I took this week off work but it turns out, sometimes when you freelance, taking a week off is hard. There were definitely quite a few moments when I felt like I should be working – but I also really needed the rest.
I did go out for the first Sunday carvery in a while for a friend’s birthday (and walked it off with a trip to the DIY store). On Saturday, I spent all night in the pub, also for the first time in ages. I had to walk home through the rain in a t-shirt for half an hour, but honestly, after all that muggy weather we’ve had, that felt so nice.
Less fun: Roxie managed to injure a paw by getting some grit stuck in it and she’s been having to go on shorter walks, which she has not been happy about .
Entirely unrelated, but you may have noticed I’ve made a few design changes, including updating the typefaces, as I’m trying to give this website a bit more personality.
Entertainment
Podcasts
A few weeks ago, Austrian newspaper Der Standard launched a new podcast called CEO (which honestly is a godawful name for a podcast). A recent episode featured an in-depth conversation with Brigitte Ederer, the former secretary of state who was instrumental in getting Austria to join the EU. It’s a gripping discussion about politics in the 1990s / early 2000s, and gives interesting insights into how accession talks work.
If you’re in the UK, you’ll have heard about the massive Afghan data breach, where a civil servant accidentally leaked the details of every Afghan citizen who had helped the UK army. What’s just as shocking though is the fact that the government used a super injunction to prevent journalists telling anyone anything (including that a breach or dataset existed). Lewis Goodall, the first journalist to be forced into silence by the super injunction, published a detailed breakdown of what happened and how dangerous this all is to democracy on Tuesday’s episode of The News Agents. It ought to be required listening for everyone in Britain.
Michael Rosenbaum interviewed Anson Mount on Inside of You this week. If you love Star Trek, you’ll want to listen to this anyway, but it’s also a great conversation about fatherhood, racism, and finding perspective. I highly recommend the archive of Inside of You, too, especially this conversation with Nicholas Hoult about playing Lex Luthor (as it turns out, Rosenbaum’s own portrayal of Luthor on Smallville was the first exposure that Hoult had to the character).
Movies
Speaking of Lex Luthor, I’ve finally seen Superman after that confusion earlier this month and it is so, so good . I am already looking forward to seeing it at least a second time on the silver screen. I also love that Krypto is based on Gunn’s real-life dog, Ozu, who they motion-captured to bring Kal-El’s friend to life on screen.
I’ve also finally managed to get my hands on a copy of Wish You Were Here (if you’re in the UK, you can get it on Rakuten). It’s Julia Stiles’ directorial debut, which is pretty cool, but the main reason I watched it is that it was executive produced by one of my best friends (someone else I went to school with who’s doing really cool stuff these days). It’s a solid rom-com with that early 2000s indie feel .
Music
Added to the rotation :
- Em Beihold: Brutus
- Sarafine & Ciauru: Lu Rusciu De Lu Mare1
- Thomas James White: Heal
Links
Nobody will ever convince me that tennis is a sport2 but I do love illustration and a few days ago I learnt that, every year, the French Open commission a different artist to create a poster for that year’s tournament. You can see all of them on the neatly organised Garros.gallery. There’s loads of good ones, but I think my favourite is Paul Rousteau’s 2024 poster. Side note: Rousteau’s unusual portrait photography is also phenomenal.
I love that we keep discovering new things about the early days of humanity. For example, archeologists figured out that neanderthals had a very diverse, highly localised cuisine.
A while ago, someone asked me how close we are to curing cancer (I had referenced the fact that I was writing about Moderna in 2015, long before anyone outside the science community had heard of the now famous company). This is still in animal trials, but researchers at the University of Florida have just figured out how we might use mRNA to push immunotherapy towards a universal cancer vaccine. You can find the paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Exciting stuff.
- That’s Corsican for “the sea’s rush”. I didn’t know until very recently that Corsican is a language. ↩︎
- I will not be taking any questions, thank you. ↩︎
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