Personal blogs

against the dark forest. Lovely writing about a social Internet that works for us all.UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings. Maybe a system …

Harry Potter? Yawn… King’s Cross station in London is the terminus for the fast trains from Cambridge, so I pass through it quite a lot. In a brilliant marketing move years ago someone had the …

If you follow my book reviews over on my website, you may have noticed several reviews for Great Courses lecture series. Each course is 12-48 lectures, on DVD, accompanied by a coursebook. These make great …

I've decided to migrate this blog to a quarto-based blog format. All future posts will be found here: https://swingley.dev/blog2.

Crazy amounts of money continue to be spent in San Francisco to shift the city rightward. We saw it in March with the purge of progressives on the Democratic County Central Committee after a heavily …

Wilco has a new record coming, Cruel Country. Jeff Tweedy, in his newsletter, shares some of the background promo material, which includes this gem of a graf.The whole record is comprised, almost entirely, of live …

I’m generally against nostalgia, since I think it’s obvious charms can insidiously blot out our ability to live in the moment. But I’ll confess to being overwhelmed with sadness upon learning a few minutes ago …

Since reflecting on one year at Microsoft almost 12 months ago, a lot has changed. Most visibly to the outside world, we’ve completely re-designed and re-engineered our Copilot consumer app from the ground up with …

The Dragon in the Sea The Santaroga Barrier Frank Herbert About a year ago my brother lent me an old copy of Frank Herbert's first novel, The Dragon in the Sea, and I hadn't got …

Lady rona finally deigned to come and visit, with comically bad timing. It’s pretty nasty, even after vaccination. On the other hand, the freezer is well stocked, and I had a week off of work …

PC, Mac$13.99Bureau 813.5 hours The Operator is a narrative puzzle game where you play an intelligence operative assisting agents in the field. By analysing photos and videos and searching databases, you discover clues, solve crimes, …

Say you've got the visa or work permit (no small feat), and you're ready to embark on a move from the US to Canada. The rest should be easy, right? HA HA HA no, you …

A heavy frost this morning. Keenest yet. Cleaned both jets. Had to do No.2 four times but seems ok now. Did all the Ts again. Men here surveying the drains. Nell gone to see Dot.

Hello all, Status updateSo.Mid-June saw me catch Covid again, which was a distinct lack of fun. I was wiped out for a good 10 days and am still feeling the its effect on my energy …

Apologies for the delay between posts — it’s not for lack of topics or interest, just a matter of time and energy. I’ve been spending time trying out different static site generators for a potential …

The Trump administration has made aggressive threats against immigrants in the US. It’s not clear what’s coming, my biggest fear is a violent display of fascism. (Don’t call them camps!) But even if it’s a …

I’m working for a Government department again. A fairly classic brief: we‘re designing a replacement for a 25 year old service used by a relatively small number of people but it captures an important set …

“’Tis the solitude of the Country that creates these Whimsies; there was never such a thing as a Ghost heard of at London, except in the Play-house.” Joseph Addison, The Drummer (1716) “I hope you …

O shred shred shred they all go into the shredder The paper into crosscut traces, the paper torn from paper. The trash bills, cancelled cheques and plaintive requests for money, The invoices paid and unpaid, …

(⏱️ ~10 min read) Another month, another collection of shiny objects (stuff I found in the the past month that were valuable/inspiring). See also, previous Signal Boosts for Oct/Sep, Aug/July, June, May 🩸 Kurzgesagt gets …