Taylor Tomlinson saved me

I’ve spent the weekend in London, coming down primarily to see Taylor Tomlinson at the Apollo Hammersmith. It was everything I could have hoped for, my jaw still hurts from laughing so much. It was very queer, it was very anti-Christian, it was very millennial.

At the end, she also played a home video of herself as a three-year-old and it’s the single cutest way I’ve ever seen a show end.

Her support act, Sophie Buddle, was also hilarious.

Also, utterly wild, Tomlinson reposted my image on Instagram. I know this happens all the time after gigs but it was a sold out gig and it’s pretty damn cool I was one of only a handful she reposted.

While I was in London, I also took the opportunity to finally check out the city’s only Austrian restaurant, Kipferl, and it did not disappoint (yes, I had a Kaiserschmarrn for dessert, and no, I will not apologise).

Life

The rest of the week was somewhat uneventful, also because there was another heatwave with more than 30°, which, coupled with the high humidity that Cardiff always has, made me feel less than human. (I hate the heat anyway, to be fair.)

I did take an afternoon off work to go for a walk on Tuesday though. I’ve been in desperate need of a holiday (and I am taking this coming week off). I wandered around Bute Park, the 53-hectare central park in Cardiff, for a few hours to try to recharge for the remainder of the week. My walk was fuelled by the new outlet of my favourite coffee shop, which is very conveniently located next to the castle right by the entrance to the park.

Entertainment

Podcasts

ABC (the Australian broadcaster, not the US network) makes a lot of really good podcasts. Science Friction is one of those and their most recent focus on brain rot was utterly fascinating. The episode on humans having relationships with AI freaked me out a little, to be honest. Start with episode one here.

I find The Ezra Klein Show a bit hit-and-miss, but one of the most recent episodes had a great discussion with Kyla Scanlon, who’s a young economist who hadn’t been on my radar before. It’s absolutely worth an hour of your time – I also enjoyed how she challenged Klein on occasion, which is the kind of energy I wish more of his guests brought to the show.

From a little while ago, but EU Scream had an interesting conversation on kicking Hungary out of the union. It’s more political thought experiment than rallying cry, and I cannot say I agree with it all, but they did make a few good points about how democracy could be strengthened in Europe.

If you speak German, BR did an investigative series on where the man on the Döner bags comes from. Turns out, that is a really difficult question.

If you speak Luxembourgish, the latest episode of Gëlle Fro is worth listening to. I find the podcast hit and miss, and the episode isn’t perfect, but their guest this time was Caroline Mart and the conversation is a really fascinating insight into one of the country’s foremost journalists.

Music

Added to the playlist this week:

Links

I’ve banged on about how amazing the most recent season series season1 of Taskmaster was and this is a hilarious breakdown of why the show works so well and why the US remake was such a disaster.

OK, another one from Defector, because I had never heard of the Twinks vs Dolls Olympics before. It’s an annual wrestling championship involving gay men and trans women, and there’s a different lubricant involved every year (this year, it was nacho cheese). It’s also an anti-fascist celebration, and if I had any inclination to go back to the US, I’d add this to my tour.

And finally, some intriguing thoughts on search engine optimisation (or lack thereof). I’ve been preoccupied with SEO for my professional website, and it’s draining because 90% is contradictory and the other 10% also makes no sense (and even Google’s lying to us about SEO). I do use a plugin on my blog, but it’s set to default settings, and I haven’t looked at it in years – it’s mainly there to ensure images appear when someone shares my posts on social media.

  1. Sorry, not sorry, even after two decades in the UK, I cannot bring myself to call it a “series”. ↩︎

Fediverse reactions

Comments

  1. Thierry to the rescue when I’m running low on podcasts :) I was expecting the Döner Papers to be one episode, but no, it’s a whole mini-series!

    1. Ha, always happy to recommend stuff. If there is anything I have too much of, it’s podcasts in my queue. 😆

  2. […] der éischter Folleg sinn dat d’Stevie Martin an d’Fatiha El-Ghorri, déi spéitstens säit der leschter Staffel Taskmaster bekannt […]

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