Tuesday 12 May 2026 to Tuesday 19 May 2026

[mousetrappling]

Books

• “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
  Finished the chapter on city states & territorial states, another point he made was that we conflate two sorts of things under the word “empire” – a centralised empire ruled by a single leader like the Roman Empire, and a hegemonic system where one city state subordinates other city states but doesn’t replace their power structures. And when the latter collapses everything quickly goes back to the status quo ante and another city state could rise to hegemonic power. Which is the same sort of thing that Metzger is explaining in the Literature & History podcast episode I listened to this week where he’s talking about how the Sassanian Empire isn’t like the Roman one.
• “She Knows All the Names” Michelle Jabès Corpora
  Sequel to “His Face is the Sun”, which is YA Egyptian-ish secondary world fantasy. It remains convincingly Egyptian-ish in flavour. I think the series is intended to be a trilogy so I’m not particularly expecting anything to be resolved in this book (I’ve not quite finished) but the story is nicely moving along and I’m enjoying it. I especially like the ibis interludes, which are charming.

Podcasts

• The Rest is Politics
  
  • Interview with Angela Rayner as part of their Gen Z series (she’s there to talk about Labour’s offering to younger people), which is a pay for series but they’ve released this one on the free feed.
  • A reaction to all the rumours swirling around about replacing Keir Starmer.
  • Q&A episode, with some stuff on Trump visiting China, and on the Ukraine war as well as a couple of fluffier questions
  • reaction to the Wes Streeting resignation & the MP stepping down to let Burnham contest a by-election
• The Rest is Politics US
  
  • Trump’s upcoming visit to China, how the Iran war is affecting the US’s perceived power, the failure of Democrat led redistricting in Virginia.
  • mostly focusing on Trump’s remarks about not caring about the American people or their finances, but also mentioned the Trump phone that apparently 600,000 people put down a $100 deposit for that hasn’t materialised and likely never will
  • a reaction to the Trump visit to China & what he’s been saying about it (mostly bullshit)
  • Trump primarying (sp?) Republicans he doesn’t like, demonstrating his grip on the party still & how he essentially doesn’t care about the long term good for his party. Plus some stuff on the effects of the Iran war on gas prices & supplies (which subject feels to me a bit like early 2020 vis-a-vis Covid, there’s no talk about what can be done if the strait isn’t properly re-opened really quite soon)
• Oh God What Now
  
  • an episode that was dated before it aired – focused on Wes Streeting and his potential challenge to Keir Starmer to be PM. He resigned between when they recorded & when it landed, which is the first step, and Andy Burnham persuaded someone to stand down so he could become and MP later on the same day too. Still relevant tho, as it discussed what the panel thought about both their prospects & careers to date.
  • more about the Labour leadership stuff including just how bad it’ll be if Burnham doesn’t win the by-election, but also Ed Davey looking wobbly as the Lib Dem leader, and their guest was the woman who does the Rosie Holt MP skits (she’s got a play on) so some chat about comedy & satire
• The History of Byzantium
  Second half of the history of Trebizond, up to it falling to the Ottomans a few years after Constantinople did.
• The History of Philosophy in China
  Introduction to Legalism.
• The History of England
  The political situation in England post the Anglo-Dutch War, with Charles II somewhat frustrated by Parliament and still taking bribes from the French king.
• The History of Egypt
  Ramesses II marrying a Hittite princess, some 30 or so years after the Battle of Kadesh, as part of diplomacy between the states.
• Talk 90s to Me
  An interview with the editor of Sky Magazine during the 90s, not a magazine I think I noticed but I didn’t “graduate from Smash Hits” on to anything really.
• Empire
  The Yom Kippur War in 1973 – if the Six Day War was when the Arabs learnt to fear an Israeli preemptive attack then the Yom Kippur War was when the Israelis learnt to fear an Arab preemptive attack, even as they had success in the war.
• The Rest is Science
  An episode about the science of some kitchen appliances – mostly fridges, but also microwaves and pressure cookers.
• The Bunker
  
