Links: F R A NCIS VS (+4)
- The biggest news of the last couple of weeks of course was the passing of Pope Francis, an interesting figure whose legacy will presumably be debated for some time. In slightly less significant news, the kerning of the lettering on his tomb was extremely substandard. A sign of the wave of enshittification that has now reached the highest echelons of the world and will live on forever here as a marker of our shitty era. Compare this to something from the 19th century and you’ll see what I mean.
- My cousin informed me of a little-known fact about Apple Music: there are thousands of spoken word poetry readings available on the platform. So I have been listening to quite a bit of that recently.
- In rare moments of idle time during my paternity leave (now finished: I started back at work last week), I discovered Balatro, an extremely addictive and fun deck-building poker-themed roguelike game which is available on pretty much every platform there is, including iOS. This feels like a much better way to waste time than doomscrolling.
- Lana Del Rey performed several new tracks at a festival in Portugal over the weekend including this tongue-in-cheek number called 57.5. The whole set is available on YouTube and is worth checking out. Lana is looking and sounding amazing, very excited for this new album which seems to have a bit of a country vibe (very in-trend at the moment).
- Much less cool than Lana, but “Britpop” veterans Pulp also returned with new music lately — in their case their first new tracks in over twenty years — in anticipation of a new album later this year called More. The lead single Spike Island (AM / S) is classic Pulp, and I’ve been really enjoying it this week.
Photograph: A field of wheat near Chichester, England.