Recently updated blogs

Paul Simon got there first.. I’m giving up ‘intelligence’ for 2024. That is, I’m not going to use the term ‘intelligence’ except to critique it as an inherently flawed construction firmly grounded in race science and unable to sustain the weight of current usage as a measure of cognitive ability that can help us assess human, animal, or machine-based capabilities. It doesn’t do the work we want it to in …

Lorrie Moore’s 2009 novel A Gate at the Stairs offers among its attractions several passages and exchanges of lexical and linguistic interest. This post looks at some of them. The book’s narrator, Tassie, is a Midwestern farm girl now in college. She’s also employed as a nanny by Sarah, a restaurateur. One of their early conversations has commentary on the semantic inflation of awesome: “You have a mother?” I said. …

Despite being twice included on lists of influential Black Britons, Olive Morris is still frequently overlooked in British history. Still, she achieved much in her tragically short life and her legacy remains alive today.

Thoughts on 2023 The Big Stuff:A year of contentment. Family life atop the miller’s hill is bliss, and the kids are so much more relaxed and confident now we’re more comfortable letting them explore. Felt like a slower year at work. I’d have rather made more, but it wasn’t to be. The sabbatical in the middle of it didn’t help matters. But it did allow me to make a lot …

I love a lot of things about Chicago, but the number one thing is that it works. It's the city that brought the world the eight-hour day, the city that rebuilt itself from ashes. It's a city of immigrants and of the great migration; a city of neighborhoods forged by working class hands. And it's the city that brought the world the hardest-working typeface, Cooper Black. Created in Chicago in …

PRC Pittsburgh Railways PCC Route 28Location: Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaDate: July 1958Photographer: UnknownPittsburgh PCC #1562 was built in 1944 by the St. Louis Car Company. The Roxian Theatre is located at 501 Chartiers Avenue, McKees Rocks, PA 15136. It was built in 1928 and had 1,200 seats. It closed in 1979 and was converted into a concert venue for a time. In 2019, it reopened as a film and performing arts theatre. …

On stage at Radio City Music Hall, I hid The Power Broker. All 1,200+ pages of it. I clutched the paperback close, under my academic regalia. On stage, helping deliver diplomas to eager graduating students at SVA, I sat behind the unmatched Robert Caro himself during a not-brief graduation ceremony where he would deliver the final Commencement address. I would ask him to sign the hidden book afterward as we …

A building on a street corner often provides the opportunity for visually striking designs with this being the case for the former Commonwealth Bank building on the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth streets. The impressive concrete ribbing and sheer visual bulk provides a commanding presence. The building was officially opened in 1954 to great fanfare, with thousands lining the streets to take a glimpse of the bank which was described …

Another year, another list of new translations! Though I haven’t been writing regular posts this year about my recent reading, I faithfully started compiling this list in late 2022. Despite this year’s challenges – thinking globally, there are wars and their ramifications and, thinking locally, there’ve epic quantities of water flowing into my street and yard – I’m doing fine and reading a fair bit in Russian, often to determine …

Previously we covered early chatbots, bots talking gibberish, and self-taught number crunchers. But what we got so far is still boring. AI was promised to overthrow the world order and not just classify arrays of floats. Can we have a chat? GPT As unimpressive as it is, neural networks take arrays of numbers and return arrays of numbers. Just like our brain takes electric signals and emits electric signals. It’s …

Palm Springs, CA, 2023

==== WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD ==== If you have not yet read the short story Melokuhle – good things, published recently by East of the Web, you are advised to do so before continuing to read this post, unless you are an academic who really insists on looking at some research first. ======== This post is not about analysing the story about the somewhat culturally aware cooperative care robot, but about …

If you’ve wanted to try a Nolty Gold planner but haven’t wanted to deal with shipping from Japan and high prices, now might be your moment! I just spotted a listing on Amazon.com for the model 3121 that I use, the 95 x 145mm size, with a gorgeous leather cover. The price I am seeing … Continue reading 2024 Nolty Gold Planner, Low Price and Free Shipping! →

Another more quiet year. 2023 was another quiet year. The number of plays and the hours spent were slightly up from 2022, but if I remove the single most played game from those numbers, the numbers are about the same or slightly smaller than in 2022. This is clearly the new normal. More new games. I stopped avoiding new games as much as in 2022, and the numbers shot up: …