
Jodie Whittaker will be the 13th Doctor when Doctor Who begins again later this year. It’s hard to see how this could possibly be controversial, but of course the Internet Babies had a good old cry about it when it was announced.
Whittaker was excellent in the most recent season of Broadchurch, and she seems like a great choice for this role too. I am not a Doctor Who afficionado, but I’m pretty excited to see how it goes.
14 year-old Aboriginal boy Elijah Doughty died on a remote Australian track last year, knocked from his motorbike by a man who was chasing him in a four wheel drive. This man, the only person who knows exactly what happened to Elijah, was found guilty of dangerous driving, rather than the manslaughter conviction Elijah’s family and community hoped for.
Related to this, and to other things, I’ve been thinking a lot about this Fran Lebovitz quote this week:
And what it is like to be white is to not to say, “We have to level the playing field,” but to acknowledge that not only do white people own the playing field but they have so designated this plot of land as a playing field to begin with. White people are the playing field. The advantage of being white is so extreme, so immense, that to use the word “advantage” at all is misleading since it implies a kind of parity that simply does not exist.
Sean Spicer is out as White House Communications Director, replaced by the utterly repulsive Anthony Scaramucci, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker. In Scaramucci’s first press conference he fawned over his new boss (“I’ve seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tyre”) and made kind comments about Sean Spicer’s articulateness, so he’s clearly going to fit right in over there.
Later, he deleted his Twitter history, saying – with “full transparency” – that he didn’t want his past views, which included an acknowledgement of climate change and an inclination towards gun control, to be a “distraction” to his employer.
Dunkirk affected me quite viscerally. Even taking into account the tricky timeline, it’s simpler and more direct than a lot of Nolan’s recent output, it’s beautiful to look at (particularly the airborne scenes, which are surprisingly and deftly claustrophobic), and the Hans Zimmer score is great.
I’m excited to see Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time and also Spielberg’s Ready Player One, both of which have had their first trailers released in the last couple of weeks.
This cabbage slaw is very good — crunchy, fresh, pleasingly filling. The dressing could go on just about anything (in fact, Sophie put the leftovers on salmon and soba noodles the next night, and it was 👌🏽).
The Federal Government has a new “super ministry” of Home Affairs, overseen by Peter Dutton. It gathers together ASIO, the AFP, Border (ugh) Force (ugh) and a few other security-oriented bits and pieces, and is apparently designed to maximise intelligence sharing and cooperation in the face of the unrelenting threat of terrorism — although when Dutton was pressed by Leigh Sales to explain how it might do that, or exactly what the threats we’re facing are, his answers were distinctly unsatisfying.
My lovely mates at Yelldesign were on the Design Files this week. I am so proud of them and the excellent business they’re building.
