Another week has started … Here are some notes about today:

• Big strategy meeting at work. It can be exasperating when you come up with an obviously awesome, superior, and well-thought-out design and your colleages are either eager to replace it with something clunky of their own invention that clearly won't work as well, or don't seem to appreciate that what they want is really not that different from what your design provides if they're just prepared to make a little conceptual jump. I've been doing this for 40 years now and a little deference from those whippersnappers would sometimes be nice. We'll have to see what we will end up with at the end.

• Everyone seems to be talking about last night's “duel” between federal chancellor Olaf Scholz and his main rival, Friedrich Merz. Merz, for all his sins, is still on track to succeed Scholz after the elections on the 23rd because his CDU party is polling at approximately double the percentage of Scholz's SPD, but everyone is waiting to see whether he will once more manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The main challenge will be to identify suitable coalition partners, and with the CDU/CSU not so keen on the Greens, the FDP (which is probably not even going to be in the federal parliament in the first place unless they manage a last-minute leap across the 5-percent cutoff) totally against the Greens, and everyone apparently still unwilling to consider the AfD (which would be an abomination as well as political suicide for anyone trying), it's no wonder that last night's debate was mostly fairly civil and nice; it is more than likely that the two contenders' parties (perhaps not Scholz personally) will have to hammer out a coalition because there will be no other viable options. So it is probably just as well not to create too big a rift. The Greens, in the meantime, are trying to make themselves look more acceptable to the CDU again; whether that will actually get them anywhere is anyone's guess.
  The big question this time around is how the small parties will be doing. Some of them – not just the FDP and the left-wing Die Linke but also the new kid on the block, the old communist battle-axe's not-quite-left-but-also-right-wing Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – are hovering around the 5% cutoff, so depending on who actually manages to end up in the Bundestag there may be unexpected opportunities here and there.

• On University Challenge, this year's third round has started – eight teams are still in the contest and must win two games in order to enter the semi-finals. Tonight's game was between Imperial and Christ's College, Cambridge, and Christ's, after a somewhat slow start, managed to win unexpectedly by means of a last-minute dash which put them in a narrow lead.

• There are lots of videos coming in to the SCD database from the Newcastle Festival, which took place on Saturday. I may eventually get around to watching some of them.