Happy sweary new year.
- This video of an hour’s worth of fireworks going off in one go sums up the first week of the year quite well.
- Work went a bit upside down because I got sick, althoigh thankfully almost certain it wasn’t covid. Phew.
- Work then spilled significantly into the weekend.
- News from medic friends puts my tiny struggles into context: “We’re removing breathing machines from patients and letting them die, cleaning the machine and then hooking it back up to a patient in literally the next bed because we think they have a better chance of surviving“
- Jesus fucking Christ.
- Christina Pagel is the only sane person worth following on twitter if you’re grappling with the maddeningly tiny venn between epidemiology and UK public health policy.
- For light relief from a) Trump and b) the pandemic, we found ourselves watching Totally Under Control, an in-depth documentary on the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic in the USA in Spring and Summer 2020. It was not escapism, but it is excellent.
- Watching platform-level moderation in action is both somewhat reassuring (in this instance) but also bewildering. Uneasy few weeks ahead.
- Finished Star Trek Discovery S3. The scenes with the turbolift floating in a hitherto-unseen oxygenated intel-proceessor-advert themed cavern gave me all kinds of sceptical questions about plausibility. The rest of it was totes fine, obviously.
- Finished A Farewell to Arms. Honestly, a lot of chat about eating and omitted sex in amongst the utter random pointlessness of war. On reflection, not the best thing to pick up during a lockdown.
- Everyone’s been enjoying Itsu frozen dumplings at home for ages without telling me. Well, I’m in on the secret now you salty bastards.
- Swearing is helping.
- As is this amazing Swedish disco track from Madleen Kane. Turn it up loud. You’re welcome.
On the Discovery turbolift scene: I have a feeling it was originally intended to be clearly taking place on the Osyraa’s ship The Viridian (and it’s canon that umbilicals between ships have turboshafts).
I also suspect CBS didn’t have enough film in the can by the time COVID became a production issue, and so had to hurriedly rewrite the storyline – there are plenty of trailing plot points which never seemed to be referred to again from about midway through S3.