Tim Leach

Yeah, fundamentally you've got to beat the addictive dopamine machine in your pocket, and that's a very big ask for sitting in a run down youth club/shivering in a bus shelter whilst Margaret and Kevin from number 77 stare daggers at you for deigning to be out in public.

That's a really interesting hypothesis - I assume someone's doing research in this field, will be fascinating to see the eventual outcomes. (It makes intuitive sense, though that of course is no proof of anything on its own.)

Oh yeah, I think it ultimately doesn't quite work, but it's a really interesting failure. Amazing actors, some brilliant performances, the design is amazing, the score is brilliant, some cracking scenes...but something goes wrong in the structure and storytelling.

The decision to use so much of the internal dialogue from the book (as voiceovers) was truly baffling. Those poor actors, having to stand there and look thoughtful/constipated, whilst the voice over said exactly what they were thinking.

"Typical of Le Conte's bourgeois, secretly authorisation, quasi-leftist politics that she has the audacity to tell us what to do with our bodies! Tumours are workers too, her miracle drug is class treachery."

The Golden Compass is an interesting counter example of what could have happened with HP (Northern Lights wasn't quite the cultural phenomenon that Harry Potter was, but you'd have thought that an adaptation of those books with Kidman, Craig, Eva Green etc would be a license to print money).

Ah amazing, my partner and I wanted to go to that but the dates didn't quite line up, we're hoping to get to the next one in Kyrgyzstan next year! Favourite event that you saw?

Side note, but how cool is Kazakhstan? Went there last year, such a fascinating place...

Yeah, the problem is the fire hose of algorithmic shit that people are spraying their brains with every day, because being angry and wrong is more psychologically satisfying and addictive than being boringly correct.

Yeah, just parking the moral implications for a moment I was curious about logistics, presumably we're not flying planes into Kabul at the moment. Would the plan be to fly them to Pakistan and bus them to the border? Seems somewhat exciting, to put it mildly.

a close up of a man 's face with the words tell me written on it ALT: a close up of a man 's face with the words tell me written on it

I go to bat for the first Thor film, I think it's really charming and fun, and the scene with Hiddleston and Hopkins is genuinely moving.

Bat find stops march of Warhammer development A tiny visitor holds up work at the company famous for making fantasy wargaming miniatures.

Winged Skaven causes chaos, yes-yes: share.google/LSlRMtvFoh6m...

Yeah, unless the polling has changed significantly since the last time I looked, the crackdown on the rioters is one of the few relatively popular things that the government has done.

Lots of British people hate immigrants, unfortunately, but loads more hate rioting and public disorder.

Yeah, it's very bleak, how exciting mob violence is, how easy it is to get caught up in it. Perhaps it served some kind of social or evolutionary function a long, long time ago, but it's a serious liability now.

People nipping over the road to go to the supermarket Nd grab a few beers, then coming back to the riot. Like being at a festival, a lovely day in the sun, only it ended with them trying to burn down a hotel with people in it.

For him, that was the hardest thing to see - the riot started with a relatively small group of hardcore outside agitators, as expected, but the mob built quite organically after that.

I spoke a counterprotestor at the Rotherham riot, and was very struck by how he described the mob gradually building throughout the day, people like the woman in this article turning up with their kids, everyone caught up in the mob violence. Extremely disturbing to witness.

I remember talking to a guy who was at the Rotherham counterprotest, and him saying how immensely disturbing it was to see how the riot gradually grew, normal people turning up with their kids for a grand day out, clearly excited by the violence. Fascinating to read about it from the other side.

The logistics would be pretty interesting. I'm assuming we're not currently flying any planes to Afghanistan? Is the plan to fly into Pakistan and bus them to the border?

Yeah, if the incentives to be more racist are both practical (it helps me to amass political power) and psychological (I get the dopamine hit of likes from my supporters and delicious outrage from my enemies), a lot of mildly racist people can become much nastier very quickly.

That's fascinating. The whole Elon Musk phenomenon has got me interested in the 'edgelord to Nazi' pipeline, where someone's delight in transgression and causing outrage in the normies leads them to ever more extreme political positions.

I still think about that piece from time to time, it's really, really good.

Arcane, The Expanse, The Last of Us, Chernobyl, Watchmen. And Riverdale, obviously.

43. Maigret's First Case, Georges Simenon

Great stuff, as always with Simenon. Going back to Maigret's youth makes for a refreshing change of pace, as he wrangles with the classic young man problems of self-doubt and being at the bottom of an uncaring hierarchy.

42. Mattimeo, Brian Jacques

Another joyous trip down memory lane, and again the audiobook version is really quite wonderful, like having your dad read you a bedtime story, hamming it up all the way through.

41. The Sanctuary Sparrow, Ellis Peters

Another day, another Cadfael. This one a little more by the numbers than some of the others in the series, but still with lots of very beautiful flashes of insight and kindness that are the hallmark of the series.

Plus, the people that tend to rise up the ranks do so by pleasing their superiors. They're predisposed to fawn to power, on the whole - defiance is a relatively alien concept.

Yeah, it's depressing. I've heard that very flat lighting is often imposed from above as it allows for more fiddling and editing in post (makes it easier to transpose a character to a different place, add CGI elements and tweaks, or work in front of a green screen).