williamjm

The latest count is three people dead (including the train's driver and conductor). The pictures do look horrific. I suspect if this had happened at any other time then there could have been many more casualties. The pandemic and in particular the Aberdeen lockdown may well have made the service much less busy than it would have been in normal times.

I watched Taxi (the late 90s French film, not the American remake). The car chases were fun, but the comedy was very hit and miss and some of it has really not aged well. No matter how much he wanted to be a driver I'm not sure I buy the lead character turning down Marion Cottilard so many times during the film. I think the first film might was probably the best of them but I remember enjoying all of them.

He'd probably have to be in isolation for a few days if he was going to come back into the team bubble again although it doesn't look like he's going to play any more this summer. I suppose as well as Crawley another possible replacement could be to bring in Ben Foakes and have Buttler plays as a specialist batsman.

To be fair, it's not even been a single year yet so it might be a bit soon to expect Rothfuss to have written anything.

I think it was Carlos Sainz who had the bad pitstop if I remember correctly.

Ben Stokes is going to miss the rest of the series because he is flying to New Zealand for family reasons. It's fortunate for England that Buttler and Woakes seem to have some good batting form now to make up for some of the loss of batting. Presumably Crawley will return at number 3 to fill the place, but Stokes is a difficult player to replace.

I was wondering if it might be something like that. It is unfortunate although I guess he probably only lost one place because of it since Albon seemed to be flying at the end and might well have overtaken him anyway.

It's nice to see that there's something they're not actually perfect at. Red Bull did seem to out-think them this weekend although maybe Verstappen would still have won anyway if he had done the same strategy as the Mercs. Good drive from Le Clerc as well to get fourth, probably about the best a Ferrari could have hoped for. Hulkenberg managed to get to both the start line and finish line this time and seemed to be driving well although I'm not sure I understand the strategy behind the late pitstop that dropped him behind Stroll. Vettel again seemed to be there just to make up the numbers. The strategists will probably now be pouring over the forecast for Barcelona next week to see how hot it will be.

I think on rewatching the film that seemed like the most likely interpretation, that even the scenes where we think he's planning the heist are in a dreamworld. I'm not sure I find that interpretation to be the most satisfying dramatically because it makes much of the film feel a bit pointless but I suspect it was what Nolan was going for. I think at times the film is maybe trying to be a bit too clever for its own good but I still enjoy it even if I don't think it's Nolan's best.

I wondered about Nelson Piquet but apparently he won his first races in the 1980 season (and last in 1991). While they would technically have a chance I'm not sure I see much prospect of Vettel or Raikkonen managing to equal Hamilton's feat this year.

I thought England had a chance, but I wouldn't have picked a big partnership between Buttler and Woakes as the most likely route to victory. They've both struggled a bit with the bat over the last years or so but they really played well today. Pakistan didn't seem to bowl particularly badly or making glaring mistakes in the field although I've heard some criticism of the tactics. They must also be regretting their low third innings total which in retrospect is where the game was really lost. It was a very good Test with big swings of momentum. Hopefully the rest of the series will produce more of the same.

He did have a pole position for Williams once.

It was looking like it might be another case of Hamilton dominating but Bottas managed to get ahead of him at the end. It might make the race tomorrow a bit more contested, although it's hard to see any winner that's not in a Mercedes unless something unexpected happens (of course, that very nearly happened last week). Good to see Hulkenberg managing to get best-of-the-rest. It's an impressive improvement on last week and he was clearly faster than Stroll this time. Hopefully he'll actually get to start this race as well.

It came out about a year ago. I think some of the stories were newly published along with collecting some from the past few years. He doesn't seem particularly prolific in terms of writing pace.

I think The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate might have been my favourite. Was the longest one the one with the virtual pets? I thought that was OK, but perhaps the idea wasn't quite as compelling as some of the other stories.