williamjm

I think the Doctor and Ruby were the highlight of the two episodes. Space Babies was fine as a lightweight episode but with only eight episodes feels like a bit of a waste of one of them. The Devil's Chord was a lot more fun and creative. The plot did conveniently mean that they could include the Beatles without having to license any of the Beatles music.

I saw a statistic that he's played in over 20% of the Test matches England have ever played. I know they play more tests now than they used to, but it's still a crazy statistic.

There's probably some small print somewhere on the leaflet.

You might get another opportunity tonight.

Black Pudding is definitely not what most people think of as pudding.

This seems to have been a fake: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd13dz1pk6qo

She does seem like she would be better suited to the Reform party, but perhaps wanted to be in a party that might actually win something.

My granny was probably the same, I imagine my Dad probably got fed the same things when he was a child.

I think my granny did something similar with corned beef, and that's a food that I'd be happy to never have again.

I finished Jodi Taylor's Symphony of Echoes, the second part of her Chronicles of St Mary's series of time travel stories. Like the first book it is a quick and fun read, but also frustrating at times. Although often quite light-hearted it does have some darker moments in it but because it is bouncing from one plotline to another so quickly the attempts at more serious dramatic moments often lack weight. For example, near the end of the book the main character has to grapple with the moral consequences of preserving the historical timeline and they are disturbed by what they are having to do but there's very little time spent reflecting on this. The increasingly contrived roadblocks to the relationship between the main character and her love interest are also very tedious. I've now started Ann Leckie's short collection, Lake of Souls. So far, the title story's first contact tale is the highlight.

A great win for Lando Norris in Miami. He definitely got some luck with the timing of the safety car playing into his hands perfectly but he had good pace before that and afterwards managed to comfortably pull away from Verstappen. Newer tyres would have helped Norris, but it seems surprising that Verstappen wasn't able to threaten him at all. Piastri was also driving a strong race in the first stint so things seem to be looking good for McLaren.

It seems a bit unfair to blame George Lucas for a movie he had no involvement with.

It is usually their friend but the Tory vote has dropped enough that FPTP is really hurting them now. They have a lot more votes in total than the Lib Dems but because the Lib Dem vote is much more concentrated in particular areas they are getting more councillors. They also control twice the councils the Tories do now (out of those that were voting this year). A similar thing will likely happen in the General Election, probably not to the same extent but the Lib Dems can do a lot of damage to the Tories in seats where Labour aren't in contention. It also seems a bad set of results for the Reform party, for all the hype about them they only got two councillors, less even than George Galloway's party.

I finished Emily Tesh's space opera Some Desperate Glory, which I thought was a very good first novel. The protagonist has been raised on a space station populated by a few thousand humans where every moment of their lives is focused on preparing to fight against a galactic civilisation with a population in the trillions. Their education has been mostly indoctrination so that she will serve loyally in the military so it can be frustrating perspective to read at first because they initially find it very difficult to comprehend anything that doesn't fit with their training. Her understanding of the world she has been raised in and the wider world outside it does evolve through the course of the book, and as a result the book does become more enjoyable to read as it goes along. This is a standalone story and a lot happens in its 400+ pages, while some of the early plot developments might be predictable there are some big twists in the second half of the book. I thought the characterisation was good, there is one character who does seem to be an outright villain but other than that the other characters do have believable motivations even when they might sometimes be doing horrific things. I'm now reading Jodi Taylor's A Symphony of Echoes. Like the first book in the series the plot is progressing at a breakneck pace, the first subplot featuring an unwise use of time travel to investigate the Jack the Ripper murders was creepy and surprising but it's barely been resolved before the next subplot kicks off.

You would need even more if you drank every time someone mentioned 'The Hive'.