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Let us posit a simplification, which will hopefully seem less arbitrary and less reductive as we further describe it. The simplification is this: that the two poles of concern, when it comes to what we call “art,” are the production of pleasure and the production of models. This is a bit what Gabriel Duquette has touched upon in calling “maps” and “chords” the building blocks of a work. The maps …

Today’s reflection is from Bondings 2.0 Contributor, Angela Howard McParland. Today’s liturgical readings for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be found here. Pope Francis recently said that he hoped hell was empty. “It’s difficult to imagine it,” the pope said. “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.” In so much …

In a nutshell: -Chiswick’s neighbourhood coffee shop -Offering pinball, a Japanese arcade, fresh pastries…and coffee -An effortless welcome served with meticulous care Chief Coffee: serving you coffee, pastries and…pinball If you find yourself walking along Chiswick High Street, you might just think you have stumbled upon the perfect antidote to city life. I raise you – take a left (or right – not sure of your coordinates) into an unassuming …

Dear Readers, Over the years, some of us (the past and present members of the collective that runs this blog) have been fortunate enough to meet some of you. We say fortunate, because such encounters have always been positive. Many of you have a background in anthropology, having studied it in college, or even a graduate degree, but — as is the case with most people who study anthropology — …

I’m not sure if I’m misremembering but my brain says there was a time when blog posts did not have “post titles” by default. Coming up with a post title is one of my least favorite exercises when writing a blog post. Often how these things change on the internet is a bit hard to unearth (particularly in the early 2000s) but it could have been as innocent as some …

How to celebrate the 30th anniversary of a personal web site? I considered this morning as I fashioned a three-legged stool over my morning ritual oracular vapors. I thought it would be good to have a petting zoo here. Basically, I thought, I'll declare links.net a virtual single human petting zoo mostly in text. I've already set myself up as an exhibit, so I don't have to do very much …

We all know how the internet works—lots of “hot takes,” polarizing opinions, trolling, and ignorance. Recently, everyone has opinions on AI and LLMs/GenAI in particular. I won’t focus here on “gold rush” influencers, bad grifters, people who build their business … Continue reading →

Do you get frustrated when you have to throw out fruits and vegetables that have gone bad?Have lots of kitchen scraps but can't be bothered to compost them due to possible smell, rodents, HOA rules, or time commitments?Welcome to "blendposting". That's my made up name for a technique I "invented" for handling kitchen scraps or wasted fruits and vegetables.It's really easy to do, will help your garden or flowerbed immensely, …

On August 2014 I made one of the most difficult choices of my life: I left my home country, my family, my friends and everything I knew to move to the United States. I arrived in Florida, and while Florida still speaks a lot of Spanish for a US State (not in a bad way, I’m not complaining! It made my life easier) it still took a bit of me …

Trumpeter Swan observed last week at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, near Charlottesville, Virginia Well, this is it: The last post at Mountain Beltway here at the AGU Blogosphere. AGU has been so accommodating, hosting my blog for these past 13+ years, but they’ve let me know that it’s time to “sunset” the AGU Blogosphere. This didn’t come as a shock – the pace of posting around here has slowed way down …

It's 2024, and it's time to move on from Bearblog for the moment. It's a great place to write, and Herman has been a very gracious host, but recently I've found myself wanting something different. Dreamwidth was on my shortlist of places to start a blog when I signed up here, and I think the reason I went with Bear instead is that I didn't think Dreamwidth had a mobile …

A huge amount happened in the Lean theorem prover community in 2023; this blog post looks back at some of these events, plus some of what we have to look forward to in 2024. Modern mathematics I personally am a member of the Lean community because of its phenomenal mathematics library mathlib, which was born around six and a half years ago and has now become a very fast-growing database …

UPDATE 8/1/22: Some confusion about the date for this one. Some are saying that it was the end of November, but one newspaper article (coming to this page soon!) published on Tuesday 10th December indicates that the party took place on 7th December. A Spirals document entitled SPIRAL TRIBE’S CALENDAR OF POLICE HARRASSMENT AT FREE PARTIES – 1991-1992, still accessible via Wayback Machine, describes the bust at the end: 9.12.91– …

Yes, this is my first post in almost a year. I’m no longer prioritizing this blog, but I will still occasionally post something. I wrote ~2 years ago that it was hard to point to concrete opportunities to help the most important century go well. That’s changing. There are a good number of jobs available now that are both really promising opportunities to help (in my opinion) and are suitable …

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. …