Thom Beckett

My final week of leave went by very quickly and the weather wasn’t quite so good, but it was, nevertheless, a wonderfully relaxing time and I’m almost looking forward to getting back (whilst also realising how well-suited I’d be to an aristocratic life of luxury without commitments). Anyway, here’s what my restful week has produced for you.

Links

It's not a dead cat. Sam Freedman patiently explains that pretty much every time calls something an example of the "dead cat" strategy, it's not. I really couldn't agree more. I find it particularly stupid when people claim that a minor story is being distracted by another story that's catastrophically damaging to the party in question. Most of the examples seem like the equivalent of forgetting someone’s name and covering it up by shitting yourself.
Do people get radicalised by YouTube algorithm suggestions? Not really - people who find extremist content tend to be looking for it or have "high prior levels of gender and racial resentment", and those without those priors that stumble across it tend to ignore it.
A Guardian profile (from March) of Angela Gallop, a leading forensic scientist in the UK. Fascinating, and depressing on the current state of UK forensics.
Helen Lewis writes in The Atlantic about Europe's ex-royals. I guess it never really occurred to me quite how many of them there might have been.
Robin Sloan has some thoughts on Musk's purchase of Twitter. It's full of great insights. "His substantial success launching reusable spaceships does nothing to prepare him for the challenge of building social spaces. The latter calls on every liberal art at once, while the former is just rocket science." And perhaps most of all "The speed with which Twitter recedes in your mind will shock you. Like a demon from a folktale, the kind that only gains power when you invite it into your home, the platform melts like mist when that invitation is rescinded."
Try out an AI that will generate images from text (e.g. "old master painting of a polluting factory" works pretty well). There's lot of fun to be had here.

Listening

I had a friend over for a drink this week, and as usual we exchanged some of the songs we’ve been listening to recently since a lot of our conversation tends to revolve around music. Coincidentally, I’d been looking into make a playlist of Beatles covers so it was great to be given this example, a cover of Lennon’s Dear Prudence covered by The Five Stairsteps (Spotify,  Music, YouTube) which maintains the interest of the original in a different, funky setting. Watch out for a full playlist in a few week’s time.

Reading

I really enjoyed listening to Ezra Klein talk to Emily St. John Mandel about Station Eleven and her new novel, Sea of Tranquility. What doesn't get much of an outing (I'm not even sure if it's mentioned?) is my favourite book of hers, The Glass Hotel which is a wonderfully well-told mystery which was published in 2020. It has a dark and somewhat distant telling, but the story winds itself around you very effectively. Well worth checking out.

Watching

It’s that time of year when Gardeners' World is back on our screens and I am unequivocally a massive fan. Indeed, I might go as far to say that it’s my favourite programme on TV. It’s certainly the one I look forward to the most. It’s slow and methodical, informative and interesting, and matched with some of the most beautifully filmed shots in hundreds of gardens. Monty Don is welcoming and delightful throughout and there’s never a sense in which the deep knowledge about gardening the presenters all have is used to belittle or patronise the audience or contributors. It’s comforting, delightful TV and it’s on every single week for almost the whole year.

Quote

Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler