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We took Rowan to Yoyogi Chapters for the first time on Saturday. The usual playgroup instructor was away so it wasn’t the same as it typically would be—and he’s not actually enrolled so I’m not sure how much he’ll be allowed to participate—but he seemed comfortable enough. As long as the weather is fine, we’ll take him again this week and see how it goes.
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Google finally stopped supporting the version of the YouTube app I was running on Rowan’s ancient iPad Mini (2nd Generation) (purchased in 2013!). Unfortunately, because the kids use YouTube through a child account, the website also didn’t work. I’d been considering an iPad upgrade for the kids for more than a year and when I saw that an iPad (8th Generation) was available refurbished from Apple for ¥38,800, I leapt on it. Emma and John now have that and Rowan has their iPad Mini (5th Generation). I’m a little concerned the ‘new’ iPad only has 32GB for storage and that won’t be enough (I’ve already had to offload apps so that I could update iPadOS) but hopefully that won’t prove a common occurrence.
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Two weeks ago I lamented my weight increase to 77kg and this past week, it broke through 78. That prompted me to see again if calorie counting might help. I paid for a year of FoodNoms+ and will see how it goes.
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I cancelled my NBA League Pass subscription. I barely watch any games so maybe I’ll just be the type of fan who subscribes during the play-offs? The final straw was deciding to try to watch more of the TV and film that’s on my ever growing watch list.
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Fresh off that decision, I forced myself through the second season of Loki. I exaggerate a little—this isn’t Kenobi—but it certainly didn’t grab me the way the first season did. Joshua Rivera nailed the problem precisely:
The TVA, in other words, was an excuse for Loki’s characters to do interesting things and meet interesting people. It is not, by itself, a reason to tune in. Yet Loki season 2 is all about that, spinning a story centered on the integrity of the TVA, its purpose, its creator, and the philosophical quandary of free will vs. determination that its existence continually exacerbates. This is Loki’s second season in a nutshell: Its writers are overly concerned about the mechanics of the MCU, and the MCU as an abstraction, not the characters and stories within it.
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In contrast to Loki, I ripped through all three seasons of Slow Horses. It’s as good as everyone says. I gather there’s a sense that the second season wasn’t as good as the first but watching them back to back to back in the space of a week, I thought all three were excellent. This is my favourite show since Westworld and I can’t wait for season 4.
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One of the biggest surprises of Slow Horses was discovering in the credits that the theme song, ‘Strange Game’, was co-written by Mick Jagger (Apple Music). I recognised the voice but didn’t recall the song and thought at first that it was an obscure track from the Rolling Stones long discography. Nope. Jagger wrote it with the series composer, Daniel Pemberton, specifically for the show. I guess that’s what Apple money can buy you.
