A former high school baseball player, with a successful businessman as a father and, a promising young man with a ‘bright future’ ahead of him avoided prison for the rape, strangulation, and violent assault of two teenage girls. He was facing up to 78 years in prison, and was instead granted a youthful offender status. Where he must attend community service and counselling. Butler pleaded ‘no contest” to the charges. And the district attorney claimed that Butler had suffered more than his victims by being subjected to the process of trial and harm to his credibility as a young man. The case...

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" Roy Batty played by Rutger Hauer said in his ‘Tears in the Rain’, speech at the end of Blade Runner. A film that grapples with the reality of biological and synthetic life, what is real and with the many versions of the film, what’s the real ending, the real message and who is, synthetic. What symbolism means, or doesn’t. We live in a post Blade Runner world of 2019, the replicants as imagined then, are yet to exist but there is a drive and affinity for artificial depictions of life. Bots and agents, who replicate life, or at the very least the...

Duncan paused the moment he heard the knock at his front door. It was loud. Assertive. He cautiously stood behind the heavy wood, “yes, hello.” “It’s the police, is Mr Duncan Trywood home?” a firm female voice asked. “Yes, I am him.” “Can you please open the door so we may ask you some questions?” “OK,” he eased the door open. It was close to dark, he could see the bright lights from a police car pointed at his house. Two portly female officers stood in his porch, one held a folder. Near their car was a rod thin male officer who looked more like a boy who would chase electric trains, rather...

Hong Kong police have recently arrested book sellers for having copies of Emily Feng’s, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom. Freelance journalists and three others have been arrested related to the book and for the act of selling, “seditious material.” Emily Feng has been banned from entering China since 2022 due to her previous reporting and now the banned book. “Seditious Material,” is the title that sounds less than harmful for many Westerners who may view China as a land known of having less freedoms, where independent thinking and writing, are prohibited or heavily guided. The reporter and...

Most Sunday’s, weather allowing, I set up a mobile comic book shop at local open air markets. I have done it for the good part of a decade, in doing so you make unique friendships with people who you may only see every so many Sundays over the years, you might not even know their names but you know their opinions on things, what books they read, movies they watch and at times the turmoils in their personal life. In being a fixture, you can be both councillor and sound board or, for some kids, an adult for them to share budding and developing opinions with. It’s a fascinating thing to see the...