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Reading: Well, I have read some more chapters of The Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton. It is a surprisingly difficult book to hold open (at least with a sore wrist), but I am resisting the temptation to deliberately crack the spine. It's (to my mind) a slightly odd mix of the autobiographical and a genuine survey of modern scientific techniques and what they tell us about dinosaurs - and I think a little confused about whether it's about modern scientific techniques or just generally "what we've learned about dinosaurs since I started studying them as an undergraduate". In theory the autobiographical stuff should provide good hooks into the drier material but something about it isn't quite working for me. I get the same vibe I got from Hawking's A Brief History of Time, that the author vaguely feels they have a point to make about their own career.

Listening: The Real McCoy Podcast discussing Kate Orman's The Left-Handed Hummingbird making me think it might be worth a re-read.

Watching: I still haven't watched anything longer than the odd YouTube short linked in my twitter feed. There's a pretty cool TikTok with Nathan Evans (TikTok Star, apparently) singing a sea shanty to a cut of the Legend of the Sea Devils trailer but since I share the almost universal middle-aged person's deep, instinctive and entirely baseless suspicion* of all things TikTok I have zero idea how to find it on TikTok, nor link to it here.

*Yes, it's Chinese, but I'm pretty sure China's surveillance culture has nothing to do with my unwillingness to engage with the platform.

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I've re-read a dozen or so Doctor Who novels over the last few years, and I think The Left-Handed Hummingbird was the best.

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purplecat

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