Tuesday 20 January 2026 to Tuesday 27 January 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “I Am a Strange Loop” Douglas Hofstadter
  The way that the sense of “I” emerges from a strange loop within our brains, where the outside world feeds into and generates patterns among the symbols and those patterns look “back” and perceive themselves. And how there’s our own strange loop in our minds, our “I”, but we also model other people, particularly those we are close to, and they in some sense existing within our minds just at a lower resolution that our own sense of self.

Podcasts

• Starship Alexandria
  Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Farscape, The Detectorists, Andor


• The History of England
  Charles II’s desire to be majestic & the Second Anglo-Dutch War, also the plague that came sweeping in from the east.


• Journey Through Time
  The last episode on Black GIs in Britain in WW2, about how the biggest flash point of trouble was Black soldiers entering relationships with white women. And the British were also divided on this, some had no problem with mixed-race relationships, some regarded that as the line that shouldn’t be crossed. And the couples were never allowed to marry, which made their children illegitimate in situations where white GIs could marry before the child was born. Which left the children visibly illegitimate which carried great social stigma for both mother & child.
  
  A series on A Christmas Carol, and the context in which Dickens wrote it, both in his life and the world in general. Scrooge is the British society of the time, chasing the profits of the Industrial Revolution to the exclusion of all that is human & humane.


• The Rest is Politics
  All Greenland all the time. They are not optimistic about the future of the world. And a brief special on Trump’s speech at Davos which did not improve their outlook. More Davos, should people boycott the World Cup, plus Jenrick’s defection, and Syria. And another brief special (crossing over with The Rest is Politics US) on Trump’s dissing of Nato troops from other countries.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  Interview with Dan Kaszeta, covering all sorts of topics about what the next year might hold in a geopolitical sense. Also an older episode on Saudi Arabia & UAE, in the context of Yemen.


• The Rest is Politics US
  A look at Trump’s speech at Davos, much less doom & gloom than the main Rest is Politics assessment. Crossover with The Rest is Politics. Brief interview with one of the Senators that went to Denmark. Minnesota, where they think Trump has flinched.


• Oh God What Now
  Trump and the potential destruction of Nato, should we be de-Americanising our lives and is it even possible? And a guest episode with Peter Apps who has written a book called “The Next World War” which was quite depressing tho at least he doesn’t think that the war is inevitable.


• Talk 90s to Me
  Christmas Number 1s of the 90s. Adidas Gazelles (a mini episode).


• The Bunker
  Weekly Wrap Up (Davos, Greenland). Start the Week (mostly Minnesota, also Starmer blocking Andy Burnhum standing in a by-election).


• Empire
  St Nicholas, his life and his body being stolen after his death. Alice Seely Harris, the photographer who exposed the atrocities of Leopold II’s regime in Congo.


• The Rest is Science
  Also briefly the life and body stealing of St. Nick, but rather more leaning in to was there once a time when a human could’ve visited all the other humans and given them gifts in one night (no). How the smell of Christmas trees that we so enjoy is actually the tree equivalent of screaming, and some tactile illusions illustrating how our perception of reality is really a model in our brains. Calendars & timekeeping.


• A History of Philosophy
  Pascal, a brief overview of his scientific achievements, and his turn to spiritual matters.


• The History of Ancient Egypt
  Roundup of news from current fieldwork in Egypt.


• The History of China
  The pressures in the empire are beginning to show up in practical ways – rebellions by the Miao people, the rise of the Triads, the rise of the White Lotus.


• The History of Byzantium
  Interview with the host of The History of Bulgaria podcast, who has just published a book on the first Bulgarian state, which overlaps quite a lot with the contemporary Byzantine history.

TV

• The Great Philosophers
  Bryan Magee talking to Geoffrey Warnock about Kant and Kant’s ideas. Next episode was Bryan Magee talking to Peter Singer about Hegel & Marx.


• Newcastle v. PSV (3-0)


• The Age of Uncertainty
  Keynes, Keynesianism and its triumphs & flaws.


• The War Between the Land and the Sea
  Finale. Not sure how I feel about that overall, was rather more downbeat than I was expecting which colours my reaction (particularly in juxtaposition with the way this season of reality is more downbeat than I was expecting).

Music

• Now Alternative 80s

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did a Tier 61 Pit, so edging up slowly. Also killing off the Lesser Evils for one of the bits of Rank VII, have ticked off enough Belials, enough Duriels, and 4/6 Andariels and 3/6 Azmodans.

Comments

[magid]

I hadn’t realized that about the Christmas tree smell; it’s really sad :-(

[mousetrappling]

To be fair that's a pretty glib way to put it – it's definitely a distress response to having been cut down, but I think it's not right to say that the tree feels pain, there's no consciousness there to experience it, so "scream" has connotations that aren't correct in this instance. Of course someone who believes in panpsychism would disagree with me (that's the idea that everything in the universe is conscious even down to electrons etc) but personally I've not found that argument convincing when I've learnt about it.