dog-days

Ashkenazi Jewish data from 23andMe leaked online. Deeply, deeply sinister.

Given the horrors of the Middle East right now, it seems odd to be talking about one small thing, but anyway. The comedian Mark Steel has cancer. He's written a very fine article about it. I saw him live when he visited a town I had a connection with for some time. (The connection being the ex). One of his jokes from then ended up being kept as a running one en famille. I still remember spotting him after the show sitting/slumping in an Indian restaurant with some friends and looking completely shattered as if the adrenaline had run out of him all at once.

Don't watch videos, but the article makes it sound as if Humza Yousaf has responded well to the Israel and Gaza disaster, given that his parents-in-law are trapped in Gaza having gone there to visit a 92-year-old sick relative.

I liked Gravity Falls (Disney Plus). A brother and sister go and stay with their chancer great-uncle Stan over the summer. Adventures ensue.

Admit this made me click through to the review and look up the book online. Overindulgence with dogs, octopuses, Welsh or haunted historical buildings would also have worked.

I'm sorry. Even when it's right, it hurts. Not sure when the good time to say this is, but from how you've described him, you deserve better.

I'm just wondering what fairly bland thing I can say next that will make you hit the ceiling. Apparently, I'm mean-spirited as fuck.

Except it doesn't, because asylum seekers === immigrants in the eyes of many of the British public, so what affects one group is inevitably going to be felt by the other. If you don't want to seem "mean-spirited" and "going on a sidetrack", then just...count to ten and stop replying : )

That's not what I'm reading. "by many people it is seen as"

No, she's not. She clearly says "they're waiting for their claims for asylum to be processed". It's the British public, not Pebble, who are doing the confusing.

RIP Terence Davies. Didn't realise he was a Liverpool man till now. Tail end of the generation of actors, writers and artists who rose high from a working-class background. He wasn't young, but I hadn't expected him to go so soon. Saw Benediction (about Siegfried Sassoon) by him last year when it was in cinemas. Thought he might have one or two more films left in him. Sunset Song has been on my to-see list for a while. Will have to make time for it.

Finished Only Murders in the Building S3, which was completely daft and over-the-top, made by luvvies for luvvies, and still worked. Woke at five am feeling nauseous and sick (this always happens on Saturdays and never ever on Mondays) and it was great. The flashback to producer Donna Demeo snapping orders down the phone followed by the pull-back to show her in the process of giving birth made me laugh aloud. But it pushed even my tolerance for silliness too far when they lost the leading man and didn't have an understudy. Oliver, you're meant to be an experienced West End director, you can't not have an understudy ready! But the show did pull back from one cliché -- it didn't let the cat-loving, cardigan wearing Howard dash on stage to save the day.

I liked Season 4 in places. One of Alias's problems was that Lena Olin (actress who played Sydney's mother) didn't return for S3. Finished Ahsoka. The last episode was very blah. It felt as if Filoni urgently needs to go away and read up on writing/directing for live action versus cartoons. Still, I did like live action Ezra. There's something so pure and lightside about him, slightly other-worldly, that reminds me of Luke at his best in the OT. Plus enjoyed Huyang's dialogue with Ezra and Ahsoka's with Sabine. Hope Rosario Dawson avoids doing the crossed-armed stance in S2 if there is one. It seemed to be standing in for her doing any actual acting.

I think part of the Irish literature scene is determined to be anything but the stereotype -- write a charming comic novel with a surrealist bent? Hell no. Give us black paint, family breakdown and used syringes in an empty bottle of Guinness. Ok, I guess many people growing up had to deal with things like the Church and small-town group-think and writing is a way to process that. Still, better you than me!

