I’ll be honest, I’m not feeling like writing any weeknotes today. On the one hand, I don’t want this to turn into a chore, because it’ll mean I stop doing it — and I have been enjoying it for the past few months — but on the other hand, I also know that if I don’t post something today, that’s a sure-fire way of guaranteeing I’m probably also not going to post anything next week, because doing these weeknotes isn’t quite a habit yet.1
I’ve not been up to much this week. A lot of my focus went on writing an application for that civil service job I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, because I decided to throw my hat in the ring.
Otherwise, it was somewhat of a struggle to get back into work mode. To have a change of scenery, I spent one afternoon in a coffee shop that used to be quite nice. It’s been part of a huge chain for a few years now, and I fear it’s finally ruined it. The coffee was expensive, yet everything about it tasted cheap. That’s okay, though, we’re spoiled for some really good independent cafés in our neighbourhood.
Cardiff, and my neighbourhood especially, is a diverse place, so it was a surreal experience on Saturday to be accosted by a crazy woman trying to talk to me about how the UK has lost its Christian values. Maybe she shouldn’t have picked the immigrant atheist to spout her nonsense at… Even Roxie started barking, and she loves people — the vibes really were off.
On a more positive note: we went for a lovely walk around the lake in our local park today for the first time in a while. It was a bit overcast, but that also meant the temperature was much more at my comfort level.
We also checked out the new outlet of my favourite Chinese bakery in town, which now also sells taiyaki (I’m somewhat irrationally annoyed by the fact that every influencer on Tiktok’s been calling it a Japanese bakery, even though everything else in there is Chinese and Taiwanese).
Entertainment
TV
I have finally started watching Murderbot. I’m halfway through the season, and it’s so much fun. I don’t think I’ve seen Alexander Skarsgård in much since True Blood, where I always enjoyed his acting, so that’s a nice bonus.
Side note: I was wondering if there were any major roles that I forgot about, and Skarsgård’s IMDb profile photo is just 👌🏻.
I’ve also been enjoying Almost Paradise, and by “enjoying” I mean I binged 15 episodes over the course of a couple of days. It’s a shame it got cancelled, though it seems like creator Dean Devlin’s trying to shop the show around. Still worth a watch, though, if you like over-the-top police procedurals with loveable weirdos.
The fifth season of Dirty Laundry has started and it’s as hilarious as ever. In the first episode, they serve the episode’s cocktail (an Algonquin) in a Nick & Nora glass, which it turns out is named after fictional detectives.
Movies
You can safely skip The Old Guard 2 .
I look forward to seeing Fantastic 4 in the cinema, hopefully this coming week. I didn’t feel like going to see it during the initial rush, especially since the summer holidays have started here.
Music
Added a few more songs to the rotation :
- Appleby: Panic Mode
- The Fray: My Heart’s a Crowded Room
- Old Sea Brigade: If Love Was the Answer
- Josie Edwards: Good Girls
- Earth to Eve: Threat Level Orange (I’ve actually been listening to this for a while but it was only a demo version on Soundcloud)
Links
The Kyiv Independent has a good breakdown of what Zelenskyy did this week that led to protests across the country. In short: he decided to abolish anti-corruption agencies.
Futurism makes a compelling case that the AI bubble is going to burst and when it does, it will be more disastrous than the dotcom bubble. It builds on the argument that the AI hype is not unlike the subprime mortgage crisis.
I recently came across Brazilian artist Isabela Sande, who makes fun videos where she appears together with an illustrated version of herself. She has a YouTube channel, too.
Hey, you made it all the way to the end! As a thank you, I’m going to explain the title of this week’s post to you. Hapax legomenon is officially my new favourite term. I learnt it on a recent episode of the always excellent No Such Thing as a Fish, where they were talking about the earth horn weapon – which has only ever been mentioned in one document and nobody even knows what it is. And if a word or expression only appears once within a context (and that context can be the entire language), that’s a hapax legomenon. The term wasn’t even a fact of the week – it was just a random comment from one of the hosts – but it’s the one thing from that episode that really stuck with me.
- Edit/note to future self: now that I’ve published the weeknotes, I feel better for it. ↩︎
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