Monday, May 4, 2026 — Edition No. 80 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 80 · Monday, May 4, 2026

Today’s outlook: Big strides, big hearts, big screens

News Scotland

A Mighty Stride for Lauchlan: family raise more than £10,000 in memory of football-mad son

Team Lauchlan walked 23 miles across Glasgow at the weekend to thank the children's hospital charity that cared for 11-year-old Lauchlan Thomson

By Helen Cooper

It took Kate and Craig Thomson eight hours to walk from Glasgow Green to Balloch on Sunday. By the time they crossed the finish line at Loch Lomond, the seven-strong "Team Lauchlan" had raised more than £10,500 for Glasgow Children's Hospital Charity — in memory of their football-mad son.

Lauchlan Thomson was 11 when he died on 7 November last year, just over a month after being diagnosed with leukaemia. His parents had noticed him growing paler, and a lump developing in his cheek. By 4 October the illness had a name. A little over a month later, he was gone.

On Sunday, his family pulled on their trainers for the Glasgow Kiltwalk and tackled the 23-mile Mighty Stride — the toughest of the event's three routes — alongside friends Lindsay and Gary Hammond, Peter McGowan, Amanda Gillies and Sarah McMaster.

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News Scotland

There can be only one Scotland: Highlander remake brings Cavill, Gillan and Crowe to the Highlands

Forty years on from the cult original, Hollywood's biggest names are filming at Eilean Donan, Glen Coe and Skye — and locals are loving every minute

By Damien Day

The mist is rolling off Eilean Donan, a Hollywood camera crew is setting up on the causeway, and somewhere in a Fort William supermarket Russell Crowe is looking for a pint of milk. Scotland, it seems, is once again the star of the show.

Forty years after Christopher Lambert and Sir Sean Connery taught the world that “there can be only one,” a new generation of A-listers has descended on the Highlands to remake the 1986 cult classic Highlander — and the locations doing the heavy lifting are the same ones that made the original unforgettable.

Henry Cavill, the former Superman, leads the cast as immortal Scottish warrior Connor MacLeod. He has been filming at Eilean Donan Castle, the postcard-perfect fortress at Dornie that featured in the original. Inverness-born Karen Gillan, of Doctor Who and Guardians of the Galaxy fame, has been spotted on set there too — a homecoming of sorts for one of the Highlands’ best-known exports. Russell Crowe, taking on the role of mentor Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (originally played by Connery), has been gamely posing for selfies in cafés around Kintail.

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What's On Glasgow

Two nights only: Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story lands at the Pavilion

The multi-award-winning West End musical brings That'll Be The Day, Oh Boy and Peggy Sue to Renfield Street on 11 and 12 May.

News Glasgow

Hundreds march through Glasgow on 100th anniversary of the General Strike

May Day rally from Barrowland to the West End marks a century since 1926, as Glasgow Trades Council celebrates workers past and present

By Helen Cooper

One hundred years to the day since Britain's coal miners and their allies downed tools in the 1926 General Strike, hundreds of Glaswegians took to the streets on Sunday to mark May Day 2026 — and to remind the city that the trade union movement is still very much alive.

The march set off from Barrowland Park and wound its way along Ingram Street, through George Square and up St Vincent Street, before rallying at the Glasgow University Union in the West End. Pipes from the Saint Frances Pipe Band and the Kinneil Band carried over the crowd, which the Glasgow Times reported numbered in the hundreds.

Organised by Glasgow Trades Council — the body that has represented the city's workers since 1857 and now speaks for more than 400,000 of them — this year's rally drew members of Unison Scotland, Unite the Union's hospital sector and the tenants' union Living Rent.

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AI News

Meta to Beam Sunlight From Space as AI Spending Rockets to $145 Billion

Zuckerberg's $145bn AI splurge includes plans for orbital solar farms 22,000 miles up — and Wall Street isn't entirely convinced

By Damien Day

Mark Zuckerberg wants to plug his AI into the sun.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Meta has reserved up to a gigawatt of solar power harvested by satellites in geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles above the Earth, to be beamed down as near-infrared light to feed the company's ravenous data centres. The first orbital demonstration is pencilled in for 2028, with commercial juice flowing by around 2030 — assuming the physics, the engineering and the accountants all play nicely.

It is the most science-fiction line item in what is shaping up to be the most expensive year in Meta's history.

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Audio Equipment

May 2026 audio gear: streaming gets serious, R2R returns, and Sennheiser closes the door

Pro-Ject's WiiM-powered streamers, Fiio's resistor-ladder flagship and a new closed-back from Sennheiser headline a month that rewards both hobbyists and working pros

By Damien Day

Three trends are quietly reshaping the desktop and listening room in 2026: streaming has stopped being a bolt-on and become the source; the resistor-ladder DAC — a chunky, old-school way of turning ones and zeroes into music — is having a full-blown revival; and closed-back monitoring, long the poor cousin of the open-back studio headphone, is finally getting flagship treatment.

Three new pieces of kit landing this month neatly embody all of it. Here is what they are, and — more importantly — who they are for.

Pro-Ject has built its reputation on turntables, so it is telling that the Austrian brand has gone all-in on network streaming. Both new boxes run WiiM OS, the same lean, well-regarded streaming platform that has been quietly eating the budget streamer market, with native Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Qobuz Connect support out of the box.

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