging. Just some decently funny (albeit well worn)…
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There's a certain strain of commentator who is just sure that nothing can ever get better. In amongst all the hullaballoo about the UK potentially banning under 16s from social media, I saw a prominent historian say: i assume banning kids from social media will be accompanied by a huge investment in teen-friendly communtiy [sic] spaces (like youth clubs) and social activities? No? Huh. But,…
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How do you tell users that the text they're about to read has been synthetically generated? It is polite to readers that you don't waste their time, it's also important that LLMs don't feed on their own regurgitated slurry lest they pollute their own development. I think there are a number of potential ways to do this and I'd be interested in your thoughts. Let's go with some bad ideas first. …
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The good folks at Thermal Master have sent me another Thermal Camera to review. The last one was a big beastie with a huge touchscreen. This one is much smaller and is designed to plug into your phone's USB-C port. The T2 Max is a chunky little camera - but doesn't weight too much. The USB-C connector is long enough to securely plug in even if your phone is wearing a case. Thermal Master…
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