Recently updated blogs

Over the past couple of years I’ve slowly stopped using twitter. Initially I was just tweeting less, while still reading lots of it. Then as they slowly broke Tweetbot by removing APIs I slowly just stopped using the service. I tried to start using it a bit more when the global pandemic kicked off to try and recreate the old water cooler usage that made it big years ago. But …

Ongoing injuries have forced me to really cut down on my running but on a recent trip to Cork city for a family wedding I could not resist checking out a local parkrun. Cork has a very well established running scene with lots of clubs as evidenced at the 'Running in Cork' blog. It is the home of many great athletes, perhaps most notably Sonia O'Sullivan who in the 1990s …

Histoire naturelle des cétacées, 1804I find enterprise software fascinating because it operates the entire economy and yet it frequently neglects every single principle of quality that software people may espouse. Slack is/has been the anti-enterprise enterprise tool — a real product, using web technologies, with emojis. So it’s fun to think through this acquisition. I have absolutely no inside knowledge. Press release via Business Wire.Salesforce Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire …

A woman leans on the entrance to one of Bordighera’s gardens in Italy, 1928.Photograph by Hans Hildenbrand, National Geographic Creative

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 takes, with just a handful of overdubs. Everyone in the room together with a leaky drum booth and no baffles. It’s a really great way to make a record. But due to artistic curiosity and …

We’ve recently launched a new degree program in Urban Technology at University of Michigan that combines urbanism, technology, and design. But what does design mean in this context? Like many aspects of creating a new transdisciplinary degree program from scratch, a simple question has been somewhat less simple to answer. This post is a report-to-date of our thinking on the nature of design in urban technology. TLDR? We’re combining service, …

May 2021’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, April 2021 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.Note: I will be in Denver 12–13 June 2021 for a conference.1 WritingsProposal: “Choose Your Own Adventure AI Dungeon”; “Decision Transformers: Preference Learning As Simple As Possible”2 Links2.1 AIMatters Of Scale:Hardware:“Podracer architectures for scalable Reinforcement Learning”, Hessel …

In some areas of a garment we may want substantial support and we need to figure out a way to create that structure with interfacing. We want that structure to not compress, squish down or lose its shape over time. We don't want that interfacing in the seam allowances though because that will make them thick and bulky. The choice of structure

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, the statements and old contracts, Outdated tech white papers, postcards from decades-past lovers, Illegible notes and forgotten reminders, all go into the shredder, And shred the box they filled, and the things best left in …

Shonen Magazine Cover, 1970 Shonen Magazine Cover Illustration 1970 Key Largo, the Unexplored Planet, 1986

Susan Bosence. "STRIPE and SPOT. (a) Combination of double wax resist twice brush dyed in Soledon blue and brown. Wax removed and paste resisted then brush dyed in dark blue on calico. (b) Wax resist spots, brush dyed in brown, paste resisted and brush dyed in blue. N.B. very labour intensive processes. 1960s." Sonia Delaunay. "Project de tapis. Encre de Chine. 35 x 22,5cm." S.B. "UNNAMED. Half grains of rice …

From Play School Play On to Russell Grant’s Zodiac Jukebox, the story behind every album released by BBC Records And Tapes.Between 1967 and 1991, BBC Records And Tapes released more than seven hundred albums. These featured everything from collections of theme tunes and full radio plays to sound effects, academic lectures, Radio 2 house bands being let loose on synthesisers, and an unlikely assortment of public figures being invited to …

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 …