In the same vein as A Short History of Wine, there’s also And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails by Wayne Curtis, Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky, and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. The last one goes way, way back, and focuses on scientific topics, but it’s an entertaining read, and helps provide context to the pre-modern era.
I felt the same way about the Hulu episodes until Quids Game, which I just straight-up hated, at first. No real connection to the larger premise, just torture porn in the form of weird aliens playing with/killing off the familiar characters.
Later, it hit me: The episode is a meta-commentary on the Hulu seasons. The “quids” are self-insert characters for the writers, poking fun at themselves. They aren’t doing a coherent storyline with this reboot, they’re just playing with familiar characters in different scenarios, and wringing out a few new jokes in a way that they couldn’t do with the established canon. In a way, it’s Futurama fanfic by Futurama writers.
From that perspective, I’ve found the reboot a lot more enjoyable. The good parts are a bonus, and the duds are forgettable.
Found the physics teacher.
I love the critical mass metaphor for Lemmy. Posts and comments are the neutrons that knock free other posts and comments after reaching other people. If we spread out our fissile material into hundreds of tiny pails, then the neutrons just fly away into the air without having any effect.