Finished Desperate Undertaking (Lindsey Davis). One of the darker instalments in the Flavia Albia series, which itself generally has a somewhat grimmer tone than most of the Falco books. The murders – and there are many – are themed on deaths in Greek and Roman plays, often on ones adapted for use in the amphitheatre, including Pasiphae. I think in the Falco series, Davis either minimised through humour or carefully limited/fenced off some of the nastier aspects of Roman culture, so we saw it, but its implications, its full workings were less raw. Now Davis is less able or less inclined to turn away from it. Despite the grimness, I did enjoy it. Davis must have a truly encyclopaedic knowledge of the geography of Flavian-era Rome by now.

Thank you for reading it so that now I never need to!

Didn't realise German had taken a more authentic route with the Osmanlı Devleti than English. God knows how English got from Osman to Ottoman. Maybe some leap involving a mispronunciation of the Arabic Uthman.

Voting is open in Fat Bear Week. 806 vs 428 then from the older bears 402 vs 901.

Fat Bear Week is back! Bear 806 jr. is still at the adorable stage. He just needs a red hat and blue coat. I'm worried about Otis. He's not looking well this year. And I love Grazer's ears. They look as if someone's stuck little blonde pom-poms to her head.

The muesli experiments continue. I might make a movie about that with Ryan Gosling and Mahershala Ali. The Muesli Experiments. This morning the extra ingredient was canned rhubarb. I'd hoped for something like stewed, fresh rhubarb; the bright red shiny stuff softened in a pan by someone wholesome on Saturday morning TV, and which they claim to have taken from their garden. Actually, this was grey and none of the texture had survived the canning process. It was edible with the addition of ginger, but was still not exactly enjoyable. Won't be adding rhubarb again unless my future life features an allotment and a kitchen.

Andor is very good, though I tend to view it as not being especially Star Wars. It's a serious show and takes itself seriously. You might be bored in the first two episodes, but stick with it, because it does pay off. Clone Wars whatever you do, don't try and watch the whole thing. There are lots of online recommendations for the stand-out episodes/episode clusters. I'd put them in chronological order then go through them, though the order doesn't matter that much outside of the little story arcs within each set of episodes – only the later Clone Trooper and Ahsoka-Anakin episodes should be left till later. You'll probably quickly get an idea of which characters you want to see more of and which are like watching bantha shit dry. Clone Wars can be fun to dip into. Season 6 Episodes 1 through 4 were a highlight for me, but work better if you've seen earlier Clone Trooper episodes. What Corvinus said re Obi-Wan/The Mandalorian/Ahsoka.

Cheating by using today's Google Doodle, but it was a nice one. The best kind really – introduced me to someone I'd never heard of who did good work. Ferdinand Berthier (born September 30th 1803) was an early campaigner for the deaf and advocate of deaf culture. I went to Project Gutenberg and with the help of machine translation am skimming one of his books, a biography of the Abbe de l'Epée, the founder of what would become the National Institute for Deaf Children. The book seems quite rambling and name-checks a lot of people rather like a modern TV awards ceremony. Still, I've come across one good (not totally reliable) story in Chapter 12 through 18 – in which an abandoned deaf-mute boy of twelve or thirteen is identified as the Comte de Solar, who was assumed to have died of small pox. Berthier is very partial to the boy for the sake of his subject, de l'Epée, who championed his claim. In fact, l'Epée's ward was ultimately declared to be an imposter. When the grave of the child Solar was opened, the remains were found to possess a crooked tooth that the allies of Not-Solar had taken as proof of the stray's identity. It's called the Affaire Solar and seems fairly well-known, especially on the French internet, though has passed me by till now. In Berthier's version of the story, the fake Solar went on to join the army and died on the field of battle due to being unable to hear the signal to retreat. (One of those anecdotes that two centuries of changing tastes has made bathetic rather than tragic.)

Out of curiosity, your RL initials don't happen to be R. C. – do they? : )

V. glad you're okay, but what a crap mayor. Even a little college I worked in in the sticks a few years ago knew to send the kids home early on buses when the river was threatening to burst its banks and rain was forecast.

Indeed, have been looking at the photos on the BBC. Hope Zorral and other NYC boarders are as little affected as possible.