I mean, I also remember ‘the news’ telling the truth. The question isn’t ‘Does the news always tell the truth?’ (No), but ‘What are the actual facts in this case?’

I could just as easily say it makes most sense that it came from bats which we know carried the virus and were sold at the market. But the criteria here isn’t which of us can put together a sentence that sounds plausible and coherent, but what the people who actually study this stuff say, and they mostly believe that it’s unlikely it came from the lab (different source this time, just to be clear!).

I like a lot of Brazilian music, so I’d pick something Portuguese. ‘Tropicalia’, by Caetano Veloso, ‘Parabolicamara’ by Gilberto Gil, or ‘Tudo Que Voce Podia Ser’, by Milton Nascimento are all fantastic.

No.

This is almost definitely correct.

I do think it leaked from a lab in Wuhan, but not that it was on purpose.

This, however, is possible, but probably false. The consensus among virologists is that the virus crossed to humans at the Wuhan animal market, not the lab. As I say, it’s possible and scientists are still looking into it. We don’t know the exact mechanism by which the virus first infected humans, but the market is more likely.

Yeah, I still think of it as a spread, mainly, but it has loads of applications.

I don’t have it on me right now, I’m afraid, but it’s in Melissa Thompson’s book Motherland, and possibly online somewhere!

I do this Jamaican-style peanut butter stew, which sounds mad but is delicious.

if it can scale

This is the question. If it can get close to plastic levels of price and quantity, it will take over. If it’s too expensive, it won’t happen.

But it has to be done efficiently enough to be cost effective, which solar furnaces can’t do (yet). If you generate your electricity with renewable power, it’s essentially fine.

I want to see Mount Everest. Not climb it - I don’t want to be one of those guys who basically gets dragged up the mountain by sherpas - I just want to see it for real.

Alright, just a sun.

THE SUN.

Low-Traffic Neighbourhood. You’re right, it’s poor editorial practice not to define it at first use! They’re quite a live issue in Hackney at the moment, which is why they’ve assumed people reading their Hackney-based blog will know it, but they still should’ve written it out in full the first time.

Lowering limits does change behaviour on its own, but I agree that proper traffic calming would be best.

Wine works well for me on Manjaro. Once it’s installed and run for the first time, it’s been seamless. I think every now and then you might find a game that requires an additional patch to run.

Free energy.

Never again will I tie my shoes without suspecting I’m doing it wrong, somehow.

This bad boy.

Things really went downhill when violins stopped wearing little shoes.

Prince of Persia on the GameCube (I think? It was a long time ago!) had a mechanism very like this, where you manually rewound time after you died/failed. More Action/Adventure than an RPG, though.