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An end of week recap “Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity, and that strikes terror into the hearts of people who love reading.” – Ruth Rendell (born 17th February 1930) This is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I look ahead to forthcoming features, see what’s on the nightstand and keep …

Helldivers 2 is a fun game. That is when it works. It has a bad habit of crashing when you don’t want it to. Matchmaking is also a little borked as it is right now. The games Quickplay will often fail. Makes it hard to play an online only game like this. Despite those issues the game looks great and I’ve been trying to get some nice screenshots of this …

I think we all understand that while talking about our perfumes, the use of the word “collection” is somewhat a stretch: it is a collection in terms of being an assembly of items of the same type, probably even systematically arranged. But since the objects of the collection, perfumes, are being used (no matter how […]

We've got another tier of management now, and managers have to prove they are managing things so no more carrying the odd day of leave over now cos you've bee worked so hard you haven't had time to take it so it's use it or lose it. Today was a use it day but I only had half of that day to call my own and what with the lower …

Creating a website can be a daunting task, especially for non-developers. As someone well aware of the struggles with the process, I spoke with Sara on Mastodon about simplifying the process of creating a website for non-developers on the back end of a recent post “An Easy Web”. We came up with the idea of providing copy-paste boilerplate templates of simple single-page starter sites that are carefully commented, making it …

Marshall McLuhan appearing on the CBC program "This Hour Has Seven Days," in 1966. (YouTube) The February 25, 1966 issue of Time magazine included predictions for the year 2000. And with the benefit of of some distance, the article is an incredible artifact of prognostication. The predictions came at a time when the U.S. was experiencing a prolonged period of unprecedented technological and economic progress. And they had no idea …

On these plains above Jena in 1806, the Prussian army was having a really bad day. Photo by Sean Manning, October 2016 In my first book, I talked about how ‘mercenary’ is more a moral and political term than a neutral category. People use different names like allies, volunteers, professionals, Private Military Companies, and mercenaries depending on their moral and political stance on those soldiers (in ancient Greece or Sir …

Early Feb NorCal wind and SoCal rain events were historically significant February started out with a remarkable pair of Pineapple Express-type atmospheric river storms, each of which brought substantial impacts, but the second of the pair ultimately generated extreme wind gusts in parts of Northern California and historic rainfall in portions of Southern California. Wind … Additional storms to bring renewed flood risk to parts of CA Read More » …

Federal law makes it a felony to “willfully or maliciously injure[ ] or destroy[ ] any of the works, property, or material of any radio, … or other means of communication, operated or controlled by the United States, or used or intended to be used for military or civil defense functions ….” I’m not sure I agree with the locals that this would apply to WJLX’s 200-foot-tall radio tower in …

I’ve been an insomniac my whole life. I remember taking long walks as a teenager around my neighborhood in the…

We tend to talk about rights without ever mentioning their corresponding duties. Every right needs an obligation to support it. At the very least we have a duty to grant the same rights to others, but more consequentially, rights have trade-offs: things we have to do or surrender in order to earn the right. The right to vote entails the duty to pay taxes. The right of free speech entails …

Sorry for the delays in posting, I have been on a short vacation. So today is one of my favorite (and obscure) fictional pop-up books about space. A really beautifully illustrated 1952 book with some amazing text to accompany it, The Jolly Jump-ups Journey Through Space!Clyne, Geraldine. The Jolly Jump-ups Journey Through Space. Springfield, MA: McLoughlin Bros. (12 p.) 1952.

Style is to genius what genre is to sceniusStyle is a relative inflexibility, a patterning, a degree of predictability – the habits of a mind, a unconscious (or willed) decrease in variety and freedomStyle is invariance, self-conformityWhen you read a new piece by a writer whose style is familiar to you and who you enjoyyour pleasure is basically saying “that’s exactly what X would think, exactly how X would say …

Tempe Arizona residents were recently sent mail ballots for the city council election of March 12, 2024. Three of the five candidates on the ballot are to be elected to the council. A voter may vote for up to three candidates, and the three candidates with the highest vote totals are elected.Suppose a voter can quantify her preferences on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 meaning she definitely …

I’ve been ruminating on the idea of narrative strategy for a while now. The last time I wrote about it was in 2020.