Below are posts associated with the “❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤” rating.
📺 tvblog: Junior Taskmaster Series 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I don’t think a kid’s version of the show can compete with the sweary semi-sadism of the original, but I’m glad there was a series I could use to introduce a currently-too-young-for-all-that kiddo to the concept. Plus, the kids were cute and funny and most of the tasks genuinely enjoyable to watch.
🎙️ radioblog: Seven to One (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
It took me a while to cotton on to some of the premise of this story—again, not being a Classic Who fan means mixing up characters means missing important details—and I’m still not sure I get all of it, but it was fun enough to give it some benefit of the doubt.
🎙️ radioblog: All the Fun of the Fair (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Silly and fun, this story wasn’t life changing (and I have a lot of questions about the fictional logic of things), but I enjoyed listening to it.
🎙️ radioblog: Sock Pig (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I like parts of this, but there’s also some nonchalantness about grief that doesn’t work for me—and maybe a vibrator joke?
🎙️ radioblog: 1963 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This didn’t wind up being as meta as I’d hoped when I first realized where it was going, but it was fun and interesting.
🎙️ radioblog: The Wings of a Butterfly (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Pretty fun story, but nothing you couldn’t have done outside of the Whoniverse. Time travel tropes galore, which I don’t mind but wasn’t particularly new either:
📚 bookblog: Une forêt (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Habitant au Kentucky, ce n’est pas souvent que j’éprouve un coup de cœur pour un livre francophone. Pourtant, j’ai lu un article sur ce livre à la RTS, et il arrivait qu’on fasse une commande chez Fnac quelques jours après, et c’est comme ça que j’ai décidé de commander ce livre au lieu sans trop le connaître,
Je ne dirais pas que je regrette l’avoir lu. J’avoue pourtant que j’ai eu des moments difficile avec lui. Mon vocabulaire n’était pas toujours à la hauteur, et puis ce n’est pas mon genre préféré, le roman très, mais très littéraire. Je me suis demandé quelques fois au cours de la lecture si j’avais fait un mauvais choix.
🎙️ radioblog: A True Gentleman (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Doctor Who is a great series because it is vast enough to slot tiny stories of all shapes, sizes, and styles into the bigger universe. This fun story about the Doctor fixing a bike and bargaining with an alien ambassador was a great fulfillment of that potential.
📺 tvblog: Au Service de la France saison 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Bon, c’était le fait de reregarder cette série qui m’a poussé à regarder tant de films français en janvier, mais c’est cela qui m’a empêché de finir cette série, ce que j’ai fait pendant le week-end.
Ce que j’aime le plus de cette série, c’est que les Français savent se moquer des Français beaucoup mieux que les Américains ce croient capables de faire. Il y a des ressemblences entre les deux façons de taquiner la France, mais ce qui serait une blague stupide faite par un Américain fait vraiment marrer quand elle est faite par un Français.
📚 bookblog: Présence au monde moderne (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
J’avais déjà lu la traduction anglaise en 2025, mais depuis que j’ai reçu un exemplaire du livre original, j’éprouvais le désir de le relire. Vers la fin, je trouve que je ne comprend pas tout à fait ce qu’Ellul essaie de dire (c’est peut-être une question de compétence linguistique, mais je crois avoir éprouvé le même sentiment en lisant en traduction aussi), mais il y a des idées bien fortes dans ce livre aussi. En fait, il est fort intéressant de relire ce livre après avoir lu quelques-uns de ses autres livres pour voir combien de ses idées sont déjà présentes en 1948.
🍿 movieblog: Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Bon, d’abord j’avoue que c’est difficile d’évaluer un film de 2002 sachant tout ce qui est maintenant connu sur Depardieu et Dieudonné (entre autres), mais je mets tout ça à côté pour ce post.
Je voulais regarder ce film parce que je savais qu’il est (était?) bien aimé des Français de ma génération. Je le trouve amusant et une bonne adaptation du sens d’humour des albums Astérix. Comme avec Les visiteurs, il y a beaucoup de blagues qui sont difficile à traduire, mais j’ai eu moins de mal avec ce film-ci.
