Things I have been....
Watching
Since Liz's visit, I've got very into Queer Eye. I inhaled the new series on Netflix and am now going back and watching the original show on YouTube as it doesn't seem to be legally available anywhere I can see. It's just very charming and definitely scratches my itch for TV which is basically about people being nice, a bit like Sewing Bee and things like that. For me, it feels like the new series is very much about challenging toxic masculinity and saying to these guys that it's ok to care about how they look and to talk about how they feel and so on, which is also really cheering me up right now!
Listening
As a result of that, I have started listening to Getting Curious, which is a podcast that Jonathan from new Queer Eye does, which is adorable. Basically, each fortnight, he takes a topic that he's curious about and gets an expert on to talk about it. Recent episodes include "How can we be less rude to bees" and "Why's the bail system such a hot mess?" (I haven't listened to that one yet, but I'm going to guess racism). Much more so than queer eye, I feel like it shows how confident he is because it's full of bits where he'll stop the person talking and say "Hang on, I totally didn't get that, explain what pollination is!" or whatever it is. Recommended.
Reading
I'm feeling really disconnected from my reading at the moment - I'm finding it hard to get excited about any new reading and at the same time, feeling like I've re-read all my comfort re-reading too many times. I think maybe I need to go and browse in a real bookshop and find some new things that are a little out left field.
What I did read yesterday was a lot of the FT, which I quite like to read. It's partly my attempt to pretend to myself that I'm not completely in my internet bubble, although while it's not left wing, its still very definitely intellectual and pro-intellectualism so it barely really counts. I spent many years being annoyed about the pay wall and occasionally going to see how much it cost and being put off again and then discovered that Alex has a sub via the university so I use that now. I wish they had some kind of micro payments system where you could pay per article - I wonder why no-one does that in newspapers. It feels like something I'd definitely have done with the FT and probably ended up spending quite a bit, if not quite the level of the subscription cost.
Since Liz's visit, I've got very into Queer Eye. I inhaled the new series on Netflix and am now going back and watching the original show on YouTube as it doesn't seem to be legally available anywhere I can see. It's just very charming and definitely scratches my itch for TV which is basically about people being nice, a bit like Sewing Bee and things like that. For me, it feels like the new series is very much about challenging toxic masculinity and saying to these guys that it's ok to care about how they look and to talk about how they feel and so on, which is also really cheering me up right now!
Listening
As a result of that, I have started listening to Getting Curious, which is a podcast that Jonathan from new Queer Eye does, which is adorable. Basically, each fortnight, he takes a topic that he's curious about and gets an expert on to talk about it. Recent episodes include "How can we be less rude to bees" and "Why's the bail system such a hot mess?" (I haven't listened to that one yet, but I'm going to guess racism). Much more so than queer eye, I feel like it shows how confident he is because it's full of bits where he'll stop the person talking and say "Hang on, I totally didn't get that, explain what pollination is!" or whatever it is. Recommended.
Reading
I'm feeling really disconnected from my reading at the moment - I'm finding it hard to get excited about any new reading and at the same time, feeling like I've re-read all my comfort re-reading too many times. I think maybe I need to go and browse in a real bookshop and find some new things that are a little out left field.
What I did read yesterday was a lot of the FT, which I quite like to read. It's partly my attempt to pretend to myself that I'm not completely in my internet bubble, although while it's not left wing, its still very definitely intellectual and pro-intellectualism so it barely really counts. I spent many years being annoyed about the pay wall and occasionally going to see how much it cost and being put off again and then discovered that Alex has a sub via the university so I use that now. I wish they had some kind of micro payments system where you could pay per article - I wonder why no-one does that in newspapers. It feels like something I'd definitely have done with the FT and probably ended up spending quite a bit, if not quite the level of the subscription cost.