Not the best chai I’ve ever had, but a nice addition to my morning rotation.

“Intentionally bad” is a vibe that really works for me, and this is a masterclass of that vibe. I have some complaints: Some parts are grosser than they need to be, and even though I can forgive most of that as part of the “intentionally bad schtick,” there’s a rape reference in one episode that feels unnecessary even if it’s meant to be a bad call by the characters. Despite even that, I really appreciate this show for the specific thing it’s trying to do, and it made a good break from more serious media this week.

I feel like the common wisdom is that if seasonal changes are going to affect your mental health, it’s going to be the winter, when temperatures get colder and days get shorter. My experience has often been the opposite, though: It’s not that I don’t sometimes struggle during the winter, but it’s spring and summer that really do a number on my mental health. It’s been helpful to recognize that over the last year or two, not because it changes the pattern but rather because being aware of the pattern is a first step toward developing healthier responses to it.

There’s a fun meta-premise to this story (adapt Doctor Who stories never made for TV as radio dramas), and I enjoyed some parts of this, but I can’t say that Peter Davison is engaging enough (for me personally! I’m sure he’s wonderful for other fans!) for me to be a huge fan here.

Ça fera bientôt vingt-cinq ans depuis le début de mes études du français, mais dans une scène de fiction, les nuances du tutoiement et du vouvoiement m’échappent toujours. Je comprends ce qui est dit mais trop souvent sans reconnaître les implications pour la relation entre deux personnages.

Mon français est assez fort, mais pas hyper, hyper fort quand-même. Il y a certaines expériences, comme les appels téléphoniques et les films, qui me rappellent surtout mes lacunes linguistiques. Je suis maintenant en train de regarder la cinquième saison d’Un village français, et comme je la regarde grâce à un service américain de vidéo à la demande, la seule version de cette série qui m’est disponible est celle qui a des sous-titres en anglais imposés sur la vidéo—on n’a même pas la possibilité de regarder sans sous-titres. Même si j’aurais préféré des sous-titres en français, il est vrai que ça m’aide beaucoup, avoir les sous-titres pour surmonter les faiblesses qui restent dans mon français.

Okay, so I just reviewed this, but I already think it’s better than I gave it credit for. I just oversteeped a cup because I got caught in conversation on my way back from the break room and it was still just the right taste, and I think that deserves full marks.

I know it’s a breakfast tea, but this hit the spot yesterday when I was dragging right before an afternoon meeting. Not too strong, just the exact kind of malty flavor I’m trying to experience more of.

Briefly forgot my work password and then tricked myself into remembering it by first typing out my work username and letting muscle memory take over.

This blend felt like a bit of a gamble, but if the flavors are subtle, they are more or less what I would have expected from the branding. A welcome addition to my current lineup.

Même si je trouve que l’application Radio France est assez pourrie (difficile à organiser, de grosses pubs qui paraîssent en début de journée), elle a été utile pour trouver d’autres émissions sur Radio Londres et ses concurrents. Hyper fascinante, cette série !

J’ai enfin repris « Un village français », mais la deuxième épisode que j’ai regardée m’a fait me poser plein de questions sur Radio Londres. Tout ce qui est radio m’intéresse, et je trouve l’idée de Radio Londres particulièrement intéressante. J’ai donc recherché quelque chose qui pourrait m’en apprendre plus, et j’ai découvert ce documentaire, qui m’ai bien plu.

The Incomparable has once again clued me in to a fun series, and I was delighted to listen to this over a couple of days. It’s a fun premise, and if the podcast I listened to was any indication, it will only get more fun with time.

Still good! Interesting themes, great art, fascinating take on a familiar premise, and compelling characters. You can see more of the seams on this volume, but I plan to keep reading, reading, reading.

This series isn’t perfect—the shaman character has enough vague stereotype surrounding him to raise a concerned eyebrow—but it’s good. What’s more, I’m so happy to be returning to it after a month-long semi-accidental break that I’m giving this volume full marks.

It’s very weird, with beautiful art to back it up. It’s fast-paced in a way that could be annoying but is justified by the story in a way that works. The characters aren’t always sympathetic, but that usually works to the advantage of the story being told.

Loved this. I don’t know why I liked it better than Tinker Tailor—is it a better adaptation, or do I actually like the underlying story better?

That got to thinking about how much of Smiley’s People is a clear riff on Tinker Tailor (George tackles a problem from the outside, brings in Guillam, chats with Connie, recruits Toby…). You can’t have Smiley’s People without Tinker Tailor, but I wonder if Smiley’s People is actually the better version of that story.

I like blending the mundane and the fantastical (Jedi should absolutely be sent to negotiate trade disputes), so I ought to like this story about the fae and influencers (especially since it has some pro-co-op vibes), but it just didn’t land as well as I’d have liked.

Eh, it felt like this was a continuation of some of my least favorite parts of Autonomous. I am also struggling to enjoy “robots’ rights” stories in our LLM era, which is dumb, but that’s how it is.

I’ve now reviewed the original (audio)book as well as radio, tv, and film adaptations! Wondering if there are more adaptations worth looking at.

This movie isn’t bad, but I found myself disappointed with it. I don’t know if you can trim the story down to two hours (though now I’m wondering what the radio play comes out to), and while I try not to grump about adaptations, I’ve got a list of decisions I didn’t agree with here.

I enjoyed listening to the “making of” track, and I wish that didn’t sound so dismissive of the actual story as it does. I’m not a huge First Doctor fan, I guess? I also felt like this story had abrupt developments that I either missed or weren’t described well. Dan Starkey was a delight, and there were bits I liked, but overall? Meh.

I don’t think I’ve ever read an interview as interesting as this one.

Look, I’m all for getting more cars off the road, but I’ve always been annoyed by people who use ebikes as motorcycles and not as bikes. This passage gets me thinking that I probably wouldn’t like the Olto sharing my local bike infrastructure:

I would say this is bad design, but really it is just abundantly clear that these are vestigial pedals. Legalese pedals. Pedals so you can say “but look, officer, it has pedals, it’s a bike!” They are not even remotely for pedaling. Because this is not really a bike.

You don’t have to spend long on my blog to figure out that I default to being grumpy about generative AI, but if I’ve made one exception to that rule, it’s for Kagi Translate, which I’ve found to be a genuinely helpful machine translation tool—and to have some neat features that I haven’t found in its Google or DeepL equivalents.

It took me back a little bit tonight, then, when Kagi Translate straight up hallucinated something on me, in a way that I imagine wouldn’t be out of place for a more mainstream LLM (which I’ve never really used). Earlier today, while working on a paper for an upcoming conference, I was consulting a Jacques Ellul book I was about to cite, and I wanted to make sure that “genetic engineering” would be an accurate translation for his phrase « intervention génétique » (which could obviously also be rendered “genetic intervention,” but I’ve never heard that phrase in my life, so I’d prefer to go with a more well-known phrase if it’s accurate).

Finally getting back to the Newitz and Anders Humble Bundle collection I recently came into! This was a fun, cozy, quick read, and its throwaway reference to a David Graeber book and last-minute praise of platform independence to avoid Apple-style skimming off the top made me smile.

I remembered liking this more than I actually did! It was a fun watch, especially as something to put on in the background while doing something else, so I can’t say for sure why it didn’t land as well as I feel like it has in the past.