🍿 movieblog: Superman (2025) (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Not a perfect movie but a really fun one. I appreciate a lot of the choices that went into this (techbro Lex Luthor, bowl cut Nathan Fillion, Hall of Justice in Cincinnati Union Station), and I look forward to seeing what else this iteration of Superman movies comes up with.
📚 bookblog: Bullshit Jobs (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I felt the same way about this book that I often feel about Graeber’s work: I like where he’s going with things, but I’m not always convinced in the details.
So, the thesis of this book is great, and the last few chapters won me back when I was feeling a bit skeptical. Even with Graeber’s concessions about his data, though, his conclusions sometimes felt tenuous, and I’m not sure we needed the taxonomy of bullshit jobs to get to the conclusions he wanted to draw in the end.
📚 bookblog: President Bitch (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Just as good as the first volume, and it’s disappointing to know that there’s nothing more to read.
📚 bookblog: Extraordinary Machine (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I want to describe this series as equally over-the-too and restrained, which feels contradictory, but I stand by it. It doesn’t take the time to overexplain the misogynistic dystopia of its world, it just lets it happen and gives space for the reader to react. And yet, it’s also intentionally campy, too! It’s interesting!
📚 bookblog: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Fun listen! It’s not any kind of deep book, but listening to how The Princess Bride was made is just about as much fun as watching the movie itself, and I enjoyed spening some time listening over the past week or so.
📚 bookblog: Paper Girls, Volume 5 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This series is getting even more interesting with time, which I honestly wasn’t expecting. I’m trying to remember if I’ve read the whole series before—I’d thought so, but I don’t remember these details. Looking forward to the conclusion!
📚 bookblog: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Cory Doctorow has regularly referenced this book (most notably, the anecdote about people letting Mark Zuckerberg win at Catan) several times since reading it himself, so I decided it was time to take a look myself. It was an enjoyable (by which I mean horrifying) read, though I think I would have enjoyed it more if the same stories had been collected as part of a journalistic project rather than as a tell-all memoir.
📚 bookblog: Paper Girls, Volume 4 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I haven’t yet mentioned how good Chiang’s art is. It’s good! This series continues to be better than I remembered it being.
📚 bookblog: Paper Girls, Volume 3 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Vaughan seems to like to be edgy in ways that I don’t always appreciate, but this series has hooked me in the way that Saga eventually did, so kudos.
📚 bookblog: Paper Girls, Volume 2 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Starting to recognize the Vaughan stuff I like from Saga: Unapologetically weird but still holds together somehow. I’m enjoying rereading this series.
📚 bookblog: Paper Girls, Volume 1 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Funnily enough, there’s a paper TPB sitting on my bedside table from when I checked it out several months ago so that I could revisit this series.
That stalled out, but I am finding it easier to get through as a PDF on my phone. The series is better than I remember it being from whenever I reread it, but it’s still not so good that I feel like I get some of the hype.
📚 bookblog: The Kobayashi Maru (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I’ve been a Star Wars fan for long enough to recognize unnecessary expanded universe material when I hear it, but I’ve also been a Star Wars fan for long enough to know that some of it is actually pretty good.
I’ve known about this book for ages and always wanted to read it because the idea of the Kobayashi Maru is just fun. I was delighted to find an audiobook on the Internet Archive and enjoyed listening to it. James Doohan can only do so many voices (I had trouble telling his Chekov from his Scotty), but I appreciated what he brought to the role, the music and sound effects weren’t bad, and the premise paid off.
📚 bookblog: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I like weird fiction, and this anarchist occult book delivers. I like the mundanity of the occult stuff and the persistent but relatively subtle anarchist themes. It could be better, but the vibes alone are enough for a positive review. Looking forward to reading the next one in the series.
📚 bookblog: Apple in China (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
Fascinating read! I’m not as interested as the author in his largely geopolitical thesis, but the raw materials he uses to construct that thesis are depressingly fascinating. They could also make up the elements of an Ellulian thesis on the dangers of power, efficiency, and technical systems. It’s harder to use Apple products after reading the book—and it’s a stark reminder of how the world we live in is so different than the world I’d like us to.