Stuff I Watched, Read, Heard, Etc in 2021

With the continuing pandemic and my own reluctance to go out and get potentially exposed, there's been a lot of time to watch stuff at home. Unfortunately, it's meant that I could only watch what was available at home, so HBO Max came through for me in a big way, while Disney Plus took a little longer to share its cinematic delights. Anyway, without further ado:

Movies

I feel like it was a blah year for movies, for the reason listed above. HBO Max, as I said, came through with a number of new releases at the same time as in theaters, and because everything feeds into some IP or other, it meant my girlfriend and I caught up on a bunch of movie series. For new stuff, the standout is probably Dune, which had a nice mix of action and intellect. That is to say, it's not the kind of introspective SF that marked Interstellar or even Denis Villeneuve's earlier film Arrival, but it's a cut above most tentpole SF blockbusters because the explosions and warfare aren't the point. It was a faithful adaptation in all the best ways, and the casting was mostly good. I'm looking forward to the next one - and maybe I'll even get to see it in theaters!

HBO Max also provided access to a couple of big superhero-related movies: the Zack Snyder Cut of Justice League, and the Suicide Squad. It was interesting seeing the long-awaited Snyder Cut, since I remember JL being pretty bad; the new version wasn't Citizen Kane, but thinking back on it now, it felt like a different movie and like all the parts fit together in a way that I don't remember the previous version doing. 

Suicide Squad, meanwhile, was a fun romp through the incredibly rich back catalogue of random DC characters. I don't love James Gunn's other superhero work, but it was nice to see Warners give him free rein to tell the story in as violent and sweary a way as he wanted. The result came off like DC's answer to Deadpool, and it looks like the story will continue with the new Peacemaker series.

I also caught up with Warner's Godzilla movies, several of which I'd seen, but they were better on the second go. Kong: Skull Island was particularly fun, and even Godzilla: King of the Monsters held up better than I remembered. Kong vs Godzilla was a little bit sillier than either, but was an okay romp. It was also nice to rewatch the Jurassic Park movies, and some bits of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom looked a lot better seen a second time.

The one new series that I caught was the Conjuring movies, again because HBO Max released the latest one and made the rest of the series available. The first was obviously the best, but it was fun seeing how the Nun and the Annabelle movies fit into the overall whole.

Looking at the amount of movies I watched there, it's clear that HBO Max has taken over as the streaming service to get the kinds of movies you'd actually want to watch. Netflix has some good ones, but they're mostly its own originals, as all the content holders take their stuff away to form their own streaming services.

TV

I caught up with a lot of series this year that I'd been watching previously, but the main new thing I discovered was Star Trek: Lower Decks. It took a while to warm to it, because I'm not entirely on board with the frenetic type of humor it mines from Rick and Morty, but the show improved as it based more of its humor on obscure Trek lore. I hold it up in contrast to the Orville, which tries to do the same thing (identifying the absurd parts of Trek while also getting at the meanings, morals and messages), but still got stuck too much on making Family Guy-style jokes about it all. That said, both are the continuations of TNG that I've been wanting, so I'm interested to see how their respective second seasons turn out.

Narcos was another fun one, both the original Colombia show and the Mexico sequel. I saw them out of order, catching Narcos: Mexico first, which perhaps made the original stand out better, even in the third season when the focus moves from Pablo Escobar to the Cali Cartel. Both, however, were entertaining procedurals looking at how the drug war is prosecuted, and the final season of Narcos: Mexico looks promising so far. Though I could watch another few seasons of Wagner Moura as Escobar.

Music & Podcasts

I'd love to separate these into two categories, but even with my British music listening project, it's been hard to find new music to fall in love with. The one exception, though it's not recent, is Echo and the Bunnymen, which sounds like something I'd have loved in high school and college. There's something about the soundscapes that reminds me of the Smiths and the Cure, so it's been fun exploring their back catalogue in its entirety.

In terms of podcasts, I discovered a few good history podcasts, mostly on ancient cultures. The Ancient World, the Ancients and Fall of Civilizations have all been entertaining to listen to, and feel like they could provide some good fodder for fantasy or science fiction story ideas.

Books & Comics

The one new book that I read that really caught my attention this year was Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It was a quick, compulsive read, which I found hard to put down and which felt like a spiritual successor to Stephen Baxter's Evolution, and indirectly to Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. I'm looking forward to the sequel, Children of Ruin, and to looking at the rest of Tchaikovsky's back catalogue.

Otherwise, I just read more books in series I've been rationing out year to year (like Genevieve Cogman's super-fun Invisible Library series and Marko Kloos's also-fun Frontlines books). I've got the final Expanse novel, Leviathan Falls, queued up on my Kindle, which I'll be tackling at some point in the new year, though I don't know what I'll do with myself when I've finished the series. I also read the second and third books of Joe Abercrombie's Age of Madness trilogy, following up his First Law series. Like with Leviathan Falls, I don't quite know what to do with myself now, and while I'll be looking forward to Abercrombie's next book, I hope he revisits this setting sooner rather than later, because I want to know what comes next.

In terms of comics, I stuck with re-reading my whole collection, so I've been revisiting books I haven't read in about 10-20 years, if not more. I've also finally gotten to my Marvel books, and it's been interesting (and sometimes a little infuriating) getting acquainted with the X-Men again. I'm still leaning toward subscribing to DC and Marvel's digital comics services at some point, so that I can read... well... everything. Who knows when I'll find the time for that, of course...

Games

There hasn't been much interesting gaming this year, though I'll have some extra time for it in the coming months. I did manage to get a Switch at the end of last year, and I have a couple of Mario games, as well as FIFA 21 (a stripped down version), to play with. Other than that, I drifted away from Mario Kart Tour on iOS, and drifted into Apple Arcade, which has also led me back to Kingdom Rush - and to the nerdy world of Kingdom Rush fandom on YouTube.

As I keep saying, iOS games like Kingdom Rush are good because they don't require the time and mental investment that the latest blockbuster games for the state of the art consoles require. I've tried picking up Skyrim again recently, but it's been years and I don't exactly know what I'm doing anymore. On the other hand, I can knock out a couple levels of Kingdom Rush without keeping all kinds of backstory straight.

That said, I do sometimes think it'd be nice to grab a new console and game, like God of War or Horizon: Zero Dawn, to be up with what everyone's talking about. I might just try, though I feel like I ought to finish more of the games I already have...

Year in Review 2021: Yet Another Year That Can't End Too Soon

Like every year, 2021 had ups and downs on a personal level, though this year the personal downs have outweighed the ups for the first time in a while, as my relationship ended. Globally, it's been just the latest tough year for everybody, a streak that began in 2016 with the great celebrity die-off and continued through Donald Trump's election, something that affected how things have gone this year.

On the writing side, my fiction suffered a bit, as the second year of lockdown meant more mental stress and fewer ideas overall. I tried to write a cyberpunk short story, but fell afoul of the rule Lavie Tidhar once gave me for writing steampunk, which is that it should be about more than its genre. I think I have the atmosphere almost right, but I need more compelling characters and a better plot. Still, some of it's percolating and elements will likely come out at the right time.

More positively, I was pleased with the work I did throughout the year on my other blog, where I did a round-up of mobile plans aimed at seniors, students and children throughout the US and Western Europe. They weren't always easy to pull together, but at least each month I knew what to work on, and in the end I think I created a body of work that no other analyst has collected and compared. And it was just fun to use my various language skills to do the kind of mobile industry research I enjoyed in 2012-13.

The other writing positive is that I started work on a new novel idea. It was partly inspired by my character in the Dungeons & Dragons game I've been playing this year, and I spent part of the year working on background and worldbuilding for it. I started writing it in earnest in November, when I took part in my first NaNoWriMo, which was unexpectedly fun.

Speaking of D&D, that almost-weekly game was a good anchor for the year, as it became my primary vessel for seeing my friends, even if it was only through a computer screen. I've slowly started seeing them in person again for outdoor walks, but D&D turned out to be a fun activity to keep connected to my main social circle.

Fitness-wise, things were made difficult by the ongoing pandemic and another summer of heat and unhealthy air. The pandemic means I'm not going to the gym, especially to breathe hard on a treadmill or elliptical, but when smoke from our now-annual wildfires blankets the Bay Area, I can't run outside. I still managed some regular workouts, and even started seeing a personal trainer again (virtually), but I'm really looking forward to the day when I can go back to the gym with confidence, or at least when I can buy my own damn treadmill.

My biggest piece of good news was that I managed to find a new job. I'd been trying since January 2020, but the pandemic stopped that fairly quickly, but I set myself the goal of sending out a certain number of applications, and got to work for the first six months of the year. Ironically, the interviews I got were based on applications I sent out last year, which were only now being followed up.

The timing was also good, because the day before I received the job offer that I ended up accepting, my previous company announced that we'd be expected to go into the office for team meetings, which was awkward for me as my team was in Arizona. Being on Zoom in the Los Altos office would be okay, but being on Zoom at home would not. I gave my notice the following day.

Two other thoughts from that whole experience. The first is relief that I left when I did, because I recently learned that the project I'd been working on was pulled. I don't know where I'd have ended up if I'd still been there, so I'm glad I'd left. The other thought is more of a rule for life going forward: never have your last day on a job be the last day of the month, because your health insurance coverage ends the month you leave. I managed to give my notice on 1 July, which meant I was covered throughout my whole 18-day between-jobs period.

At a global level, the pandemic slightly faded into the background, though it was always there to remind us that we're still very much in it. One reason for the fading was positive, as the vaccine rollout took on speed, and I got jabbed in May (and boosted this month). They may not confer 100% protection, but as another layer of protection on top of masking and social distancing, they helped lower deaths and hospitalizations, at least in some places and for a while. More negatively, we've seen the drawback of our inequitable system of distributing vaccines, as two terrible variants, Delta and Omicron, arose in India and South Africa, respectively - taking advantage of large pools of unvaccinated people there to develop.

