More Scams to Watch Out For

The internet is a dangerous place these days and there's always one more new thing to watch out for. Right now, it's fake  CAPTCHAs. 

A real CAPTCHA (which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” by the way — just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) runs in your browser. It might ask you to click a box, identify images, or wait for a quick verification. What it shouldn’t do is ask you to send a text message, open your phone’s SMS app, tell you to press a strange combination of keys, or ask you to copy and paste anything into your computer.

Take a couple of minutes to read the article. It may save you a lot of grief later.  

2026 Locus Awards Winners

 The winners of the 2026 Locus Awards have been announced. The awards are voted on by subscribers and readers of Locus, the long-running newsmagazine of the science fiction and fantasy field. 

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL:  Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor 

FANTASY NOVEL: The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow 

NOVELLA: The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar

NOVELETTE: “We Begin Where Infinity Ends“, Somto Ihezue 

SHORT STORY: “In My Country“, Thomas Ha

The full list, including nominees, are listed on the Locus site.

Movie and TV Reviews - May 2026

Short reviews of movies and TV shows I watched in May. Now that we're watching the Blue Jays, there won't be as much here.

Movies

• Greenland 2: Migration. I saw a review that suggested that this was better than the first movie. It wasn't. 
• Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Ghost War. Yet another Jack Ryan thriller. Lots of action and not a lot of plausibility, as usual. This one was OK until about halfway through, then started to run off the rails. I did enjoy the parts that were set in Dubai.  (Amazon Prime)
• The Mandalorian and Grogu. See my review from last week. (IMAX)

TV Shows

• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (season 2). Lots of big monster battles in the middle of a muddled plot with too many jumps in time. The final episode ended with a setup for the next season, but I don't really care.(Apple TV)
• Dept. Q: This is a police procedural billed as "tartan noir" and it is indeed gloomy and you'll probably want closed captioning on. Unfortunately the plot stretches my "willing suspension of disbelief" past the breaking point and the characters are mostly standard tropes. (Netflix)
• A Taste for Murder: A grieving British detective travels to Italy to restore the relationship with his daughter and gets involved in all sorts of crimes. The best parts are the setting (Naples and Croatia, subbing for Capri) and Patricia Logan, of Downton Abbey fame. (BritBox)
• Good Omens (season 3): A one episode, 97-minute season, largely because Neil Gaiman wasn't involved. And it shows. You can probably skip this one. 
• Law and Order: Criminal Intent: Toronto (season 3). It's very formulaic. We like it for the Toronto settings and the stories that are sometimes taken from local news. (City TV)

Photo of the Week - May 31, 2026

I took this photo earlier this week when Nancy and I travelled in to Toronto for a fancy supper to celebrate our anniversary. This is Yonge Street, about a block north of Dundas, showing what's left of what was once known as the Yonge Street strip, partly because of its many strip clubs. The large building on the right is part of Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), formerly Ryerson Polytechnic. It stands on the former site of SAM The Record Man and A and A's, two great record stores that are long gone. The Zanzibar Tavern, one of Toronto's few remaining strip club, still stands. 

Taken with my Pixel 8 Pro and cropped and straightened in Google Photos. 

What's left of the Yonge Street strip

Saturday Sounds - New Riders of the Purple Sage - Powerglide

I first discovered the New Riders of The Purple Sage through their association with the Grateful Dead, who they opened for when I saw the Dead in 1970 and 1971. I enjoyed their music; I guess you could say they were my gateway to country and western.

From a post by Peter Christiansen in the Grateful Dead group on Facebook

"Powerglide".  Second album by the New Riders of the Purple Sage.  Wonderful followup to that most excellent first album.  Buddy Cage replaces Jerry Garcia on pedal steel.  A number of guest appearances including Jerry Garcia (banjo) and Bill Kreutzmann (percussion) from the Grateful Dead, and noted session player Nicky Hopkins (piano).  Another fun, sing along, toe tapping collection of songs. Covers "Hello Mary Lou",  "Willie and the Hand Jive",  "I Don't Need No Doctor" "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" take on the energy of the band while original writing on the others contributes significantly.  Another important part of my high school days.

Of their albums, Powerglide was my favourite. It still holds up well after more than fifty years.

Avoiding a Lockout of Your Google Account

If you had to pick an account that getting locked out of would cause the most headaches, your Google account would probably be up near the top of the list. That is assuming that you have a Windows PC and use Google Chrome, or an Android phone. Mac users may be able to skip this article.

Google, rightly. doesn't make it simple to get back into a locked out account. But they do provide more than one way of restoring your account access, including a new one mentioned in this article.

We'll start with the newest feature for account recovery, which is Recovery Contacts. This is a list of up to 10 people you specify, and when you're trying to get back into your Google account, they can be asked to confirm access in the same way that you might normally approve a prompt on your own phone (which is helpful if your phone is lost, for example).

I have a friend whose phone was stolen while travelling. He was not able to recover his account and lost access to many valuable photos and a YouTube account he used to promote his business. If he'd followed some of the steps in this article, that wouldn't have happened. 

It may take some time and be a bit of a hassle to get your account set up so you can recover it, but it's worth it. 

 

Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Nancy and I went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu last night at the IMAX theatre in Whitby. I didn't enjoy it. There was enough plot to fill out an average episode of the TV show, padded into a 2-hour-plus movie with a lot of pointless action scenes. No character development at all. The Mandalorian might as well have been a 2nd-tier Marvel superhero. Even in the IMAX format, much of the movie was dark and hard to follow. 

Wait for it to show up on Disney+ if you want to see it. (That may be a general reaction; the theatre was maybe 10 percent full).