Recently updated blogs

Listening For Ghosts In Dr. John’s Gris-Gris By David Toop Paperback: £19.99 Hardback: £35.00 Published in two editions, a standard trade paperback and a limited edition hardback with dustjacket. Paperback with flaps 148mm x 210mm 300 pages (approx) ISBN: 9781913689605 Available to Pre-Order Soon Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper’s Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum …

Twenty-two years on the pier, and yes, it’s been a bit quiet, imagine the requisite gesture at all of [an all-encompassing roundel of a wave] THIS, I mean, look back, to the turn of the century, then look about us, here and now: can you seriously say any of us has learned any single God damned thing? —I thought not. There’s been shit I’ve been thinking about meaning to write, …

I am a man with too many hobbies and interests, but James’s lovely ode to OD&D has me thinking about the game once again. Some of the longest campaigns I’ve ran and played in have been OD&D games: impressive for a game that came out 6 years before I was born. The 50th anniversary of D&D is this year. I suspect we’ll see a lot of writing about the game …

Silk Is For Seduction audio edition I promised to leave you alone, but this just came up, and I want my blog subscribers to hear about deals first. I’ll keep it short.For the next couple of weeks, you can download the audio edition of Silk Is For Seduction, the first Dressmakers book, for $4.99. The bargain price is available from Chirp audio. The easy way to do it is to …

“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. …