The other thing that put the pandemic on the back burner was way more frightening, as a mob of right-wing extremists stormed the US Capitol on 6 January to stop Joe Biden being certified as president and keep Donald Trump in office. We've seen the effects of right-wing violence resonating throughout the year, from that and from violence at some BLM protests last year, and the atmosphere just grows more and more worrying. Mass shootings are back up in 2021, after last year's lockdowns meant people weren't congregating in places, and far-right extremists are just elevating the tensions further by making more explicit threats against lawmakers they don't like - sometimes lawmakers themselves are threatening their colleagues.

To add to the instability, Republicans are making moves that will make it easier for them to steal the next presidential election. The media's focus has been on voting laws in places like Georgia, where the accusation is that voters of color will find it harder to vote in coming years, but the GOP has also quietly been shifting election officials in various battleground states, who are expected to be more tolerant of shenanigans than the officials in place in 2020. 

All of these steps, and the simple demographic sorting of Democrats into urban areas and Republicans into thinly populated rural areas, are setting the stage for Republican minority rule for years to come. That'll mean more regressive laws like Texas's SB 8 abortion law, but my other big worry is that laws like that will be used to weaken laws in progressive states - our governor in California, Gavin Newsom, says he wants to use SB 8's model to sue gunmakers, but I also see a danger in right-wing judges striking down our own gun, environmental and labor protections.

The cherry on top has been the political polarization of the pandemic, which started last year with protests against lockdowns and mask mandates, but gained a new battleground with the vaccines. Many of the same people parroting the big lie that Trump won the election are also pushing the idea that the vaccines are dangerous, sometimes in very cynical ways (see any Fox News host, where vaccinations are apparently mandatory and well taken-up). On the fringes, but dangerously close to the mainstream thanks to social media, are people claiming that the vaccines are a plot to depopulate the world.

To sum up, I had a couple of good wins this year, but a couple of big losses, and weighing on all of it is the uncertainty of what's happening in the world around me. I'm lucky to live in an area that's both responsible with regard to pandemic precautions, and is seeing lower numbers, but other parts of America (and California in particular) aren't so lucky. I see the pandemic continuing for another year, if we go by the length of the 1918 flu pandemic, but I also expect that the polarization and misinformation on vaccines will mean we have to get boosters for the next few years, which will suck.

Unfortunately, next year will see a midterm election, and the forecasts are already negative for the Democrats, so we can expect gridlock and hateful right-wing rhetoric to ramp up. So unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see a good year for some time to come.

Chris Claremont's X-Men

Once again, a dispatch from my big comic-collection reread, where I've now moved onto my much-diminished Marvel collection. Just as reading my DC books started with the Justice League, which was my favorite of those titles, here I've started with the X-Men, which is what got me into superhero comics in the first place. Though the book that did that was (New) X-Men #1, I've started with Uncanny X-Men, the title that had gone back to the team's creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Like most comics readers of my age and generation, the Chris Claremont version is pretty much definitive, having given us a lot of the ideas and characters that we associate with the team now. Because of my searches for back-issues back in the 90s, my collection of his run goes all the way from the late 70s to his departure in the early 90s, so that you can get a sense of how he reused characters and settings over time.

Something that struck me recently, as I read the Muir Island Saga that ended his run on Uncanny, was how well he developed sub-plots over a long time, so that they paid off years later. The Muir Island Saga took place in 1991, but we started to see hints of the Shadow King's takeover there in issues from 1987 or 88, taking advantage of other storylines and subplots that had taken place even earlier. Rereading these issues, I remembered feeling the same awe at seeing a bunch of storylines come together as I did back in the 90s when his run on Excalibur came to an end (though sadly I only have one issue of that run remaining).

Part of what let him put all those subplots in place was the enormous breadth of characters that he created for the book. The main X-Men team, at that time, was believed to be dead but was actually operating from an abandoned outback Australian town. Events conspired to separate them and deposit them, with memories erased, all around the world, leaving Wolverine to go and collect them again. At the same time, tipped off by Jean Grey, two marginal X-Men, Banshee and Forge, went looking for them, while also investigating the odd happenings on Muir Island. On this read I enjoyed the way these characters, who either weren't very well-established or hadn't been seen for a long time, alternated as leads with the main X-Men characters, giving a sense of a self-contained universe.

This period is also notable for being when Marc Silvestri and then Jim Lee were drawing the book. I was a little surprised at how rough Silvestri's style was at this time, somewhat inconsistent and not very recognizable to the linework of his later Cyberforce or Witchblade comics - probably the effect of his inker Dan Green, though I could be wrong. Lee's style, meanwhile, undergoes an interesting transition from his early, Art Adams and manga-influenced work, to the linework that's become more associated with him.

Lee's style, in particular, gave rise to legions of inferior imitators, especially once he and Silvestri and others decamped to Image to create their own books. Interestingly, you can see Claremont's influence there too, as a lot of early WildCATs or Gen13 stories feel like what the writers think Claremont would do. This is both in the breadth and type of villains, and in the ponderous language used in the narrative captions.

One thing that I don't love about Claremont's work now is how wordy it is. Compared with a Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis, who either don't use narrative captions or use them less, these X-Men books take a long time to read, because there's so much speech and narration going on. His language isn't as stilted as, say, Roy Thomas's (my earliest X-Men issue is the one where Thomas introduces Sauron, with typically florid language), but I do remember a friend in college laughing about the vocal tics that Claremont was known for.

The other thing is his accents, which are uniformly terrible. Rogue's is pretty bad, but Banshee's is worse - if you've ever heard an Irish accent in real life you won't recognize it in how Claremont wrote him. Moira MacTaggart's Scottish accent is also not great, in part because Claremont didn't seem able to distinguish it from Banshee's Irish one. These are kind of minor quibbles, but they get magnified by the legions of inferior imitators who propagate these terrible accents because that's how Chris did them.

Because I haven't gotten to New X-Men yet, or read what was happening around the books, I don't recall exactly why Claremont left the books when he did. What I can say is that he left just as they got big in the wider culture, with the 90s animated show using a lot of the characters, designs and plots of that New X-Men reboot period. As I've suggested before, this wider attention is a mixed blessing, because even though it means more people are familiar with the work, it also puts pressure on the creators not to veer too wildly from what viewers of the TV show or movies are familiar with.

Another way of saying that is that Claremont's more long-form, sub-plot driven stories, with less-recognizable characters in less typically superheroic situations, wouldn't have worked in the X-Men's imperial phase of the 90s. Unfortunately, in the hands of lesser writers, the whole universe became bloated and unwieldy, which at least led to the creative rebirth of the late 90s and early 2000s, where Grant Morrison took on New X-Men. 

I'll probably write more about that later, but it's interesting that it took a talent like Morrison to shake the X-Men free of Claremont's influence. Though it has to be said, rereading his run emphasizes how much better he was than the writers who immediately followed him.

Ole No Longer at the Wheel

Y'all, I'm tired. I could have written this week's piece about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, but it was painfully obvious what was going to happen, starting when the judge prohibited the prosecution from referring to the victims as... victims. I think back to the Trayvon Martin verdict, which also hinged on reasonable doubt; that felt radical, that such a miscarriage of justice could occur, but in 2021 it feels commonplace.

So instead I'm going to fiddle while Rome burns and write about Ole Gunnar Solskjær's inevitable departure from Manchester United, after a shocking run of results. It's narrow, it's inconsequential, but it isn't the harbinger of lawlessness and collapse that a murder trial effectively allowing vigilantism, so let's talk about that this morning, instead.

I was quite excited when Ole took over, back in 2018. I'd spent the past two decades loving to hate United, but somehow the idea that they'd bring him in after sacking José Mourinho felt romantic, rather than the latest mercenary super-manager from the continent. Of course I'm always happy to see an Italian manager do well, in particular, but the idea of hiring Antonio Conte or Massimiliano Allegri (to say nothing of Mauricio Pochettino, Carlo Ancelotti, Zinedine Zidane, etc) just contributes to the sense of a class divide in management, where the same foreign coaches get the big jobs and the same British or English coaches get the mediocre ones.

Obviously Ole's not British himself, but there was something in his appointment that suggested the divide wasn't a foregone conclusion, even if it was just an interim appointment at first. He then surprised everyone by doing really well, and getting the job permanently, after which his results dipped for the rest of the 2018-19 season.

There have been ups and downs since then, the most significant up being the transfer in of Bruno Fernandes, who quickly turned into one of the league's best players. The team posted a couple of top-four finishes in the last couple of seasons, but notably won no trophies, despite doing well in various cup and European competitions. This was fairly ominous, as was the seesawing of results, with humiliating scorelines becoming rather common.

As long as Ole's team got results, I felt the criticisms were a bit snobbish (I'm thinking of Jonathan Wilson here). I wouldn't claim Solskjær is some unheralded tactical genius, but he got the team organized after the lows of the Mourinho era, and then picked a gem like Fernandes out of complete obscurity to take the league (and fantasy league) by storm. This was without a sporting director, mind you, and no clear link between Ole and Fernandes, unlike David Moyes bringing in Marouane Fellaini during his tenure because he'd coached Fellaini at Everton.

The subsequent signings have seemed a little scattershot, like Donny Van De Beek, and haven't really addressed the side's biggest faults. Though the signing of Raphaël Varane was a step in the right direction, and Edinson Cavani turned out to have more life in him than you'd have expected of a 34-year-old striker, they didn't address the issue of midfield and the focus came onto big-name signings like Jadon Sancho.

