Recently updated blogs

I had my beady eye on this book coming out. Paul Nash is an artist and designer I always find draws me in. He was one of a handful of artists that worked in the interwar years and across different mediums. They knew of each other, they studied and worked together. They came to epitomise the idea of a commercial designer, though they may not have chosen that word to …

He hadn’t even gotten the letter into the envelope when he was sprayed down with Ending Gel. I know what the letter said because I was the one who sprayed him down. I tore the letter from his gnarled, dead grasp. It was an honest mistake, killing him — he was naked at the time, just lounging around in his car without a stitch of clothing on, the spitting image …

Essex Industrial Heritage Fair: Saturday, October 5th 2019 Chelmsford Corporation Water Works, now Sandford Mill Chelmsford Corporation purchased the Sandford Mill site (a water powered corn mill) in 1923 for their new waterworks. Water was taken from both the River Chelmer and a borehole, then treated before being pumped to Galleywood reservoir, where it was available to the city's inhabitants. The capacity of the waterworks was expanded in the 1950s …

A simple overshirt or “shirt jacket” is a piece that has been missing from my closet for a while. I wanted something I could just throw on for days that are a bit too chilly for a t-shirt, but not yet cold enough for a heavier layer. There is no need to tuck or even button it. It’s perfect for fall and spring, and pretty much goes with all of …

A group campaigning for a Museum of Slavery and Freedom to be established in Deptford has announced the launch of its latest initiative, the MoSaF Map, this Saturday. MoSaF London has issued an invitation to local residents, businesses and community groups to attend the launch and book a place on one of the free walking tours that take place on Sunday. Local groups, schools, neighbours and friends are all invited …

On Lifestyle Design <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Microsoft researchers found white-collar workers are adding a 9pm shift to their workday.<br><br>I wrote about why:<br><br>- your entire day is filled with online meetings<br>- flexible work empowers night owls<br>- more global teams<br>- WFH + parenting = "triple peak" day<a href="https://t.co/QO8dwcwo8Y">https://t.co/QO8dwcwo8Y</a> <a href="https://t.co/DyYH47oCOi">pic.twitter.com/DyYH47oCOi</a></p>— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) <a href="https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1510965707688890374?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 4, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> What I’ve learned A couple of months of invoices in the …

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 anyway, so I’m just going to suck it up and catch up on some sleep and podcasts and maybe attempt to make some soup.I now have faith in lateral flow tests. I was beginning to …

One highlight of the fortnight was going on a tour of friend’s Animal Crossing islands. With a WhatsApp call for chat. It makes you realise how big the game is – not in what you can do, but in the number of characters, and the number of objects. It’s all so extra – the detailing, the actions, and most of all the weird algorithms that power everything that happens. They’ve …

Shostakovich’s Sixth and Ninth symphonies clearly belong together – flip sides of the same coin, the composer wrong-footing the Soviet establishment with an irony bordering on insanity. The opening Largo of the Sixth is one of his greatest deceptions and Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez (in this his debut recording for First Hand Records) ladles on the intensity in what is clearly music of serious consequence. Or so Shostakovich leads us to believe. …

SUMMARY OF THE PAPERS Conference report for ‘Britain Afraid: Imperial Insecurities and National Fears, 1798-1945’, organised by Dr James Crossland and hosted by Liverpool John MooresUniversity in collaboration with the Invasion Network, 21–22 June 2022 Anxieties related to the maintenance and expansion of the Empire, fear of internal radicalism,international extremism, and the invasion in Great... Continue Reading →

Many apologies to subscribers who received a notification of a new post earlier today. Unfortunately this was an error on my part. I was working on an upcoming essay and managed to hit the “publish” button in error well before the work was done. So I’ve unpublished, and will try to get on with finishing up the post itself. It’s actually part of a big long-term project and it’s going …

Gold pig charms that hide a tiny erotic photo viewed by peering into the pig's butt hole

This week, the 4th international conference on the history of physics finally took place at Trinity College Dublin. The event, supported by the Institute of Physics and the European Physics Society, was the fourth in an ongoing series of international conferences on the history of physics, a biennial series of meetings that aims to bring together professional historians and physicists with an interest in the history of their subject. It …

[Mr. Bingo, Fuckofftopus] Over the last year I’ve started to feel like an Octopus. This feeling began when I got an eerie sense that part of my brain had been damaged through the isolation of a forced lockdown. Octopuses distribute their neurological activity across nine centres; one central cortex and eight ‘mini-brains’ that are located in their tentacles. Their thinking is spread across their body. If a tentacle is damaged, …

I received a circular from Standard Life this morning in the email, offering advice on “How to pass on your pension to your loved ones”. This, I thought, was a bit previous as I have no intention of dying anytime soon, although I grudgingly admit that at some point it may have to happen. Like Woody Allen, however, I don’t intend to be there when it does. One of the …