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Out of all the stars dubbed “box office poison” by the Independent Theater Owners Association in May 1938, the label has become most strongly associated with Joan Crawford. For the most part, being called “box office poison” ultimately became a footnote in the careers of the stars included on the list. Some moved on from Hollywood, but others stars successfully moved past it and entered into new phases of their …

Happy Solstice! In honor of Winter Solstice, I've made an updated list of popular lights. Today is the day you're most likely to need a flashlight in the northern hemisphere; if you're shopping for one, I hope this will help. There is no best flashlight, so this is an amalgamation of what enthusiasts have been buying and recommending to others lately along with the author's arbitrary preferences and biases. Please …

Non-fiction Viviane Robinson Reduce Change to Increase Improvement: My brilliant colleague at the National Institute of Teaching, Paula, recommended this. It has been hugely influential in developing leadership approaches that are clear and simple, and is full of helpful and … Continue reading →

December brought episode number three, the last of the calendar year 2023. This edition of “The Almanac” first aired on Wednesday the 6th at 8pm Eastern over on Uncertain.FM, and got a replay the following day at 4pm. By now you’ve hopefully got the drill: The first Wednesday of every month brings a couple […]

Never let a name fool you: Yvette Mimieux. The ooo-la-la French seductress thing was all the rage in the early 1960s cinema and TV. After WWII, French culture spilled across the Atlantic and wormed into American culture. French plus female, along with even a minimal degree of attractiveness, propelled a woman into the hearts, minds,… Continue reading Evan Engber and Yvette Mimieux Kayak the Coquille River

In Rainham Marshes, at the edge of the Thames, lie strange and abandoned craft. These odd survivors are concrete barges, stranded by the shore and surrounded by myth. Why were they built? It's not certain, but evidence suggests that they were constructed during World War II. Given the shortage of steel for wartime construction, concrete vessels were a tempting alternative. They had been developed in the nineteenth century for use …

Sometimes a story takes a number of years to ripen. And sometimes two or three stories merge in unexpected ways. I just had a moment of convergence when new infill development, sub rosa adaptation, and wartime migration all collided. Back in the 1990s I used to live across the street from an old gas station. It was still functioning at the time, but some years after I moved it went …

This is a post about multiple wordles and the point at which they hit diminishing returnles. If you don’t know what Wordle is, this post is not for you and also, how is life back in 2019? Just so you know things are about to be terrible, maybe forever. Maybe I’m just bad at it? Ever since we all collectively lost our minds over trying to guess a word once …

I've been designing the layout for a few documents related to the courses and classes one of my long term clients offers. Initially, these documents were intended to be digital-only, and my client preferred I use Google Docs so it was easy for them to make minor text edits. However, a bit later it was decided to also have these documents printed with a full-color cover and inside pages in …

Back in the fall, I wrote a series of posts on a particularly horrific episode in Meta’s past. I hadn’t planned to revisit the topic immediately, but here we are, with Threads federation with the ActivityPub-based fediverse ecosystem an increasingly vivid reality. My own emotional response to Meta and Threads is so intense that it hasn’t been especially easy to think clearly about the risks and benefits Threads’ federation brings, …

Of archetypical power is the fantasy story where an age calls forth its hero. As when, high up in Nerd-Olympus, the spirits of Anne McCaffrey, Frank Frazetta & Gary Gygax drew forth & braided kaleidoscopic eldritch energies with a glowing lock of Lita Ford’s hair and conjured Barbara Blackthorne, obsidian goddess of Empress… emerging from lands around & about Philadelphia, bound together they drew Metal’s mighty sword from the Rock …

Ever since I first learnt about C. P. Snow’s lecture The Two Cultures and the heated debate around it, I have been fascinated by the possibilities offered by any text or work of art that could bridge the notorious gap … Continue reading →

My new book with Marion Fourcade, The Ordinal Society, will be published in April by Harvard University Press. Here’s the cover: The book cover As of this afternoon, the book also has a nascent website. You can and indeed absolutely should preorder the book from all the usual outlets. Buy now before it’s cool. Or go look at the website and preorder from there. Your call, really.

When contributing to other users’ repositories, always start a new branch in your fork.

Introduction The close of this year’s COP28 climate summit provides an opportunity for us to reflect on our contribution to efforts towards addressing the urgent threat of climate change, and to consider some of the findings of our recent Net …