I think the thing that upset the whole balance, though, is the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo. Despite him still being sort of a cartoon super villain on the pitch, and a problematic figure off it, he's a fiercely talented and ferociously hardworking player. But as loads of commentators have pointed out, he doesn't play the game the way it's played now, with the entire team involved in attack and defense, and as a result he no longer makes teams better. The pressure to pick him means that United doesn't pick Cavani or Sancho, which in turn suggests that they blew £73 million to make one of England's most promising players squander his best years sitting on the bench.

But the question is, how much of that is Solskjær's fault, and how much the board's? As I say, there's no sporting director, so the signing strategy is split between the coach and the chief executives, and it's clear that the executives thought getting Ronaldo in was more important than winning trophies. I could be wrong, and Ole could have floated the idea, since they played together for a few years at United, but it's just not in keeping with the same manager who brought in Fernandes.

Though maybe that's the tactical muddledness of Solskjær in a nutshell? After all, he signed Van De Beek and promptly parked him on the bench, too (ironically he scored the only United goal in Ole's last game in charge, the loss at Watford).

So what's next for Ole? He'll likely dip down the league if he stays in English management, though with his strong Manchester United association it's hard to see any of their rivals taking him on. More probable is a return to Scandinavia, and perhaps one day a stint managing Norway's national team.

As for United, they're starting to bandy around names again, like Mauricio Pochettino. I'm a little unconvinced by him, because even though he turned Spurs into genuine contenders, they also never won any trophies during his tenure. His style also leaves the players jaded and burned out after a few years, so it doesn't feel like an appointment for the long term (though it might also be wrong to frame "long-term" in terms of Alex Ferguson's million years in charge).

Conte's now spoken for, at Spurs himself, but he'd have been a short-term appointment too, since he falls out with club boards quite regularly, especially when he wins leagues. The big one I can think of who's available and a potential fit is Allegri, though whether he'd fancy working with Ronaldo again is an open question. I'm sure there are loads of Spanish coaches that have the profile United is looking for, as well.

Or...

Apparently Michael Carrick will be caretaker, until they find an interim manager to see out the end of the season. Maybe he'll do well enough in the position to hold onto it longer? It's unlikely, especially since the last club legend just flamed out so spectacularly, but the board might be so scattershot that it could even happen...

Thoughts on Shang-Chi

Because I'm not going to the cinema yet, my ability to watch new movies this year has been limited to what's available on streaming. And while I appreciate that there are certain financial ramifications to that, it was a bit of a shame that Scarlett Johansson's lawsuit against Disney over Black Widow has meant that the new MCU films aren't streaming on day one, even if Disney was at least charging extra for them, unlike HBO Max.

This means I'm either waiting for some recent movies to become available on streaming, or am considering renting them. The list, at the moment, consists of No Time to Die, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eternals, and until Friday, Shang-Chi. Possible spoilers after the jump:

Finally Doing NaNoWriMo

Every November for years I've seen people talking about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), but I've never joined up myself. It always felt a little gimmicky, or I had other stuff I was working on, or any number of other dumb reasons.

This year, though, I've decided to give it a try. I've felt a little directionless with my writing for the past 18 months or so (gosh, I wonder what that could be related to), even when I had stuff to revise or write down. More importantly, it's been a long time since I've felt able to work on something longer than a short story (and even those didn't seem to be coming to me), so this felt like the right time to do it.

On top of that is the realization that to properly get ahead in publishing, it helps to have longer works. I've been focusing a lot on novellas lately, but have also been finding it hard to find markets that would take them. A novel, on the other hand, seems easier to shop around to agents, which seems like the most reasonable port of call for getting ahead with my writing.

It helped that I finally had a novel idea, which I spent a little while developing earlier this year. I outlined it and wrote a few world-building type documents, that would help me get a sense of the structure of the story and the tone I wanted to strike, but then I found myself distracted by my tech/telecoms blog, and didn't do anything more on the novel idea for a while.

Incidentally, the tech/telecoms blog was so easy to work on because I knew, month to month, what I wanted to do with it. This is what I mean when I say my fiction writing has felt directionless - I had a short story idea a few months ago, and I got as far as the first (hand-written) draft, but in the transition to the typed second draft, I couldn't make it work or muster much more interest. With the other blog, on the other hand, the subject (comparisons of age-related mobile plans in various countries in Europe) dictated the structure, so I knew that after I finished writing about plans aimed at seniors in Italy, I could write about plans in Italy that were aimed at kids.

It's the same with the novel I'm currently working on. Because I spent some time figuring out the structure earlier this year, I know what I want to accomplish in most of the chapters, and can spend my precious and limited writing time accomplishing it, rather than getting hamstrung by all the possible things I can do. Of course, this is the kind of thing that works for me, so maybe a different type of writer thrives on that ambiguity.

As far as the actual NaNoWriMo, it turns out the goal is to write 50,000 words in November, whereas I always thought it was 30k. It doesn't matter either way, as the important thing is to have something workable at the end of the month, and because my writing sessions are regularly yielding much less than 1,000 words, let alone the 1,667 I'd need to average to get to 50k. It's still satisfying to go to the website and input the number of words I've written that day, and see the little meter tick up. I probably should have tried gamifying my writing ages ago...

In any case, it seems to be working, i.e. I have something to write that's holding my interest, and crucially I'm looking forward to certain scenes later on in the story. Even if I don't have the full 50k words by the end of November, I'm aiming to continue writing this initial draft into December, so fingers crossed that I'll be able to do something with it in 2022.

Thoughts on Dune

Another week, another review of a movie that's premiering simultaneously in theaters and on HBO. However, in marked contrast to the Many Saints of Newark (aka Sopranos Babies), I've managed to watch Denis Villeneuve's Dune (Part One) in its entirety before writing my thoughts on it.

This isn't a proper review, just some scattered thoughts (as the title implies), but the main questions to answer are: is it a good movie (yes) and should you watch it (yes)

To start off, it's worth noting that I'm one of those who read Frank Herbert's novel way back in their teen years, and whose view of science fiction has been shaped as a result. I read the rest of the main novels in the last year or so of college, though the series didn't improve as it went on, and I gave up on the prequel books written by Frank's son Brian with Kevin J Anderson, whose work I knew from various Star Wars tie-in novels. Every once in a while I'd look at the Wikipedia page for the Brian-Kevin books, and see that they'd mined some aspect of the history, but I've never felt the need to revisit.

I also saw David Lynch's movie version after I'd read the first novel. Oddly enough, I had Kyle MacLachlan in my head as Paul the whole time I was reading the book, so in a lot of ways I think that was the best casting of the character. Sting was pretty bonkers as Feyd-Rautha, and the entire thing was weird and, if not entirely successful, at least memorable. Less successful (for me) was the Sci-Fi channel miniseries, which I didn't ever manage to finish.

So where does Denis Villeneuve's version fit into this timeline? Despite the fact that it's probably been twenty years or more since I last read Dune, so much of the movie was immediately recognizable to me. I remembered many of the scenes from the book, and the ones that I didn't seemed to be improvements.

Just as crucially, the design is suitably epic. The book evokes images of gigantic starships and monumental architecture, and this movie brings both of those, with overtones of mind-bending French comics like the Metabarons - which was written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who was heavily influenced by Dune in making the Metabarons, and who spent part of 1973 trying to film his own version of Dune. There are a lot of flowing imperial robes, impressively bonkers head-dresses, and vehicle design that's reminiscent of animals.

Incidentally, there were similar overtones to the design of David Lynch's version, which makes it interesting to think that such epic, far-future SF should inspire such bonkers and dream-like costumes, ships and architecture.

I mentioned improvements, and a key one has to be that Baron Harkonnen is no longer portrayed as an Evil Gay Dude. This aspect of the character was problematic when I read the book in 1997 (especially because his corpulence and disgusting skin condition were implicitly linked to his proclivity for young boys), and only slightly fixed when the Brian-Kevin prequels revealed that his conditions were actually the result of Bene Gesserit poisoning. On the other hand, I'm glad to see that aspect is not touched on in this version - though who knows what Part 2 will bring?

They also recast Liet-Kynes as a Black woman, which strikes me as a reasonable choice to make - though how much more daring would it have been if the Atreides clan had been recast as non-white? At least then you wouldn't have accusations of the White Savior Trope, which Dune contains in spades. In Dune's defense, Paul is the White Savior not because he's white, but because of Bene Gesserit scheming over millennia - though, yeah, the White Savior thing is still prominent.

But turning to the director, this is now the third film I've seen by him, after Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. I'm not sure I can point to any real commonalities among the three movies, apart from the sense of scale in all of them. That's not to say that Villeneuve's a generic director, because they're each unlike any other science fiction film around today. But comparing Villeneuve with Christopher Nolan's SF movies (Interstellar, Inception and Tenet), Nolan's appear to be more grounded in reality, with the trappings of Hollywood action films, while Villeneuve's atmospheres are more dreamlike and harder to fit into the Hollywood template.

I also think the two directors stand up to close comparisons, as they've made the best science fiction movies of the last decade (specifically Interstellar and Arrival, in that order). As a result, it's clear that Villeneuve was the right person to make a new Dune, since it fits with his aesthetic and his sense of what makes a good SF film. Meanwhile, Nolan would probably have made a good remake of 2001 (you could argue that Interstellar is just that).

Overall, as I've said, Denis Villeneuve's Dune is a good movie, fantastic-looking and well worth the two hours and change that it lasts, which feels quite slim compared with some other recent epics, or indeed compared with Blade Runner 2049. It helps that this film contains only about the first half of the story from the novel - it allows him to be expansive and really build out his world, without worrying about hitting the final beats in times that are reasonable for a Hollywood film. And if the movie ends abruptly, at least the ending comes at a point where you're looking forward to seeing more - similar to how a TV episode might end, while pointing to the next.

