A quick few links & likes
to pass the time before Rivals
If you like word games, do you know Alphaguess?
Have you read this excellent piece about the appeal of Tony Soprano?
Hello And Pandora Sykes on Victoria’s Secret? I didn't think I had an iota of interest in Victoria’s Secret, but I was wrong.
I liked this article about Clare Waight Keller in the NYT (gift link) - she was at Givenchy, then she designed capsule collections for Uniqlo, and now she’s become its creative director, which is excellent news if you wear clothes. Also if you’re in the market for wide trousers, I strongly recommend those, as well as the cashmere jumpers with the small, chic V necks, though they’re currently mostly sold out online.
I am late to the party watching Industry. There is too much sex in it. I’d really like to know if it’s just me and my extreme old age, or if you think there’s too much sex in it too. Very good otherwise, though. Brilliantly written and acted. But my God, so much shagging, you sit there going oh PLEASE give it a rest just for FIVE MINUTES, I beg.
Death at the Sign of the Rook, Kate Atkinson’s most recent book featuring Jackson Brodie (now a grandpa), is so good that it has put me off reading other things. I start them and then put them down again, sighing. Among other things it’s a classic country house mystery. It’s utterly brilliant. (You could I suppose go in cold but I’d strongly advise reading them in order, so beginning with Case Histories).
But I have a proof of The Sequel, the sequel to the unputdownable The Plot, so I think that might help. I just tried to link to me raving about The Plot on here last year, but nothing came up. Weird. Maybe I read it pre-Substack? If you haven’t read it, do. Prepare to not leave the sofa until you’ve finished it. The Sequel is out at the end of the month, but sneakily you can read it straight away on Kindle.
I am grumpy because we have a ladybird infestation, which sounds potentially quite sweet but is in fact deeply revolting. Also I can hear scuttling in the room above my office. At least I’ve dealt with the cluster flies.
But the light is very beautiful this afternoon and some of the dahlias are still going, just about , even though I keep ceremonially picking The Final Bunch This Year.
Rivals tonight (on Disney+, all in one go). It is ridiculous how excited I am about it.
Oh - I discovered this amazing thing that I didn’t know (why not? really bad), which is that for the past 30 years in French-speaking Belgium (Wallonia), as opposed to Flemish-speaking Belgium (Flanders), the media have had an informal agreement not to give airtime to people from the far right. At all. They are ignored. No one thrusts a mic at them or asks them on their politics show. No one goes to their events. If and when their speech is reported, it is always painstakingly contextualised. It’s a cordon sanitaire. The result is that French-speaking Belgium does not routinely elect far-right representatives, unlike Flemish-speaking Belgium, where you can’t move for proto-fascists (ditto much of Europe, and the rest). It’s grossly illiberal, obviously, but it’s also brutally effective. When the woman in this clip says, ‘but everybody has a right to have their say’, the male presenter cheerfully says, ‘not the extreme right. Not in the francophone part of Belgium’. The clip has gone viral on French TikTok.
Very good instant noodles. Well, 8 minutes. But superior.
Back on Sunday with a food post.
Do give this post a heart if you like it. DO you like it? Sometimes I quite like writing a brisk list.
This short post is free to read because it’s Friday, though obviously paid subscriptions get you access to everything and are MUCH BETTER.
I just marvel at your skill as a writer- making a simple list interesting, and chatty. Blows my mind. *round of applause*
Re: the censoring thing. I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this. What makes sense as an ideal, vs. what actually works in reality, with human brains and human natures getting involved. Ideally, yes, free speech for all. Everyone should have a voice. But in reality, what human brains (and internet algorithms) do with that free speech is listen to the loudest voices and prioritise them. Then (I think it was you who linked that article about the Dominique Pelicot trial where this was discussed very well) the human mind is led very easily on a slippery slope towards extremism without even realising it. We THINK we have free will to choose and edit and come to rational conclusions, but I don't know if we actually do. I don't know if we don't either, to be clear. It's just, the ideal and the reality don't sync up.
There's an idea that free speech is allowing thought to be wild and grow freely. But even in the wilderness, tending needs to happen, or forests grow too thick, and are more susceptible to wildfire. Even in the wilderness, a random seed from a non-indigenous plant can disrupt the entire ecosystem.
We're seeing firsthand in so many places what happens when extreme thought of any kind is allowed to take root, flourish, and for people to think its the norm. We've seen it in history too. I think it's our responsibility to tend the wilderness of thought out there so that the entire ecosystem can flourish.
Sooo excited for Rivals, have a pic of me reading it in bed age approx 18 with a big mug of tea and now aged 54 know for sure it doesn’t get better then that.