Tuesday 31 March 2026 to Tuesday 7 April 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  In the introductory chapters Trigger is setting out what he’s doing in this book & why. I’ve only read the first one so far, which is setting out the two positions on comparing cultures. The rationalist one, which says that all human behaviour is driven by environment & biology and any given person would react in the same way to the same circumstance with just a bit of cultural flavour sprinkled on top. And the relativist one, which says that all human behaviour is driven by culture and so reactions to circumstances will be different depending on culture with no commonalities between different cultures. He says no-one is really at the extreme end of either of those positions, but that the literature does separate into these two camps. It’s a bit like the nature v. nurture debate in biology, and I suspect he’s leading up to the answer being “both, and”.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Science
  
  • A Q&A episode, which included a question about could bees be trained to be a universal Turing machine (no, but there’s a crab species that swarms that has been used to build a logic gate), and a Holocene Calendar website.
  • Categories, and how the words we use shape how we think about things, and how the categories we use are made up not inherent to the universe – using vegetables as the example, thinking about what vegetable is the most vegetable, and talking through various definitions.
• The Bunker
  
  • An episode on Elon Musk saying he’s going to merge SpaceX and XAI and build datacentres in space. The interview guest was a bit too keen to give Musk credit for being clever, but even so it wasn’t a terribly flattering to Musk episode.
  • Weekly Wrap Up, mostly about the Iran war.
  • Start the Week, almost entirely about the Iran war and Trump threatening war crimes, but tucked away at the end was a bit about the changes in employment rights which are coming into effect this week.
  • An episode about inheritance tax, which has become something everyone in the country is up in arms about despite fewer than 10% of estates being affected by it. The expert guest took the view that the best thing that could be done is to make it simpler so there aren’t the incentives to look for loopholes if you’re really rich, and progressive so it feels fairer overall.
• More Jam Tomorrow
  MI5, its history & current operation (in general terms, obviously), with a particular attention to how it used to be completely secret & not established in any legal sense.
• The History of Philosophy
  Nicolas Malebranche’s thinking on how God causes everything but in a general way not a particular way – he doesn’t intervene except in very special circumstances that aren’t comprehensible to mortals, but instead has set up the world to operate by rules he has chosen. I was left thinking that Malebranche had shoehorned God into a system that had no place for God simply because he believed in God.
• The History of England
  The story of Nell Gwynne, also Pepys the sexual predator, and attitudes to slavery & Africans in this time period. And how politics was affected by the way the king was led around by his … pleasures.
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • the Iran war & funding of UK political parties – and how the same problem underlies both, that the people concerned (the US & the big ex-pat/foreign crypto donors) suffer none of the consequences of their actions.
  • Q&A episode, including more on Trump in Iran and the way he’s treating so called allies, whether or not the King should do the state visit to the US given the things Trump is currently saying, some cultural recommendations.
• Journey Through Time
  Episode 4 of the McCarthyism series, looking at some of the high profile Hollywood cases, and the movies & plays that come out of this period (like High Noon & The Crucible) which are about the issues.
• Oh God What Now
  Discussion of how the zeitgeist is to hate politicians and whether this is new or just more intense & various ideas about what may be responsible. Also a bit on Liz Truss launching a MEGA movement.
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • The Iran war, but also the birthright citizen case & the sacking of Pam Bondi.
  • The Iran war again, this time the unhinged social media post about Iran needing to reopen the Strait or the US would commit war crimes, and about the rescue of the crew member from the downed plane.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  Interview with the President of Finland.
• Talk 90s to Me
  Talking about Jeff Buckley’s brief career and his death & legacy.
• Starship Alexandria
  Discussion about The Demolition Man by Alfred Bester. Which I may’ve read as a teenager & not really got on with, but that’s such a hazy memory that I’m not sure if I read it or just saw it in the library.
• In Our Time: The Columbian Exchange
  The discovery & subsequent colonisation of the Americas by Europeans ended a millennia long period of isolation for the Americas which had significant & far reaching effects on both Old & New World. Mostly the effects on the New World were negative: human population die off, ecosystem disruption by invasive species. The effects on the Old World were more positive – new foodstuffs which lead to a population explosion, and from there a boom in technology & science as there were more people with more time to devote to this. There was even a global effect on the climate – a current hypothesis is that the drop in population in the Americas lead to so much less agriculture that a significant amount of carbon was sequestered by reforestation, and this lead to the Little Ice Age.
• The History of Egypt
  Discussing the burials of the Apis bulls – one that Khaemwaset presided over in the reign of Ramesses II, which was still in the tradition of burying them in separate tombs, but this is also the point when the Serapeum began to be constructed.
• Empire
  Episode 3 of the Mao series, talking about what happened after the Long March for the Communists, and also about the Second World War in China.
• The History of Byzantium
  What happened to the last Roman Emperor when Constantinople fell – there aren’t any definitive accounts, so he was piecing together what’s said by a whole range of contemporary sources and came to the conclusion that it’s most likely that the Emperor fell in the final breach of the walls by the Ottomans, and was subsequently beheaded and his head taken to the Sultan so that it could be displayed.

TV

• The Roman Empire by Train
  
  • Episode 2 was still based near Naples, this time she was visiting Herculaneum (in particular a villa where a large library was discovered) and Capua (of Spartacus fame).
  • A very brief bit of Rome, then she moved on to look at the Via Apia & some Etruscan remains (which make it clear that a lot of “Roman” stuff started with the Etruscans). Then on to Florence & environs.
• AI Confidential with Hannah Fry
  Using a high profile case of a young man who tried to assassinate the Queen in 2021 as its jumping off point this episode looks at AI induced psychosis, in general as well as via chatbots that are explicitly set up to be your romantic partner. And also how this tech just isn’t properly covered by the laws we have (if that young man’s chatbot had been a person it would likely have also been charged with treason or some other serious crime, but the people who made the software aren’t held responsible at all). I thought Hannah Fry did a good job of letting the subject & the people she interviewed reveal itself/themselves as deeply fucked up. Tho it’s possible that’s in part me projecting as some of the examples gave me a visceral feeling of horror – both the founder of Replika and the found of another tech start up whose name I forget started off by wanting to be able to talk to someone who had died, and so made a chatbot based on that person. And the idea that I might talk to a fake version of my dead mother is, as I said, really quite viscerally horrifying.
• Rick Stein’s Australia
  An episode in the interior of New South Wales, on farms and in the outback. One roast lamb recipe, but more interesting was the orange & almond cake.

Games

• Diablo IV
  Did the dungeon for the end of Season Rank II, we’d timed it about right – left it long enough that it wasn’t much of a challenge but not so long it was tedious. Unlocked Torment I difficulty level and are now past the level cap, and have got up to Pit Tier 15.

Music

• “Honey Lingers” Voice of the Beehive
• “Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus” Roxette
• Scant Regard (live)
  Supporting EMF – his merch aesthetic was 50s biker but skulls, and that sorta fit the music. He was playing guitar with backing tracks, and wearing a leather jacket & shades. Fun, tho we didn’t feel the need to buy anything.
• EMF (live)
  EMF are turning into one of my top 5 live bands I think, seen them twice now and even tho I don’t know much of their catalogue other than the big hits they are a blast live. This time it was a teeny-tiny venue with less than 100 of us in there, so you could see that they hadn’t walked straight out of the 90s on to the stage but they still brought that sense of joy & energy like the last time we saw them. A lot of fun.