From what I've read on the internet, Part 2 isn't even written yet, let alone ready for theaters. However, I'll be interested to see how it turns out, and whether Villeneuve will follow the arc that the novels took if he gets to Dune Messiah or beyond. I'll also be interested to see if this film, or series, manages to turn Dune into a household name, the way Star Wars is... especially since Star Wars was so heavily influenced by Dune.

Thoughts on the Many Saints of Newark and the Sopranos

Like a New Year's resolution, I always swear this time will be different, but then I let myself down. In this case, I was all set to not write this blog until I'd actually finished watching the damn movie in question, but the conveyor belt of content waits for no one. So here we are: I'm most of the way through HBO Max's Many Saints of Newark and thinking back to the Sopranos.

I've actually resisted watching it for a while, to the point where I wasn't sure it'd even still be on HBO Max. I didn't even twig that it was a prequel to the Sopranos until about the fifth time I saw the trailer, and then I was even less sure that I wanted to watch it: I have a bit of a complicated relationship with the Sopranos, and wasn't convinced I'd enjoy this.

On the other hand, I kept seeing memes relating to it, and the final straw was listening (yesterday) to Marc Maron interviewing David Chase. There were a lot of interesting insights (like the big mystery of who Ray Liotta plays in this movie, or the point where Silvio Dante decides on a hairpiece), but listening to them talk about it made me think that it would be a little more than just a romp through the Sopranos's greatest (unseen) hits.

First of all, I love the casting in this movie. James Gandolfini's son Michael is quite enjoyable as a young Tony, while Alessandro Nivola is magnetic as young Tony's mentor Gentleman Dick Moltisanti (the father of Christopher!). I'm also loving Leslie Odom Jr as Harold McBrayer, the foil for Dick's machinations and the center of the racial subplot running through the movie. The best of the supporting characters are Jon Bernthal as Tony's father Johnny, and Vera Farmiga as his mother Livia - Farmiga, in particular, is an MVP here, because she does a great job of evoking not only Nancy Marchand's older version of the character from the series, but she's also made up to look exactly like Edie Falco, who played Tony's wife. When I saw her in the trailer, I honestly thought it was Edie Falco at first (Maron said the same thing on his podcast, btw).

I'm also enjoying that racial subplot. It takes place against the backdrop of the Newark race riots in the 60s, and I've found I really like these period pieces showing how the different communities interacted at the time. Other examples would be Boardwalk Empire, and the critically maligned Green Book.

The movie also makes the show look better to me, which I wasn't totally expecting. I need to qualify that statement, though, because I don't want to give the impression that I don't like the Sopranos. I just don't think it's the second-coming of the gangster movie that people have been saying for twenty years.

I've seen all of it, of course, though not in order. As a result, I saw certain characters die before they were introduced, and saw the beginnings of certain other storylines. But I don't think that's why I'm so conflicted about - rather, I thought some of the storylines in the show didn't hold up as well as they could have, and I thought the Wire (my absolute favorite show ever) had tighter storytelling.

What I admired about the Sopranos was the family drama, and the way Tony corrupted everything and everyone around him, and also simply the way this was a story about the American Dream. He was both absolutely steeped in it, by virtue of achieving it through dishonest means and by constantly striving for the trappings of it, while also being stuck on the outside of it... again, by virtue of his criminality but also the way Italian-Americans have adapted to the US. The most devastating episode for me was the one where Tony befriends all these middle-class professional guys, but realizes they're getting off on hanging out with the gangster.

Another one that came back to my mind was the one where we see Dr Melfi's family, and how they live their Italian-ness; David Chase mentioned it in the podcast, saying that her family represented a strand of Italians who'd tried to "pass" by Americanizing, much more than Tony's type of Italians. I'm a completely different type of Italian-American, maybe closer to German by virtue of having come from the north and having arrived in the 1980s, but these questions have been present in my family, too.

Anyway, now that I'm almost done with Many Saints, I'm wondering if it'll be time to rewatch the Sopranos soon - I'll have a lot of the stories fresh in my mind when I do. Maybe I'll appreciate the show more on the second go?

Foam Rolling and Acupressure

I've heard it said that the things everyone is looking for on the internet are how to get rich, how to get skinny and how to get laid (I'd also add how to get published). I don't know that I have any insights on any of those things that you can't get anywhere else, although I'm partial to the slow-but-steady school of achieving them all, if that helps.

But on the subject of getting skinny, I've been thinking a lot about recovery lately. Specifically, I've been thinking about various sore or tight muscles, and how to get them not to be sore and tight. The journey I'm on is currently ongoing, but I'd say that it's worth it, so these resources might be helpful.

The first thing to do is to find a personal trainer. I've talked in the past about how they're not always so helpful, but this is one area where they're really worth it. Depending on your goals they can recommend the best ways to tackle your specific pains and tightnesses, and they can diagnose the real problem behind a continuing ache you might have. The game-changer for me was a few years ago, when my trainer at the time explained that a tight muscle is a weak muscle: therefore, rehabbing that muscle means rolling it, stretching it and exercising it, in that order.

For those, like me, who are reluctant to go back into the gym until the pandemic is a little more beaten, there are now virtual training sessions. My gym, 24 Hour Fitness, offers them for cheaper than in-person sessions, though they can be a little tough to find. The obvious downside to virtual training is that you need to get your own equipment, so that's where the next section comes in.

The first thing to have at home is the actual foam roller, and this is the brand that I have at home. TriggerPoint makes them in a variety of sizes and softnesses, as well as varying amounts of things sticking out of them. Larger rollers mean you can roll both legs at the same time, but may be less portable; I prefer the orange Grid travel, because it's neither too firm nor too soft. The ones with studs coming out of them are good for getting into hard-to-reach areas, but may be too painful for beginners.

For getting into smaller areas, I have a set of massage balls similar to these (which appear to be sold out). My set has a more spiky second ball, but the smooth one is the one I use the most - I'll typically pin it against the wall and work it around the tightest back and shoulder muscles. You can also use them for rolling out the soles of your feet, but if you want to really hit the smallest trigger points there, I recommend golf balls.

For additional resources on foam rolling and acupressure, I'm currently reading Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett. His book has its detractors, and it requires even more equipment than I've got, but it's good for finding all the different parts of your various muscles that you can smash or floss or roll. I've worked my way down to his section on the adductors, which has been a revelation.

A slightly less intense beginners' routine is here. It walks you through various ways of rolling out some of the more common muscles that need it, and includes a primer on what fascia is and why you should get it in working order. I also sometimes listen to Bret's podcast, when it's got someone interesting talking on it - they're not all about fitness, but I think those are the ones I listen to most commonly.

Those are some of my resources for rehabbing my muscles. I've found that these routines have helped a lot in releasing tightness in my back, neck and calves (my worst trouble spots), as well as hamstrings, quadriceps and glutei. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go sort out my shoulder...

Let's Normalize Masking and Distancing

Bit of a controversial statement there, but I'm going to stand by it. Incidentally, I'm not advocating masking in every circumstance forever and ever, but ever since I started watching Japanese reality show Terrace House last year, I've been struck by how normal it is to wear a mask when you're felling sick over there.

This is a nice change from our Anglo-Saxon free-for-all of germs. I used to have a flatmate back in London who would sit in the living room when he got sick, coughing really loudly and not trying to cover it up. I asked him to cover his mouth once, and his response was that I was going to get it anyway, so why bother? Not super helpful.

A few years later, a coworker here in the US was famous in the office for coming in whenever he was sick, even though he was perfectly able to work from home (and would have saved himself a long commute on top of that). Of course he'd spread whatever he had to the rest of us, but what made it worse was that his boss didn't think anything of it - the company's policy was even to pool vacation time and sick time together (at least for their division; mine were separate), which only increased the incentive to come in and make everyone else sick.

I do remember my own experiences in years before that, where I'd have to evaluate whether I was sick enough to stay home, and if not I'd travel to work crammed onto the Tube, then sit in my office and presumably spread my germs to everyone around me. Those were different times though, when we weren't routinely given laptops and so it was harder to actually work from home. All the same, I think managers then, as now, could have been more aggressive about having sick employees stay home where possible.

We could also normalize wearing surgical masks when we're sick, or around others who are, like people in East Asia seem to do. It's a shame it's become politicized here, because it's not a big deal to put on a surgical mask - they may not be as protective as N95s or KN95s, but they seem to do something, and they're not hard to get hold of... in normal circumstances, anyway.

I read this morning about some dimwit in Missouri complaining that schools shouldn't mandate masks, because then kids won't learn about facial cues. On the contrary, I'd argue that if kids only have someone's eyes to look at, they'll get a lot better at reading facial cues - after all, don't models talk about "smize-ing", where you make your smile look genuine by smiling with your eyes? I'm sure I learned this from Tyra Banks.

This future I'm positing doesn't even require 100% mask-wearing compliance in all situations (perhaps idealistically, I'm imagining a future where we aren't in a pandemic - I am, after all, a writer of fantasy). It just requires people to be grown up about listening to their own bodies, and wearing a mask when they start sneezing and coughing to not infect those around them. It also requires us not to conform to this free-market ideal that we show our usefulness by powering through our illnesses and going to work when we probably shouldn't.

Again, these thoughts may be too fanciful for the cultural moment where we find ourselves, but they're worthy goals. If (when!) we get back to the normal run of leaving the house and going to offices and seeing humans, I'll aim to continue wearing masks when I feel it's warranted.

Of course, the damn things being so politicized means I'll be paranoid about some right-wing jerk beating me up for it because I've triggered him somehow. But I'm being the change I want to see in the world. In an absurd, meaningless existence such as our own, that's the one freedom left to us.

