Tuesday 5 May 2026 to Tuesday 12 May 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Finished off the Kingship chapter, where the other big takeaway was that all these kings were sacred to at least some extent. Ranging from a man doing a sacred role through to the king as an actual divinity, tho all of them had in common that it was the installation of a man as king that made him sacred. Now quite a bit of the way through the chapter about city states & territorial states – four of the former (Mesopotamia, Classic Maya, Aztec, Yoruba), three of the latter (Egypt, Inka, Shang China). There’s been previous attempts to make this an evolutionary thing (territorial → city or vice versa) but Trigger pooh-poohs this and thinks they are two different ways an early civilisation can organise itself. Some differences & commonalities you can draw out include that city states tend to have bigger & denser cities as the farmers for the rural areas live in them to avoid being exposed to attack during inter-city wars, territorial state have bigger surpluses available to the king & the upper class (enabling things like the pyramids in Egypt) because they can draw on resources from a wider geographical region not just near enough to a city to commute. A territorial king can be peripatetic, but a city state king who has conquered/has overlordship of other cities will receive them in his home city rather than travel to potentially hostile territory.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Science
  A Q&A episode, including a question about whether there is more data in the cloud or more water in the clouds (the water wins if you approximate water droplets in clouds vs bits in datacentres)
• The Bunker
  
  • the Chernobyl disaster
  • primer for the Senedd elections (released just before them)
  • primer for the Scottish parliament elections (released just before them)
  • Weekly Wrap Up, released before the local election results, so focused on the Farage being given £5mil story
  • Start the Week, which obviously focused on Starmer’s woes, but also the Iran war and the lack of clarity there.
• The Rest is Politics Leading
  An interview with Zelensky
• Oh God What Now
  
  • politicians saying offensive or otherwise unfortunate things on social media, how & why the rich are weird (in deeply unpleasant ways) including a bit on how if you rig a monopoly game by giving some participants an advantage that’s obvious to everyone in the game (like they get twice as much for passing Go & get to roll the dice twice each turn) those people will credit their win to their skill not to having an advantage
  • the rise of the Greens & whether it’ll stick (including how it has hoovered up the people who were in a similar way so keen on Corbyn when he became leader of the Labour Party), online betting on platforms like Polymarket and how it’s changing politics & letting people make a lot of money in ways that you can’t figure out if it’s corrupt or not
  • a bit of a round up of the local election results so far as of c. 10:00, but already by then it was clear that Reform were winning a lot of seats
  • a more in depth look at the aftermath of the local elections, both in terms of what it means for Keir Starmer (nothing good) and for how politics in the country is shifting
• The Rest is Politics
  
  • Trump’s spat with Germany including threats to move troops out, the local elections (in advance) and the £5mil gift to Farage
  • Q&A episode, including the rise of anti-semitism in the UK, the situation in Mali & the King’s speeches in the US
  • response to the local elections, immediately afterwards
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • whether or not the war in Iran might be about to end in a peace deal, Trump setting up Vance & Rubio to fail, one of the state senate primaries in Indianapolis and what that says about MAGA support
• Quiet Riot
  Round up of the local election results whilst they were still being called, but while it was clear which way the wind was blowing.
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  A look at the situation in the Middle East and how it’s being affected by the Iran war, but also at the wider economic effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

TV

• The Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts
  
  • From Nimes round into Spain, taking in some very well preserved Roman places in the south of France (like an aqueduct coming into Nimes where one particular bridge still stands high above a valley, or the amphitheatre in Nimes).
  • Two places in Spain to finish up: Tarragona and Cartagena (which is where my Dad went on holiday earlier this year).

Games

• Diablo IV
  Still in the process of levelling up the new characters & playing the new storyline.