Tuesday 3 February 2026 to Tuesday 10 February 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “His Face is the Sun” Michelle Jabès Corpora
  
  Finished Thursday 5 February 2026. The fantasy ancient Egyptian setting is very well done, she clearly spent a lot of time both learning about ancient Egypt and putting thought into how to make it different but still recognisable. It’s a story with a prophecy and four point of view characters who it becomes clear are part of how this prophecy will work out. They could be stock types (the Princess, the Priestess, the Warrior, the Desert Nomad) but actually are more well rounded than that. Right up until the last couple of chapters I thought everything was very clearly telegraphed & was just chalking that up to “well, it’s YA” and then two things I totally didn’t expect happened, so that was rather well done. A piece of fluff, but I enjoyed it, and will look for book 2 in the library when it comes out.


• “There Is No Antimemetics Division” qntm
  
  Finished Monday 9 February 2026. Quite a mindbending book, and difficult to know how to write anything about it. It’s SFF, and in the same genre space as the X-files and Charlie Stross’s Laundry Files series. There’s an Organisation, that’s a part of the British civil service in the same way that MI5 or MI6 are. But they deal in ideas that are infectious (memes in the original sense of the word dialled up to 11) and ideas that simply cannot be known/remembered. Many (most?) are hostile but how can you fight back if you can’t remember what your opponent is? I enjoyed this, and I should re-read it at some point when I can remember my first read through as I suspect a lot will land differently when you know where it’s going.


• “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple
  
  Just started this so not much to say, on the Empire podcast he’s positioned this book as not quite a counterpoint to Frankopan’s “The Silk Road” but more of a “yes, and”.

Podcasts

• Empire
  
  Second episode about the First Indian War of Independence, where one of the key points is that for the people concerned it’s about religion even tho there are all the other problems that colonialism brings, it’s the perceived attack on their faiths that triggers the uprising. Third episode, which was about the Kanpur massacre, an atrocity committed by the Indians against the British civilians living in Kanpur, which lived on in the imagination of the British for decades after (and was met by atrocities from the British). Fourth episode, which was the First Siege of Lucknow which they characterise as the best of the rebels vs. the best of the British, so both attack & defence are better organised.


• The Rest is Science
  
  Levitation by sound (so long as you’re a tiny piece of polystyrene that is). Smell, why you can’t smell the inside of your own nose, super smellers. Erdõs numbers, and Erdõs as the most peculiar scientist/mathematician they could think of, is there a way to describe “left” or “right” without reference to anything human e.g. some intrinsic property of the universe (yes, it’s to do with the weak force), Hannah Fry owns the prop used in Devs for the quantum computer.


• Journey Through Time
  
  Second & third episodes about The Spanish Civil War, the make up of the International Brigades – the volunteers who came to fight the fascists, I hadn’t known that one of the key problems for the Republicans in the war was that the part of the army that had military experience was the part that were with Franco. And then the beginning of the war proper. I don’t think I’d known before that this was also the beginning of Kim Philby’s spying career, he’s ostensibly here as a journalist embedded with Franco’s forces, but is also working for the Soviets already. Fourth episode is about Orwell’s time in Spain, where he is with a different group that are against Franco.


• The Rest is Politics
  
  The Epstein files, with a particular focus on how even if you set aside the vile sexual predation this was a network of corruption on an incredible scale. Iran, whether the Americans will intervene and whether that will be a good idea, the Melania film. A mini extra episode of Alastair Campbell reacting to the whole Mandelson thing. A broader exploration of what the Mandelson part of the Epstein scandal says about how the world is run.


• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  
  The geopolitical situation in the Arctic.


• The Bunker
  
  How the War in Ukraine is going from the Russian perspective, and how it’s essentially the same as it was this time last year. Weekly wrap up (with a lot about the fallout of Peter Mandelson’s Epstein connections). A look forward to 2026 in Trump’s US (aired shortly after Venezuela). Racism in Britain (aired not long after the Farage allegations). Start the Week (more about the fallout from the Mandelson revelations).


• Starship Alexandria
  
  Back to their normal episodes, this one is an in depth look at the film Godzilla Minus One.


• Oh God What Now
  
  Peter Mandleson and the latest release from the Epstein files. An extra episode about the resignation of Morgan McSweeney.


• The History of China
  
  The build up to the first Opium War, trade imbalances that upset the mercantile nature of both England and China, and the English turn to selling drugs.


• The Rest is Politics US
  
  The Washington Post, more on the Epstein files, hints that the Trump regime is losing support by losing touch with what normal people think about what they’re doing.


• The History of Philosophy
  
  Pascal’s Wager, and some of the push back it receives.


• The Rest is Politics Leading
  
  An interview with the President of Moldova, who came across very well.


• Talk ’90s to Me
  
  About TFI Friday (which I never watched back in the day).


• The History of England
  
  1666, the year London burned and more of the Anglo-Dutch war.


• The History of England Shedcasts
  
  One of the Birth of Britain episodes – Britain after the Romans were established, how much different areas integrated, how religion worked & how much it integrated, the way that Britain became a great place to launch your bid for becoming Emperor.


• The History of Byzantium
  
  The second set of five influential people in the Byzantine empire.


• Origin Story
  
  The history and politics of the Blue Labour movement (Maurice Glasman sounds both nuts & somewhat reminiscent of Matt Goodwin’s radicalisation).

TV

• The Age of Uncertainty
  
  An episode about corporations and how their power structures have evolved into a thing of committees where the individual people are more interchangeable than the myth of the one guy at the top directing operations. I quibbled about this afterwards, but J pointed out that all my counter-examples are essentially a new layer of corporations who are still in the earlier phases, the ones Galbraith is talking about still exist the way he was talking about them.


• Digging for Britain
  
  The East of England and the Southeast – the highlights were a carnyx & boar standard dug up at an Iceni site, and the many different finds at Sizewell where the new nuclear power station is being built. Most of the programme was about the latter, and they have found stuff from 40kya all the way through to the Second World War.


• Guitar Heroes at the BBC
  
  Episode 6, which is the last one. This is basically an hour of music performances previously shown on the BBC, loosely fitting a theme of “has a good guitarist” (or perhaps just “has a guitarist you’ve heard of” and sometimes that’s for being a guitarist). With the occasional bit of commentary via captions (sometimes snarky, sometimes just a factoid to make you boggle, like the woman who is now a chainsaw artist). Fun, shallow, and often most entertaining for the “what is he wearing‽” nature of the 70s.


• Empire with David Olusoga
  
  Episode 1 – the beginnings of the British Empire, as merchants form joint stock companies to trade in the east and colonists set sail to make homes in the west. I know this history but haven’t previously quite framed it as the two things happening simultaneously. It all ends up the same though, exploiting other places for profit ­ growing cash crops in the Caribbean (sugar) and Virginia (tobacco) using slave labour, and ruling over parts of India extracting goods & taxes and failing to look after the people who are producing the wealth.


• The Great Philosophers
  
  This episode was about Nietzsche and you could see from this discussion exactly why the Nazis had been fond of Nietzsche, and the overall impression I had of his philosophy was that it was rather unpleasantly self-centred. But Magee and Stern were arguing both that the fascist reading of Nietzsche was too shallow & misinterpreted, and that there was quite a lot of value in his ideas even if you didn’t agree with all of it.

Games

• Diablo IV
  
  Did actually manage a Tier 66 Pit (tho I got disconned near the end of it and you can’t get back in the game during Pits, so J finished up on his own). Getting further now is mostly a question of grinding away at the Pits trying to edge up, plus looking for any gear that might be a bit of an upgrade.