Thoughts on Germany on its Latest Election

It kind of snuck up on me, but after months of talk, the German federal elections are here, and they look to herald a certain amount of chaos, rather than a clear successor to current chancellor Angela Merkel. As I checked the results a moment ago, the Social Democrats (SPD) had gathered the largest share of votes, though at just under 26% of the total they're not exactly commanding a mandate. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are at second with 24.1% and the Greens are in third place with 14.6%.

One of the things that's helped Germany weather the chaos of the past few years has been the sense of stability that came from Merkel's long reign and the grand coalitions between CDU and SPD that were formed. It's hard to see that sense of stability continuing, if everybody starts fighting about who's going to be the next chancellor, and I'm feeling a bit pessimistic at the prospect of the far-right AfD making further inroads amid the chaos.

We can debate the effectiveness of Merkel in these past sixteen years that she's been in charge (and in fact, I did debate it with my mom this morning), but it's undeniable that from outside Germany she became the face of the country that other chancellors before her, or other heads of state in other countries, haven't really managed to do. I may be able to name all the post-war German chancellors from Konrad Adenauer on down, but I'd be hard-pressed to name an SPD leader in these past few years, beyond Gerhard Schröder, whom she defeated to become chancellor, and Olaf Scholz, who seems likely to take her place now.

Now, I won't say I spend a lot of time following German politics, or even current events. I've even fallen out of the habit of checking the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Süddeutsche Zeitung a couple of times a week (blame the fact that my current job requires a bit more focus than my previous one). I used to watch Deutsche Welle's 15-minute news roundup every Sunday morning, to keep my German up, but they stopped doing it.

I do, however, like the idea of a nice, stable society out there, one that I'm familiar with and that I wouldn't mind living in again. The last few years have been a bit tough for me on that front, since the US has been a basket case, the UK has been worse thanks to Brexit, and Italy has set the template for the chaos of both since it elected Silvio Berlusconi in the 1990s. Germany wasn't always the economic powerhouse of Europe - when I lived there unemployment was over 10% and you could see a palpable difference between East and West - but it was nice to know that it was still well run and pleasant.

I'm sure it will continue to be, but it suffers, as ever, from its placement at the heart of Europe. It still has unruly neighbors to its east, in the form of Russia and the various right-wing populist governments of Hungary, Poland, Turkey and so forth. It also faces a fractious and xenophobic Britain, and an increasingly ungovernable US, while also playing bad fiscal cop to the rest of the EU.

An English relative once asked me whether my heart lay in the US, Britain or Italy, and I answered that it lay in Germany. This may have been overblown, but I don't think it's completely wrong. When I used to read the roundups from the European soccer leagues on the Guardian, I always used to imagine the feeling of being there on a Sunday night after the games had ended, a feeling I never got from reading the Italian roundup (even though I've spent a larger part of my life in Italy).

When I moved to Britain after my year in Germany, I was a little shocked at how little anyone in Britain seemed to know about Germany, though I remembered the WWII references from Euro 96, so it shouldn't have been too surprising. I suppose in that way I became a bit of a hipster (for lack of a better term) in my cheerleading for the place - it's pleasing that, in the two decades since I left, the rest of the world has caught on to what a cool place it is.

It also seems to have gotten better since I left. The government made moves to naturalize many of the foreigners who'd been living and working there for decades, and the high streets appear to have become more cosmopolitan (I remember being so excited when a sushi place finally opened in my town). Germany even started to export prestige dramas, like Deutschland 83, so it seemed that the world was finally taking notice.

So with these elections heralding a big change for the country, I'm hoping that it can continue to be prosperous, stable and tolerant, and that it can continue to set a good example (in at least a few ways) for the rest of Europe and for the US. I'm also hoping that I get to go back soon, since my last visit was in 2012 - I've always regretted not seeing more of the country, and I'd like to rectify that error.

Why was the 1918 flu forgotten?

Like everyone else in the world since March 2020, I've become conspicuously well-informed about the previous big pandemic, the 1918 flu. I've seen (and probably shared) memes on social media about people being told to wear masks back then, or how cases surged, then dipped, then surged again over the two years that the pandemic raged across the world.

Now, that preceding paragraph needs to be rendered in a special sarcasm font, because I'm totally not well-informed about the 1918 flu, though I have indeed seen more information about it in the last 18 months or so, than I had in the preceding 40 or so years of my life. But what's spurring me to write this blog today is the fact that just the other day I was reading a book about the history of Canada, published in 2006, and it makes not a single mention of the pandemic.

I even checked the notes and index, and there's nothing about 1918 flu, Spanish flu, or pandemics in the entire book. This despite a big section on the First World War, in which Canada played a prominent role, and another on the aftermath of the war (though in fairness, that section isn't so big, because the author skips over much of the 1920s).

I've been hyper-aware of this gap in history since the coronavirus pandemic began, particularly in how books from around that period have ignored it. In fact, I think the first instance where I heard of the 1918 flu was in a series of books of alternate history by Harry Turtledove, which explore the long-term consequences of the South winning the Civil War.

When preparing to write this blog, I found this post on History.com, which suggests that this collective act of forgetting came about because people made a conscious effort to forget it. So distraught was everyone at the ferocity of the illness, that doctors made a point of not writing about it; on top of that, the world was recovering from the Great War, and America was racked by political and racial violence.

The problem is, this explanation is still unsatisfying. I get that the books I typically read wouldn't necessarily make a big deal of the 1918 flu, especially because they might have been aimed at kids or written ten years later. But given how many people it affected, it's hard to imagine everyone taking the collective decision to never speak of it again, and then abiding by that decision for the next hundred years.

For one thing, I've learned in the last 18 months that there have been other forgotten pandemics since 1918. Apparently there was one in the 1950s in Britain, for example, which I only heard about in the context of this one. I suppose it makes sense that if a disease is raging only in one or two areas, or if it's over fairly quickly, then you wouldn't hear of it again.

At the same time, I'm well aware of the polio epidemic that raged throughout the Western world in the early decades of the 20th century. That was only beaten in the 1950s, when the Salk vaccine came out, but presumably the long decades in which polio was a danger to people meant it was harder to ignore.

In this context, I can't help thinking of another forgotten event, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, which I'd never heard of before the HBO Watchmen show came out a couple of years ago. In that case, the forgetting is probably easier to explain, because it happened quickly (over two days) and in just one place, though of course there were other such incidents over the course of the 20th century. And, perhaps a bit distastefully, it was easy for the rest of America to forget given who was massacred in Tulsa - what would a reader of the New York Times have cared for a Black community in Tulsa being burned to the ground?

I think that, on top of people wanting to ignore these kinds of events, the reason we've forgotten them is that it was so hard to get information out back then. One point in that History.com article that I found interesting was that the papers covering the 1918 flu didn't really talk about the human impact of it - contrast that with now, when we see people on Facebook and Twitter who have caught the coronavirus, or died of it. We're all constantly talking about it, and doing so in a way that's leaving a more-or-less permanent record - something that didn't necessarily exist 100 years ago.

Still, given how unknown these events are, it makes you wonder what else we've collectively forgotten - and whether that forgetting is setting us up to repeat whatever's happened.

Au Revoir Afghanistan

Odd historical synchronicity (or maybe not) that the US withdraws from Afghanistan just in time for the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. There's been a lot of ink spilled about what this all means, but the thing that's stuck with me the most has been the piece in Vox about the "death of liberal interventionism".

I didn't manage to read the whole thing (I try to keep my morning sweep of the news short), but one point that stood out was that, with the US riding high after the end of the Cold War and the successful intervention in Kosovo, we thought we had the moral high ground locked up... but there was nothing preventing us from doing "nation-building" were there wasn't such a clear danger of crimes against humanity. This is exactly what we ended up with after 9/11 and the rush to war in Iraq.

There are arguments for and against interventionism, but I lean toward the side that says we, as the world's superpower (at least back then), should put a stop to the most egregious crimes. I was suspicious of the motive to going to war in Iraq, even though I agreed with the idea that the world was better off without Saddam Hussein in charge of an army. I just didn't believe the arguments put forward in support of the Iraq War.

The rest is history. We quickly lost more soldiers in Iraq than the number of victims who died on 9/11, sank a crap-ton of money there to create ISIS, and lost a huge chunk of our international standing. Afghanistan wasn't as flashy a disaster, but it lasted longer and we end our involvement there with the Taliban back in charge, ready to roll back whatever notional gains we made in these two decades.

I'm not unmoved by the arguments that the US presence in Afghanistan bolstered women's education and participation in society, though. In fact, that's at the heart of what I'm talking about here. The liberal interventionism of the 1990s, as I remember it, was never only about projecting power, even if those being bombed by us at the time might remember things differently. The neocon nation-building projects of the following century, however, were absolutely about projecting power and scaring unfriendly regimes into not messing with us.

What the argument about intervention misses, and presumably that article in Vox, is that we've also become very bad at soft power. Not just since 9/11, but since Vietnam (or probably earlier, like Korea). These last twenty years of attritional warfare have sapped our ability and resolve to find non-military solutions to global problems, but it seems we never had much resolve for that approach... only now we don't even pretend to care.

One of my biggest complaints about the Obama years is that his administration oversaw US pullbacks from regions where we've been a presence for years. It may seem strange when I've just mentioned soft power, but several countries in Southeast Asia have seen cause to regret the withdrawal of US naval forces from their regions, because now China's throwing around its weight and claiming their territorial waters. US forces being there seem to have kept things calm, but now it's unlikely that the US can go back to keeping the peace there without a confrontation with China.

