Thom Beckett

Morning all. We’re sticking with Monday delivery for now. There didn’t seem a lot of point in changing it until I’ve had the timing change for a few weeks. Let me know if it does/doesn’t work for you.

For those excited about my personal news, I’m on leave for the next two weeks so you can see if that changes the content I find. I’m planning to do very little indeed and certainly am not travelling anywhere. I’m very much looking forward to it. Now onto some stuff I’ve found this week.

Links

I can't get enough of reading about Crossrail's engineering, and this article doesn't disappoint. It really gets to the heart of the scale of the project, which will expand the tube network by 10%
Man has tiny hole in curtains, room turns into camera obscura
Patrick Willems makes a pretty persuasive case as to why the OC is great. As with most of his recent videos, it contains an ongoing story which you can skip if you feel so inclined. The main content is excellent.
Michael Hobbes (formerly of the You're Wrong About podcast) expertly dismantles a New York Times piece on cancel culture.
Data from Am I The Asshole on Reddit (for those unaware, a poster will share a situation, asking the question at the end whether they, or usually one other specific person is “the asshole”. Basically, it's an argument-solver): "Male posters were significantly more likely to be the assholes. They made up only 23% of the NTA [not the asshole] posts but 60% of the YTA [yes, the asshole] posts." You do surprise me.
There's a fly species that's about as big as your fingers. I’ll warn you that there's a pretty good chance you don't actually want to click on that link. The flies are going to get added to my list of animals that I'd turn a bit of a blind eye to becoming extinct. Currently the Coconut Crab is the other member.
There's some great form-replies to criticism here. I like H.L Mencken's "You may be right". Might use that for Twitter arguments in the future.
A gorilla in a Chicago zoo spends too much time looking at the phone screens of visitors. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Listening

This week, I've been revisiting a 2011 track by the band Girls. It's called Vomit, which perhaps might not be a word that entices, but this is one of my favourite tracks of the last decade or so. It starts off with a a dark guitar-led verse that drags and sways before dropping into a chorus that foreshadows the gospel coda where this song is going to meet its glorious end. The second arrival of the chorus tests the gospel waters even further, as a choir grows in the mix. In between we get an acid-infused psychedelic guitar solo before the real show begins.

The song takes one final reset in the form of a middle eight with the descending bassline that will drop us into the coda which is nothing but "come into my heart, my love" over and over and the song finally gives up and becomes the beautiful gospel track it was always destined to be. A Hammond Organ heralds the arrival of a freestyle vocal solo and the coda swells and grows until you wonder if the final rebellion against this beautifully crafted song was titling it "Vomit". A true classic. (Spotify,  Music, YouTube)

Reading

I started reading The Story of Wivenhoe this week. I’m not even going to link it, because it’s very out of print. It's by Nicholas Butler and was published in the late 1980s. It's quite a serious book and doesn't have the fun, if dubiously-sourced joy that some of Martin Newell's Wivenhoe books have, but it seems well-researched. It has informed me that my street name (Valfreda Way) was actually a misspelling of a yacht that was built in Wivenhoe, the Valfriya.

I accept that a book about the town that I live in, that isn't in print any more, isn't much of a recommendation, but I'd suggest seeing if you can find something equivalent for your own area. There are a surprisingly large number of local history books available if you look around. Their quality can vary dramatically, but it's great to learn more about the history of where you live.

Also, Wivenhoe is lovely. I very much recommend it.

Watching

There's a new series of Taskmaster this week, the first episode was on Friday. Taskmaster is one of my favourite comedy shows . The guests are as good a collection of well-known and up-and-coming comedians that you could hope for, and the tasks set by (little) Alex Horne are well-crafted to make for great TV. All 4 has all the old series, including those produced for Dave. I particularly recommend the series with Bob Mortimer, who is reliably hilarious throughout his series. You can see some of his best bits here. His piss-graph (at the end of the previous video) is one of the funniest things on TV over the last few years for my money.

Quote

“From the bathtub to the bathtub I have uttered stuff and nonsense.” This is the bathtub in which the baby is washed at birth and the bathtub in which the corpse is washed before burial.
Alan Watts, Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life