Recently updated blogs

“Consider raindrops: you can feel them on your head – but you can’t perceive the actual raindrop in itself. You only ever perceive your particular, anthropomorphic translation of the raindrops. Isn’t this similar to the rift between weather, which I can feel falling on my head, and global climate, not the older idea of local patterns of weather, but the entire system? I can think and compute climate in this …

One of the most touted benefits of Caesars Diamond status is that you can get a free stay at the Atlantis Bahamas. This is a destination I wouldn’t ever have normally considered, but there was a really good sale fare from Vancouver to Nassau so I grabbed tickets a couple of months ago. This is usually a rational strategy: if there is a good deal on flight tickets, just grab …

The Fujifilm X-S10 is an almost perfect camera for street photography. In this blog post I explain why.

A True Account (November 2023: Update Post)“Moral Clarity” (October 2023: On Gaza)News of News of News of News (September 2023: Update Post)News of News of News (July 2023: Update Post)Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) (June 2023)News of News (May 2023: Update Post)“The Subject of Emancipation”: Trilce Translation Launch (May 2023)Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton: Preview (April 2023: Update Post)Latest (April 2023: Update Post)In other news... (April 2023: Update Post, Lorenzo Thomas, …

I saw a link go up on HN the other day: An app can be a home-cooked meal – and found it really inspiring. What resonated for me was that even though this guy has obviously got some programming chops (he made a messaging app which looks pretty competent, even if it only has 4 users…), he made this thing for himself (and his family), with no intention of ever …

Discovered Jan 2, 2024 09:17 roland in Elk: “More Julia in ‘24!->“my approach to criticism is to try to stick as closely as possible to Facts About My Personal Experience…” <– More Julia in ‘24! – QUOTE:my approach to criticism is to try to stick as closely as possible to Facts About My Personal Experience, like:1.here is what I use this thing for & why it's useful 2.here's a problem …

Thanks Luis Villa for this write up of the current Vizio case (GPL enforcement). The head of the National Audit Office, Gareth Davies, gave a thoughtful speech to Parliament on why good governance matters, especially for the UK's public sector, now. Trust and AI was the topic of Bruce Schneier's September talk at the Harvard Kennedy School: Trust is essential to society. Humans as a species are trusting. We are …

The Azores are nine volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and make a wonderful destination for hikers. Each island has its own personality and this post highlights the best hikes in the Azores by island. This diverse archipelago sits between the United States and Portugal and boasts crater lakes, hot springs, waterfalls,...

The Times has reported that next month the UK will to deploy 20,000 military personnel across eastern Europe as part of the NATO exercise Steadfast Defender. They will be accompanied by one of the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers, eight other warships and F35 fighter jets. The article quotes Grant Shapps, the UK Defence Secretary, as warning that the world had moved to a ‘prewar’ phase as global conflicts escalated. …

I've updated my 2023 reading list with the 105 books I read over the course of the year. Highlights were The Future, by Naomi Alderman, Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty and Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway

Enregistration is the process by which linguistic features become associated with particular contexts. For example, light novels having long, sentence-length titles is now so established that it's an easy way to parody light novels. Phonology can also be 'enregistered,' such as the vowels that make up Indie Girl Voice. While these two examples are obvious because they 'stick out', enregistration also applies to more subtle cases we take for granted. …

Find all previous and future episodes listed here or in your podcast app under “Barbican Station”. This week we are back to talk about Mick Herron’s latest book – The Secret Hours! I’m pleased to welcome The Sunday Times Senior Political Commentator Tim Shipman to the show. In the first half of the show we stay relatively spoiler free on The Secret Hours as we talk politics and Herron, British …

I wrote the following introductory text for my personal ChatGPT account when I wanted to use it to help me brainstorm (???) ideas for my new YouTube channel. As I’ve already found with prompt writing, it was clarifying to describe myself to an LLM for this very specific purpose. I’m much more honest/blunt than I would be in writing a description of myself for human consumption. Putting it here for …

While distant reading has taught us a lot about the history of fiction, it hasn’t done much yet to explain why we keep turning pages. “Suspense” is the word we use to explain that impulse. But what is suspense? Does it require actual anxiety, or just uncertainty about what happens next? If suspense depends on […]

This is the script for “The charges against Binance”, a video about the legal actions against Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao. On November 21, the United States announced a landmark resolution to multiple years-long investigations into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange: Binance. The company’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, agreed to plead guilty to a felony, pay a fine, and resign. Binance itself pleaded guilty to three charges, …