Africa is another example, more appropriate to talking about soft power. China is investing heavily in the continent, bankrolling infrastructure so that it can collect raw materials to feed its factories and markets. The US, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen: I'm not saying we should be exploiting Africa's resources, but because it has little of what we want, we don't have any interest in engaging with the place. Meanwhile, China lets Africa's despotisms do what they want.

I don't see anyone in US politics who looks willing to engage with the rest of the world, and that frustrates me. Bernie Sanders, for all that I agreed with him on a lot of his platform, just seemed unengaged with the world - which may seem okay if you think that American power is exclusively a bad thing. But I do still believe that America has a positive role to play in world affairs, if it would just get itself together to do so, and if it could actually do so sensitively.

I keep coming back to initiatives like the Marshall Plan or the rebuilding of Japan. Both of those came with negatives, like the fact that the eastern half of Europe languished under the Soviets for fifty years, or that South Korea was a US-backed dictatorship until the 1970s, but Western Europe and Japan are stable, prosperous societies that grew with the help of the US. They may seem lost in the current multipolar era, but Japan essentially created the technological world we now live in, and Europe is a huge exporter of culture (including my beloved football).

This is all relevant for Afghanistan. When the US toppled the Taliban, it claimed it wanted to create a stable, open society like Afghanistan apparently had until the 1970s. If it had actually tried to help the country, rather than spending all its money on destroying Iraq and arrogantly presuming that the Afghans would be eager to turn into Americans, then the cultural gains that women, liberals and LGBTQ people have made there in the last two decades wouldn't be threatened now.

Tips for Writers: LinkedIn Learning

One of the perks of working for a large company like my previous employer, State Farm, is that there are a lot of resources available to employees. These ranged from discounts on stores via its Perks at Work program, to learning resources like Degreed and Linkedin Learning (formerly Lynda.com). The content on Degreed is mostly client-generated and client-collected, meaning that State Farm itself was putting together courses on subjects it deemed important, and cribbing from across the web to populate them.

But my big discovery was that LinkedIn Learning also contains a bunch of courses on creative stuff, which is why I was glad to find that my new employer also gives us access to it. There are a number of creative subjects on LinkedIn Learning, like photography, but the area I want to focus on is creative writing, because there's a fair amount of content on the platform that writers will find useful.

The first thing to say, though, is that you're probably better off accessing LinkedIn Learning through your employer's subscription, if they have it. It costs $29.99 per month for a monthly subscription, or $19.99/month if you take out an annual subscription, so it can be costly; if your employer doesn't offer LinkedIn Learning, you can find a number of the same courses on Udemy starting at around $15 per course. By the way, I found an article comparing the two, which claims LinkedIn offers a la carte courses, but I couldn't find anything on its pricing page other than its monthly prices, so that's potentially a strike in Udemy's favor.

The other point about LinkedIn is that it's better for fiction writers than screenwriters. I was able to find just one course related to screenwriting, but I stopped using it after a couple of days, because the teacher seems to have only one credit to his name, which I'd never heard about before. The fiction writing courses are run by actual authors (e.g. Jessica Brody) or writers who have made a career of focusing on the way stories work (e.g. Lisa Cron). I may never have heard of Jessica Brody before LinkedIn, but a quick google search reveals that she's published over 20 books - so at least she knows the industry and is a working writer.

Some of it can also be very basic. The first writing course I watched was Foundations of Fiction, which features a lot of explanations of types of point-of-view, exercises on writing types of characters, and so forth. But that proviso should only put you off if you're already a bestselling writer - those, like me, who are getting their writing careers off the ground can probably always stand to go over the basics again, every once in a while.

(It's also interesting how easy it is to not learn the basics if you're entirely self-taught, in any subject. At least a basic course will frequently explain these points in a systematic manner)

Jessica Brody also has courses that are aimed at the business side of writing, like how to sell your novel to a major publisher, and developing ideas that sell. I haven't gotten to those courses yet, but I am going through one on productivity hacks for writers, which is full of good tips even if your writing time consists of just an hour a night before bed.

One other course that I've bookmarked to watch at some point is on using Scrivener. I bought it a few years ago, and while my prose stories are still all in Word, I always consider it would be good to learn how to use it to full effect (I've also written screenplays in it).

Beyond the writing courses, there are some good courses on time management and productivity, which have some useful tips and approaches that can transfer over to writers. I'm also partial to the Desk Yogi series on movements you can do to mitigate the effects of sitting at your desk all day - like time management, these are relevant for writers and non-writers alike.

Overall, there's a good amount of creative writing content on LinkedIn Learning, enough that if you have a few minutes free at the end of your workday, you should be able to learn some useful tips or approaches to writing. It's also good to keep your mind thinking about writing, even outside of your normal writing time (though I don't think you should spend all your work time fooling around on LinkedIn Learning).

LinkedIn Learning may not have the brand-name appeal of MasterClass, but if your employer offers it for free it's a good resource, and I highly recommend it.

Where Camping Meets Doomsday Prepping

With the inevitable collapse of American society amid pandemic and political polarization, I've found myself unable to resist the lure of camping gear recently. Not only have I spent some down time during work hours checking out Wirecutter's guides to various camping items, but I've also started looking at the same lists of gear on CNet.

It all started in February or so, when the extreme weather in Texas caused all those blackouts. I mentioned then that I'd picked up a solar panel for charging my phone and other electronics, but since then I've been obsessed with finding power banks that could power my laptop, or jump-start my car, or even run household items with AC plugs. Everything that I've seen on Amazon is expensive, or not quite what I'm looking for, but I feel like it's a matter of time before something comes out that I can make use of.

Beyond that, though, I've had a look at articles on what to keep for emergencies, such as first aid kits and receptacles for fresh water, and at articles on stuff to take on a socially distanced road trip to a national park. All of it looks so appealing, from the outdoor dish set to the portable table to the cooler.

All this research on camping and outdoor gear reminds me of my trip to Joshua Tree a few years ago, which occasioned a round of REI expeditions where I picked up snack food, camping dish wear and a headlamp. There was so much stuff that looked fun and useful and that would surely turn me into the indomitable outdoorsman I'd like to be, although I'm also realistic enough to admit that I probably wouldn't use it so much if I did have it. After all, I haven't gone camping since then - between the pandemic and my girlfriend being a little less enamored of the idea of roughing it for a few days in some remote forest among bugs and predators.

Still, I find it interesting that I'm so taken by all this stuff. I guess I just like that it's all so versatile and tidy - presumably bringing out a lot of interesting equipment, unfolding it expertly, and then squaring it all away into small corners of my trunk or garage appeals to the OCD in me.

It doesn't help that I can imagine how I'd use it all. For example, we'd drive up to Yosemite, confident in the knowledge that we wouldn't have trouble with gas stations because I'd be carrying a canister of gasoline for my car. Once we arrived, I'd pull out the collapsible table and chairs, set the table with the stackable dishes and cups, and extract our lunch from the cooler (which apparently can keep ice frozen for a week).

We'd keep our devices charged during lunch with the solar panels hooked up to the 1,000 watt portable generator, which is all electronic so it can't poison us with carbon monoxide fumes. Said generator could also power everything up to and including a fan, to keep cool and ward off bugs. And on finishing, we'd pack everything away back into the car and go for a walk, or back home, or wherever we wanted.

Part of what fascinates me is the idea that going camping doesn't have to be grim and full of deprivation (without going to the other extreme of glamping) - if you do it enough, you know what you need so you bring stuff that lets you cook, relax and keep yourself entertained. The other thing is that sense of order that comes from knowing that the set of dishes you brought stacks into a neat little cube, which you place on top of the cooler that holds all your sodas and snacks.

The other, other thing is probably borne of the pandemic and all this time I've spent at home, which is the feeling of being able to go anywhere and be prepared for it. My vacations have usually been to cities, which I can navigate fairly well even if I don't know the language (as long as there's Starbucks, public transportation and cafes where I can read for an hour). My beloved city breaks feel impossible to achieve at the moment, even being fully vaccinated, since I don't feel comfortable getting on a plane and some places still aren't letting tourists in, so road trips are probably the most likely ways of getting out of the house for a few days.

Though the real limiting factor is bathrooms. Using a campground toilet is one thing, but I'm not quite at the point where I (or my girlfriend) would feel comfortable using a bucket we've brought ourselves. So for the moment it's probably better that I don't go on any REI shopping sprees...

British Sea Power is Dead. Long Live Sea Power

Just discovered today that English indie band British Sea Power has dropped the "British" part from its name and will henceforth be known as Sea Power. My first inkling was when I saw a Youtube video by someone called Sea Power, which made me wonder if it was BSP, a band I've loved since 2004 or so, but with whom I've lost touch in recent years (as I have with all bands, frankly).

So I went looking around, and found that they had indeed changed their name, and they explain why here. It's hard to disagree with their reasoning, especially given the turn that British politics has taken since June 2016 (but also that it was taking long before then). With the Tories spending the last decade ginning up xenophobia and isolationism by invoking the so-called glorious past, especially the Empire and WWII, it must feel increasingly difficult to maintain a name like "British Sea Power".

They say in that Guardian article that the name was originally intended, in part, as "1950s situationist", but I can also imagine that there are sections of the British music-listening public that couldn't pronounce that word, let alone define it (not that I can really define it either - I assume it has something to do with Dada?). And not to put too fine a point on it, especially since I've only seen them live twice, but you can imagine a section of their fans that maybe doesn't understand that the WWI uniforms, lyrics invoking places in Britain, and all other trappings isn't meant to be an uncritical lionization of Britain's past.

That is to say, were there fans at BSP shows who weren't in on the joke? Did BSP worry about getting co-opted by skinheads the way Madness, Morrissey and Joy Division have been, to varying degrees? If so, it's a shame to see them giving up the fight against people like that.

