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.

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.

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.

Yeah, the Admiral from this episode who kicks Riker in the head, though. That’s my guy.

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.

Ha, I came here to say Bitches Brew before seeing it was in the OP!

I’d add Loveless by My Bloody Valentine: much-imitated, but there’s nothing quite like it.

Also, my early '90s bias is showing here, but In Utero by Nirvana is uniquely brilliant. No one’s melded beauty and ugliness so successfully in any medium.

True, but it was more restricted in its potential application (because you had to be near a reliable water source). Modern electricity generation, including renewables, doesn’t have that limitation - as the application of coal to steam power demonstrates!

But the economics are clear: if renewables stay cheaper than fossil fuels (and there’s no reason to think they won’t), governments will make the switch anyway.

We’re actually doing pretty well, globally, at shifting to renewables. We’re making more, more quickly and more cheaply than ever before.