Intriguing premise

9th November 2025

A busy week at work, therefore not much to report here.

Three times at the gym. I’ve stopped the backsliding but not yet reversed it. Stress means snacks.

On Thursday I had dinner with Murray at Wahaca. Their food’s not particularly special but they do have a separate vegan menu so that’s good enough for me. My roasted mushroom burrito was tasty enough and — mercifully for a Thursday night — the place wasn’t rammed with unpleasant people.

Yesterday I went to the Yokimono market in Dalston, which was smaller but much more convenient than last time. I enjoyed browsing a lot of nice prints, stationery and ceramics but what’s important is that I ate curry bread from Kanazawa, takana onigiri from Onigiri Yamada, matcha warabimochi from Nanaka and an anko mochi anpan & white chocolate matcha cookie from Gu Choki Pan. All fantastic.

I watched the first two episodes of Pluribus. Episode one was well-executed and hooked me with an intriguing premise; episode two was necessarily less intriguing and came dangerously close to wheel-spinning, which is slightly worrying at such an early stage. But it took Breaking Bad a while to get up to speed too, so for now I’m still interested and would like to see where it goes.

I have lots of questions about the situation presented in the show and no sense of which of them it’ll be interested in answering. How much of the unexplained oddness is intentional versus incidental? And, more abstractly, am I supposed to be taking any of it literally in the first place, or is it meant to be explicitly satirical or allegorical? Hopefully this’ll all become clearer over time so my brain can shut up and enjoy it.

Behold the insightful opinion of someone who’s never seen Better Call Saul: Rhea Seehorn’s good isn’t she?

Although I’ve seen all the non-celeb seasons so far, I haven’t got around to watching The Celebrity Traitors yet. The final outcome was instantly spoiled by all UK news outlets so I suppose I’ve missed my window to experience it properly. I might give it a go anyway. Apparently this one doesn’t have any percentages in it‽

LIGHTBULB BOTNET CORNER: IKEA’s upcoming Matter-compatible product range sounds interesting. I’ve been all-in on their smart home gubbins for a while so I’m happy they’re continuing to improve it and increase its interoperability over time. Their press release is frustratingly light on details but the Verge article shows some nice colourful objects and mentions some encouraging prices (£3 remote!).

I don’t have a coherent mental model of how well all this stuff is going to work together. I’m looking forward to messing about with it to find out.

Kind of bananas that Ruby 4.0 is going to happen this year. This is inevitably going to cause drama because of how gems express their required_ruby_version constraint, but at least it’ll be technical drama for once.