My only quibble (and it's truly just that) is that Sea Power doesn't have the same ring as British Sea Power.  Realistically, I don't see why it should change my opinion of their first two albums, The Decline of British Sea Power and Open Season, as some of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic music in my collection (outside of the avant-garde that I have). The first album, Decline, is so much about Britishness that I couldn't help but love it, while Open Season in my memory sounds like a Victorian trophy cabinet - though that might just be because of songs like Victorian Ice and Oh Larsen B.

Much of my most British music is strongly urban, tied to cities like London, Manchester or Glasgow, but Sea Power's the only one that seems to engage with the countryside, the past and the forgotten parts of Britain (like their song Canvey Island, off third album Do You Like Rock Music?). Their singular vision was demonstrated nicely by their writing a new score to Man of Aran, a 1920s documentary about people living on the desolate west coast of Ireland; and also by selling mugs emblazoned with British Tea Power (one of which I have back in London).

I have no reason to expect that the name change heralds a shift from these themes. But as I say, it feels a little like they're ceding the fight over what's "British" to the worst proponents of the term, right at the time when England, and Britain more generally, needs someone to articulate a left nationalism that encompasses a nautical (as opposed to naval) tradition of the country, and that champions appreciation of nature and the countryside as something for all people, rather than the Tory/nimby impulse to keep the countryside green for the landowners.

It's interesting that they received a lot of interview requests from far-right channels like GB News and Russia Today in the wake of their name change, because it's hard not to see it as a salvo in the ongoing culture war. I applaud them not talking to those outlets, and I wish them success in their next albums - my Great British Music Relisten hasn't arrived at SP yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Spoiler-Filled Thoughts on Marvel's Disney Plus Shows

It's been a couple of weeks since I finished Loki, and since then my girlfriend and I have watched a couple of the documentaries that Disney+ has about the making of the three MCU shows they've launched in the past year. Overall, I think they've been decent, though I liked some better than others, as I'll explain below.

WandaVision

For me, this was probably the strongest of the shows. The central conceit/mystery, in which Wanda and Vision are inhabiting a different sitcom idiom each episode, was a great showcase of the strengths of TV versus movies, as well as a nice love letter to TV sitcoms. The episode riffing on 80s shows was especially strong for me, since that's the decade I grew up watching sitcoms like Growing Pains and Family Ties.

It also had a nice set of references to stuff from the comics, like Wanda and Vision's original costumes, and tied into the upcoming Dr Strange sequel, though that part would have been more effective if said sequel hadn't been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. My favorite thing, however, was the way it reused certain side characters from older Marvel movies; Darcy from the Thor movies and Agent Woo from Ant-Man and the Wasp were not only fun to see again, but they played really well off one another. It was also cool to see Monica Rambeau show up, grown up since her appearance in Captain Marvel and acquiring her powers.

However, the real "holy-shit" moment for me was the appearance of the X-Men version of Quicksilver, Wanda's brother Pietro. I'd found it interesting that the twins had been appearing both in the MCU and the strand of X-Men movies that kicked off with X-Men: First Class, and that the MCU immediately killed off their own Quicksilver while the X-Men films dispensed with Wanda at some point (I don't actually remember when she disappeared from there). And, ever since Disney bought the part of Fox that owns the X-Men films, I'd been wondering when they'd integrate the X-Men with the MCU (though I'm not really a fan of that idea).

In fact, I'd kind of expected that this integration would take place during the Infinity War/Endgame movies. As I saw it, the writers would use Thanos's unlimited power not only to destroy half the universe, but would break the bonds between universes and bring the X-Men in to help out. Things didn't turn out that way, so seeing Quicksilver "recast" was a fun Easter egg, though it's too early to tell if it will go anywhere.

Falcon and Winter Soldier

If WandaVision was the strongest of the three shows for me, then this was unfortunately the weakest. I'll hasten to add that it wasn't exactly bad - the relationship between the two leads was fun to watch, for the most part, and it featured some good meditations on what it means to be Captain America in today's world.

But the reason I call it the weakest of the three is that I'm not sure it earns its six episodes. There's a lot of business about Sam and Bucky coming to terms with stuff, and more about the Flag Smashers being angry, and more about USAgent also being angry, but it didn't feel like anything different than what we'd seen in the movies - and so that's why I think it might have been as effective as a 120+ minute movie than a six-hour TV show.

Such is the fate of all shows that follow something as formally exciting and innovative as WandaVision - it can seem a little bland to go back to the old style of making MCU stories when you follow something that played around with the format so well.

Another possible ding is that it doesn't feel like it leads into something the way WandaVision does. We've established Sam as the new Captain America, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a new bad guy (who also appears in the post-credit scene in Black Widow), but it's unclear what it's leading up to. That said, I do look forward to seeing what that will be, since that thriller side of the Marvel Universe has always appealed to me.

Loki

This was another fun one, and if it didn't play with the MCU brand/form as much as WandaVision, it was still a nice departure from the usual type of stories. It also helps that it was anchored by fan-fave Tom Hiddleston, showing off the complex version of Loki we've gotten in recent MCU films. That and the other Loki variants, particularly Alligator Loki.

From an in-universe perspective, it was nice to see what happened to Loki after he broke the timeline in Endgame by disappearing after his capture back in 2012, and how that leads into the upcoming Phase 4 of the MCU, where we'll encounter Kang the Conqueror (this seems to be another show that leads into Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness).

Getting back to my theories about integrating other properties into the main MCU, the storyline about the Time Variance Authority and its efforts to keep the timeline pure and uncluttered seems to point to a way that they'll be able to incorporate the X-Men movies, i.e. by having them happen on an alternate Earth.

The other thing I really liked about Loki was the design of the TVA. The technology all looked like it belonged in a 60s-based vision of the future, which made it very appealing - indeed, the TVA offices and the infinite city that they occupy look like an interesting place to hang out.

Because these shows all led into future MCU stuff, it'll be interesting to see how the franchise evolves as new movies come out. One nice thing about the MCU has been the way that it could incorporate lots of different types of stories, and these three shows have been a continuation of that trend. The hope is that Marvel can continue to be relevant and entertaining as Phase 4 progresses, but if it maintains the quality of these shows then it'll be in good hands.

Stop Treating the Pandemic Like It's Over

We're in a full-blown third, fourth or even fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, but nobody seems to have noticed.

That's not strictly true: people are noticing that cases are rising in the US, and that the Delta variant is becoming the dominant strain of the coronavirus (if it hasn't already), but they're sitting there blaming it exclusively on people who haven't gotten vaccinated. By people, I mean pundits and random people on Twitter - hardly a day goes by when I don't see someone on there yelling at us all to get vaccinated (I have, thanks), or being derisive about unvaccinated people being hospitalized.

I find this tone worrying. As I said, I'm vaccinated, and I'm pleased that I got it so soon after it became available in my age group. I believe that the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all got it, we'd be seeing fewer cases. I also think that those who are peddling misinformation, be it about the existence of the pandemic or the efficacy of masking or who are making baseless claims about the safety of the vaccines, are wrong.

Recently, though, I've been finding a weird equivalency between those of us who continue to wear masks and those who refuse to get vaccinated. Speaking to some neighbors the other week, outside and double-masked, I was asked if I hadn't been vaccinated. I answered that I had, but the question rattled me a little. It shouldn't be controversial for me to continue wearing a mask, and it's not the horrible imposition that some, like Tucker Carlson, seem to think it is.

Even Bill Maher (whom my girlfriend loves but I frequently find infuriating) has laughed at people who were still wearing masks outdoors, despite the fact that he got infected with Covid after being vaccinated. If anybody should appreciate the importance of continuing to take precautions, it's him - but I digress.

The fact is that California saw around 44,000 new cases last week. This article from the New York Times says that one in five new cases are in Florida, with appropriate doses of condescension for a Republican-led state, but it doesn't so much as mention California, which by this math accounts for over 10% of new cases. There are pockets of vaccine hesitancy here, which are frequently caused by politics, but it can't be the whole story.

There have to be more Covid breakthrough infections than we're hearing about - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself admits that it's no longer tracking all breakthrough cases. This other article from the NYT notes that the more people you're around, even if you and they are all vaccinated, the greater your risk of encountering a viral load big enough to get you sick.

Some places are taking appropriate steps. I'm staying with my girlfriend at the moment, and the grocery/deli near her house has gone back to requiring masks indoors for all customers. When we went up to a mall in San Francisco a few weeks ago, the vast majority of people outside (we didn't go in) were wearing masks despite notices from the mall itself saying that vaccinated people didn't have to wear masks indoors.

I just think it's too early to start opening up again, and to start telling people they don't have to wear masks. More importantly, I think it's unwise to imply that the vaccine is the only thing that can save us from this pandemic, when wearing a mask is probably as important a step as getting the jab. There's still debate on the relative effectiveness of masks versus vaccines, but I think the point is, if you can do both, do both.

To sum up, if cases are rising in the US (and they are), then don't blame it exclusively on people who haven't been vaccinated. They might not be able to get it, for example because they're allergic, or they might not have gotten around to it yet. Even if they can get it, but are hesitant, telling them they're stupid and selfish is unlikely to convince them otherwise. And even with the vaccine, we shouldn't be declaring victory just yet - we may not want to admit it, but there's a long way to go to eradicate Covid completely, which should have been our goal in the first place.

Euro 2020: Done and Dusted

Well, that's another Euros in the bag. I wasn't positive about Italy's chances going into the final, since they'd be playing an England team that had been looking ever more unstoppable, and they'd be playing at Wembley, where the home support would be the twelfth man. My fears were confirmed (apparently) when Luke Shaw scored in the second minute of the game, but I was pleased that Italy regrouped, held on through a difficult first half, and then came back into it in the second.

