Weekly Update, September 28, 2025

Another week of mostly working on stuff that’s not yet ready and preparing for the Great Cycle Challenge.

On my other sites this week:

Pharmacoepia Fantastica: A handful of new drugs added this week: Cernadine, Euphorazine, Profillica, Teamocil and Zanotab for a new total of 155 drugs described on the site.

Reading Orders: Added The Marvel Universe 14: The Late Eighties and its attendant event reading orders: Fall of the Mutants, The Evolutionary War, Inferno and Atlantis Attacks.

Weekly Update, September 22, 2025

These weeks, they may look slow, but that’s because I’m working on stuff that isn’t ready to go public yet. But the time will come, for each of them. And of course, getting in shape for the Great Cycle Challenge is not uncomsuming of my time 😉

On my other sites this week:

Pharmacoepia Fantastica: A bunch of new drugs added this week: Ascomycin, Beng Lie, Cuppliance, Engorgulate, Mei Kuan, NasoPRO, NasoPRO Silver and Tricetyltriparanol bring the total up to 150 drugs described on the site.

Weekly Update, September 14, 2025

Not gonna lie, this was a slow week for me. Practicing for the Great Cycle Challenge is time consuming. But bits and pieces got done. In particular, the Kali Yuga Countdown once again ticks down to the inevitable end of all things here.

On my other sites this week:

Reading Orders: Two orders were updated with new releases, The World of the Five Gods Reading Order and John Birmingham’s Axis of Time Reading Order.

Pharmacoepia Fantastica: Only one new drug added this week, but like I said, it’s been slow going. X-Drugs is the 142nd drug to be described on the site.

Weekly Update, September 7, 2025

This week has been a slow one, between putting the finishing touches on my game for Haven and feeling a little under the weather, this has not been an amazingly productive week. But my health and the weather both improve, so I’m optimistic of future accomplishments. As this goes out to you, I am just finishing up running my Call of Cthulhu one-shot (or I should be if all goes according to plan), so that’s another project done and dusted.

I did manage to get some stuff done this week, including adding some more drugs to the Pharmacoepia Fantastica, with 141 fictional drugs now listed on the site. The new additions are: Agony, Baccaran, Bliathol, Devilweed, Luhix, Mordayn Vapor, Mushroom Powder, Redflower Leaves, Sannish, Terran Brandy and Vodare

Weekly Update, August 31, 2025

The big news this week is the return of the all new, updated and reformatted Annotations to Keating! The Musical, the first part of the relaunch of my main site, The Centre Cannot Hold. You can find them here.

Aside from that, not a lot to report – various things in the background are coming along, but I’ve been busy being social this week, so I got a little less visible work done. Hoping to see some of you at Haven next Sunday, and in the meantime, have a great week folks.

Weekly Update, August 24, 2025

No big announcements this week – slow progress on various projects continued, but nothing spectacular. Just another week of reminding myself that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and that doing something is always better than doing nothing.

On my other sites this week:

The Pharmacoepia Fantastica had some new drugs added to it: Gamedone, Millenial Tristesse, Ninetenicillan, Ridilin and Stovulax. This brings the total number of fictional drugs now listed on the site to 130.

Weekly Update, August 17, 2025

This is the first of what I intend to become a regular feature here on the site, just a central accounting of the things I’ve been working on over the previous week.

First of all, and most obviously, I launched this site. It’s new and I don’t yet know entirely what I’m going to do with it (beyond what I’m already doing), but I’m fine with figuring that out as I go along. Aside from that, a lot of my attention has been on prepping my Call of Cthulhu game for Haven, which I am very excited about (it’s been a long time since I last wrote and ran a convention game).

On my other sites this week:

Reading Orders saw the new The Neal Asher’s Polity Universe Reading Order added to it, as well as more work behind the scenes on other upcoming features. I’m currently working on The Marvel Universe 14: The Late Eighties and its associated timelines and events, but it’s going to be a while yet before I get all that done, as I have other things with higher current priorities (like the aforementioned convention game).

Aside from the above, there’s work and life and things like that. You know how it is.

Ten Questions for Peter Dutton

Peter Dutton’s been doing a lot of interviews lately, but no one seems to be asking the important questions!

  1. Can you prove that you are in fact Peter Dutton, and not Scott Morrison who has secretly appointed himself Peter Dutton?
    Scott Morrison has form in secretly appointing himself to things. Citation.
  2. You’ve spoken in the past of your work as a police officer, and in particular, your attendance at domestic violence disputes. In your experience, when the wife in such a case starts defending her husband unprompted, saying things like “he’s a good man” or “he provides for us” or “he’s not a monster”, how likely is it that she’s telling the truth?
    Just asking, this seems like a thing he would know about. Citation.
  3. You’re fond of playing up to a tough on crime image, and yet you’ve often voted against tougher penalties for crime, as with the recent wage theft bill. How do you square that circle?
    It’s almost like he sees there as being two kinds of crime: crimes which must be punished massively, and are committed by poor people; and crimes which are not that important, and are committed by rich people. Citation.
  4. You’ve made being a police officer a big part of your image, but the fact is that you’ve been a politician and a property developer half again as a long as you were ever a cop. Why don’t your other jobs get equal time?
    Seriously, being a property developer is his major source of income, but it doesn’t rate a mention on his official site. Citation.
  5. Were you to become Prime Minister of Australia, you would be the face of the nation to much of the world, and have the responsibility of negotiating with foreign heads of state. Under those circumstances, would it be your plan to continue to make racist jokes?
    I mean, big tough decisive men like Petey don’t change their minds, do they? Citation.
  6. You like to talk about the dangers and instability of minority government. As the current parliamentary leader of a notably unstable party that has had seven different leaders in the last 18 years, do you regard yourself as an expert on this subject?
    I mean, he’s obviously not an expert on winning a leadership spill, which odd considering how many he’s been through. Citation.
  7. The Liberal Party likes to say that it is the party of sound financial management. Why did your party pay ten times the market value of the Leppington Triangle, and how does that constitute sound financial management?
    The Liberal Party has an eye for an anti-bargain. Citation.
  8. Your nuclear power policy, by your own account, will take many years and cost billions of dollars before it generates a single joule of power. How will that lower power costs this year?
    Construction won’t even start until some time in the 2030s… Citation.
  9. Your nuclear policy contains no information about where the waste from the power stations will be stored. Would you be okay with it being stored in your electorate?
    WEIL
  10. Given that your nuclear power policy is less a complete policy, and more a sort of performance art, does it actually indicate that you are testing the waters before you go into performance art full time when you leave Parliament?