• Evening start will be first time for 12 years for England

• Ireland also host ‘Super Saturday’ finale against France

England will begin their Six Nations campaign on a Friday for the first time in 12 years in 2027 after they were handed an opening night trip to Dublin to face Ireland by tournament organisers.

Ireland will also host the final match of next year’s “Super Saturday” with organisers pitching Andy Farrell’s side against France in the 8.10pm kick-off. Ireland and France have won the last four editions of the Six Nations between them and both are in the hunt, along with Scotland, for the title this year with one round remaining.

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They wowed the Edinburgh fringe with whip-smart sketches about Nasa engineers and what their audience were thinking. Now the slacker troupe are back on stage – but a long way from TV screens

When a “New York cult favourite sketch group” (as per the blurb) visits the UK, we may imagine we are getting the next big thing. But by the end of a transatlantic video call to three-quarters of the four-piece Simple Town, I am disabused of such naivety. “We meet sometimes with UK production companies,” says one of their number, Sam Lanier, “who see us and think: ‘These guys could be a great bridge to the American market.’ But what they don’t know is that no one fucks with us in America. All the people who work in development in American comedy already know about us, and they’ve all said ‘no’.”

“We don’t make a living doing Simple Town at all,” he adds. Reader, don’t let the status of Saturday Night Live – or recent Netflix hit I Think You Should Leave – fool you: sketch comedy isn’t a golden ticket in the US either. And Simple Town, such lovable debutants at the Edinburgh fringe last summer, are in the same boat as their UK counterparts: holding down day jobs, making films as well as live sketch, just about keeping their team-comedy show on the road. But “we really believe in it,” says Felipe Di Poi. “We believe the work we’ve done together is the best work any of us has done, that it’s way bigger than anything we could have made by ourselves.” You can deny them TV gigs, you can stymie their professional development, but – by all the collaborative gods! – you can’t keep a good sketch troupe down.

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Britain's Ministry of Defence wants a counter-drone system designed, contracted, and delivered within weeks

Britain's Royal Navy is urgently seeking a ship-based counter-drone system and recent world events likely explain why.…

A noid is a neural network you can actually watch. 24 numbers in, 2 numbers out. The input is what the noid perceives. The output is what it does. The function between them, shaped by 1,922 weights, is its entire behavior.

"The News" is not the most uplifting, cheery and positive of media to consume at the moment. Have you decided to cut back, and what have you found to fill the time with instead? Or write about whatever is going on with you, your life, or just the view from your window right now as this is your free thread.

Ryu's Photo has added a photo to the pool:

In de documentaire ‘Generatie Bhagwan’ keert regisseur Maroesja Perizonius terug naar toenmalige leden van de Bhagwanbeweging om hen te confronteren met kindermisbruik onder de ‘sannyasins’, een onderbelicht aspect van de vele wantoestanden die al bekend zijn uit de Bhagwancommunes.

We zouden we het bijna vergeten: op 18 maart zijn er verkiezingen voor de gemeenteraad. Met het aantreden van een nieuw kabinet en voortslepende en vers opgelaaide internationale conflicten staat de lokale politiek niet bepaald in het middelpunt van de aandacht. Ook vier jaar geleden werden de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen overschaduwd door de toen recente Russische invasie […]

Het bericht Nederlanders over de lokale politiek: best tevreden, maar weinig bekendheid verscheen eerst op StukRoodVlees.