I also had a bad feeling about penalties, but that fear was also dispelled when three of England's players missed or failed to beat the Italy keeper. I'm just sad to see that the ones who missed were all black, and my prediction that they'd come in for racist abuse has unfortunately come true.

There's been a lot of talk about racism swirling around this game for the last few days, both at an overall societal level and at a personal level, i.e. in my Facebook Messenger chats with friends before and after the match. What kicked it off was the England fans booing the Danish national anthem in the semi-final, and then doing it again to the Italian anthem this time, one of several acts that got the FA fined. English friends have predictably pointed to Italian fans booing black players in Serie A or throwing bananas at them, which is of course worse... but as we've seen for a few years, certain elements of English fandom are happy to go after black players if they're not performing to the required level, or if they're simply too "bling", which is racist code for buying themselves the stuff they were deprived of growing up.

My distaste for the anthem-booing also stemmed more from the unsporting nature of the thing, than any thought of racism, and from the lecturing that the rest of the world always gets from the English on how unsporting us foreign-types are. Yet certain subsets of the English fans seem to think that these sporting rules don't apply to them, or possibly that if they're doing something it can't be unsporting (see also diving to earn penalties).

But let's get back to the football, since it's what brought us here in the first place. I've talked about the ebb and flow of the game, how England were on top for the start, then Italy battled back and the game stayed level through extra time. It wasn't, perhaps, a game for the ages but it also wasn't a disappointing match; in fact you could say that this is the only result that made sense, since I felt the two teams were very well matched, and indeed the two best teams of the tournament.

It was also a fitting final to a tournament that I believe has been particularly fun. I've mentioned before how many more goals we've had than last time, which is one (imperfect) indicator of how teams are playing. I believe I've also talked about how this tournament has felt like a necessary catharsis for Europe after suffering so heavily from the pandemic - Italy and the UK have been overtaking each other for most deaths from Covid-19 for about a year, and essentially every country in Europe has had trouble getting it under control, or rolling out vaccines, or something else.

This is why I believe that holding the tournament across the continent wasn't the foolishness that the podcasts I listen to claim it is. That doesn't take into account the pandemic, though it doesn't seem as if it's spread particularly rapidly other than through England matches - I can certainly imagine that having 24 sets of fans converging on one location and then bringing it back to their own countries would have been worse.

From a footballing perspective, though, I think that holding the games in some of Europe's greatest stadia was a wonderful idea, because it spread the festivities around. My mom and my sister, who are currently in Rome and London respectively, could each attest to the carnival atmosphere in their cities, which they wouldn't have had if there hadn't been games in those cities. My one objection was the amount of travel that some teams were subjected to, particularly those that had to go back and forth from Baku, Azerbaijan.

Perhaps a more sensible approach would have been to award the group stages to six different countries, and then held the knockout rounds in a decreasing number of venues until we got to the final at Wembley (which I think we can all agree is probably the most iconic football stadium in Europe). Certainly it would have cut down on player fatigue, air-travel emissions and (by not holding games in Baku) authoritarian fuckery.

Still, all in all, I think this has been a great tournament, even beyond Italy winning it. It started inauspiciously, with Christian Eriksen's collapse in Denmark's first game, but fortunately he recovered, and that incident brought the Denmark team together in such a way that made them a second-favorite for many neutrals.

The football was good, and characterized by team cohesion rather than individual heroics. I just hope I can be in Europe for the next one.

Euro 2020: On to the Semis

We've now had two knockout stages, and I think it's fair to say this tournament has continued to deliver on its promise of fun. The round of 16 held its fair share of surprise results, with the biggest being Switzerland's defeat of France on penalties, while Ukraine's win over Sweden and the Czech Republic's over the Netherlands were close behind.

I watched part of the Switzerland-France game and managed to catch the first four goals. Switzerland did well to get on the scoring sheet first, but I'll admit I gave up on them when Karim Benzema scored his two goals in rapid succession, and when Paul Pogba scored his screamer not long after. I switched off, and only later did I learn that not only had the Swiss equalized, but they'd beaten the world champions on penalties. This makes it so much more disappointing that Switzerland did so badly in the next set of penalties against Spain.

The other one that caught my imagination (other than the obvious Italy match, about which more below) was Ukraine vs Sweden. At the outset this one promised to be brutally boring - for all that the Swedes are effective at getting far in tournaments, they're one of the dullest sides around. Ukraine, meanwhile, doesn't have a much better reputation, as football journalists still hold up the Switzerland-Ukraine matchup from 2006 as the dullest game in the history of football. So I was surprised to find myself captivated by this match, in which I jumped out of my chair when Ukraine scored its winning goal.

As for Wales-Denmark, I have to admit I was one of the millions that was rooting for the Danes this time, given the narrative surrounding Christian Eriksen's collapse back in the first match. That said, I wasn't expecting a 4-0 demolition (nor, presumably, were the Welsh). With that narrative in mind, I wasn't too sad to see Denmark go on to beat the Czechs in the quarterfinal, even if it meant that yet again an Eastern European team wouldn't go on to win the tournament.

England continues to have a good tournament. Not only have they not conceded a single goal yet, but they've improved markedly from the slightly ponderous team that we saw in the group stage. The 2-0 defeat of Germany wasn't too surprising to me, since the Germans had failed to convince in their own group stage, but the 4-0 against Ukraine shows that the English have found their stride, particularly striker Harry Kane. It's getting harder to imagine who can stop them - certainly it doesn't feel as if the Danes are going to be able to do it.

And to be honest, I'm not sure Italy has it in them to do it either. I don't want to get over-confident, since Italy doesn't have the greatest record against Spain, but it's hard not to look past possibly the weakest team still in the tournament, and what I see there is likely England.

In terms of overall quality, I think it's fair to say that Italy is the best team remaining. They had an easy group stage, held off a stronger than expected Austria and controlled the game against Belgium, which is still the top-ranked team in the world. But knockout games turn on a moment, and the slightest weird wobble against Spain or whoever awaits in the final would see them going home. After all, it's rarely the brightest team that wins a tournament, especially at the Euros.

The other thing that has me worried is (I hate to say this) Gigio Donnarumma. A friend of mine laughed at me when he conceded in the Austria game and I asked if we could sub in Gianluigi Buffon, but my question was sparked by what looked like panic on Donnarumma's part. Even with that fantastic defense in front of him, he suddenly looked brittle, and I haven't shaken this sense of unease about him. It's odd, because he's meant to be a great goalkeeper, but I suspect that anything that dumps Italy out will stem from him.

But I hope not! I'd love to see Italy comprehensively banish the demons of 2018 by winning this, and in a style that puts paid to foreigners' lazy stereotypes that our football is negative and cynical. And if both Italy and England are firing on all cylinders for the next two matches, then we're in for a great tournament.

Euro 2020: Done with the Group Stage

Just to follow up on the last post, I can now give the full roundup of goal statistics from the group stage (presumably to much rejoicing across multiple continents). As I noted, as of Match Day 2 there had been more goals scored in Euro 2020 than at the same time in Euro 2016, but Match Day 3 has been a feast of goals, not least because of the unexpected goalfest on Wednesday, where the two remaining Group E games produced 5 goals each, and those in Group F produced 4 goals apiece.

To put it another way, those four matches accounted for 18 goals, compared with 21 goals across the eight matches to wrap up the other four groups. And those other groups did feature some high-scoring games, such as Denmark's miraculous 4-1 defeat of Russia to snatch second place in the group and qualification for the round of 16.

Also impressive is the fact that there haven't been any more 0-0 draws since the second match day, presumably because the third-place qualifying for the knockout rounds meant that so many groups had something to play for, and so they came out to win. The podcasts I've been listening to have been pretty down on the new format, as introduced in 2016, but I wonder if it's succeeded in providing the right amount of jeopardy that's forced teams to go for wins rather than playing cagily. After all, as someone pointed out on Totally Football, England was set to face each of the four teams from Group F at some point on the day, as the ranking swung around based on who'd scored.

Admittedly it's not too inspiring that Ukraine squeaked through with a single win and two losses, beating out Finland and Slovakia on goal difference. That said, Slovakia were the architects of their own downfall by not only losing 5-0 to Spain, but by gifting them two of those goals. The best own-goal, indeed, has to be Slovakia goalkeeper Martin Dubravka jumping up to palm the ball over the crossbar, only to (inexplicably) palm it downward into his own goal.

Incidentally, the own-goal tally for the tournament is now up to 8, compared with 9 for every European Championship from 1976 to 2016 (which itself set a record, with 3 own-goals). I talked last time about why this might be happening, but it's worth noting that 3 of those 8 came from goalkeepers, and two of those were freak bounces off the keeper at an awkward time. Which just makes Dubravka's howler more inexplicable, because if he had but remembered which direction was up... alas.

This all means we're now at the business end of the tournament, where one team goes on and one team goes home. I'm cautiously optimistic about Italy's chances against Austria, but if they do win that game they have the privilege of facing either Portugal or Belgium. And if Italy manages to surmount that challenge, they'd next face likely France or Spain (or Croatia, or more remotely Switzerland) on their way to the final.

It's hard to know how to feel about Italy's showing so far: I'm used to them imploding at some point in a tournament, but what worries me is that I can't see where that implosion will come this time around. My hope is that coach Roberto Mancini has instilled a more Northern European ethos in the team, and we won't get more of those timid displays where Italy sets out to play for a draw - but you never know. At the very least, if Italy does make it to the final it'll be on the back of beating a bunch of traditionally strong teams.

And if they go on to win, it'll be a little disappointing not to be in London, as I was in 2006, to see the city's numerous Italians go nuts celebrating in the streets of the West End. But at least the tournament's on, so I won't complain too much.