  • Weekly Wrap Up, obviously discussing the Labour leadership, but also some stuff on Trump visiting China and on the Ukraine war
  • an episode about RFK Jr’s attack on public health in the US
  • Start the Week, the by-election that Andy Burnham will be standing in dominated this of course
• Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell
  An interview with a British journalist who has been reporting on & from Ukraine, primarily focusing on the real meaning of the occupation by Russia in terms of how it affects people & their lives (not good, the Russians are committing war crimes in those areas).
• Origin Story
  The last part of their series about European Union, taking us from the 80s through to today – one thing they pointed out that I hadn’t really thought about before was that at the point that we had the Brexit Referendum the EU wasn’t at its best, so it was harder to make the case for staying in than it would’ve been pre-2008, let alone in the 1990s.
• The History of China
  Edging closer to the Taiping Rebellion – the state of China after the First Opium War leaves it particularly vulnerable to a new religious/social movement starting up and Hong’s conviction that he’s the second Son of God is only increasing.
• Literature & History
  Looping back to talk about the war between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanian Empire in the early 600s, which left the area vulnerable to the Arab/Islamic takeover. Focusing mostly on the Sassanian perspective as that’s the one we don’t usually hear, one of the things he drew out was that the Sassanian Empire was more akin to medieval Europe than the Roman Empire. So for the 20 years while the Sassanians were winning this war everyone was on board, but once it started to shift then the various power players started to look out for their own interests.

TV

• Classic Hits in the Piano Room
  Split into two chunks while watching it, and watched both this week – not entirely what I expected, Classic Hits in this case seems to mean songs from around 20 to 30 years ago most of which are quite quite bland.
• Secrets of the Brain
  Jim Al-Kahlili talking about brains, this episode was a mix of the evolution of the brain from the first bilateral organisms through to the human brain and a primer on how brains work at the level of the neurons (how they send signals, how they respond to pressure etc).
• The Planet of the Plates
  About plate tectonics, which is a relatively new theory (only widely accepted in the early 70s) and really demonstrates on how coming up with the right paradigm shift suddenly unlocks a vast array of explanations – it explains where earthquakes are & why, where volcanoes are & why, and why the landscape is as it is.
• Later … with Jools Holland
  Despite the lineup sounding uninspiring in advance there were actually quite a few interesting songs tho nothing I think I’d seek out for another listen. Of the interviews the one that stood out was Jools asking the singer from Tomora what she liked to do for fun and she said a couple of things then looked him straight in the eye and added that she enjoyed pleasuring herself. Jools didn’t quite know what to do with himself after that!

Games

• Diablo IV
  Hit the level cap, and are now gaining paragon levels – I’d expected the paragon boards to have also been reworked but the first one looks much like it did before. Also did the Capstone Dungeon for Rank II, had left that a bit late, we were so overpowered we got no meaningful XP from it. We’ve also moved the questline along a lot for the expansion, I think we’re nearly ⅘ of the way through.

Talks

• “The tombs of Thutmose II and other recent discoveries in the Western Wadis” Piers Litherland
  An update on Litherland’s excavations in the Western Wadis, next door to the Valley of the Kings. The big news a couple of years ago was that he & his team discovered the tomb of Thutmose II, but it was completely cleared out. There’s evidence to suggest his burial was moved very soon afterwards to somewhere else in the same wadi, and that’s what Litherland has been looking for – no success yet, but they are clearing a large (like more than house sized) pile of conglomerate made of plaster and limestone chips which was made to look like the natural cliff and have found some hints that there’s something to find under that. He also talked through how he thinks that the reburial programme that Thutmose III undertook towards the end of his reign might be about legitimising his reign (burying your predecessor is part of becoming the rightful king), and whilst he did rebury Thutmose I (his grandfather) and Hatshepsut (his father’s wife but not his mother, returning her from Pharaoh to Great Royal Wife status) he wasn’t able to rebury Thutmose II (his father).