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It may be the middle of February, the rain and the winds have been approaching biblical in their severity but some plum blossom has begun to show in one of the orchards. Now that is a hopeful sign of Spring. It certainly brightens the twice daily walks with Lucie when we pass the trees and a little more warmth should release some of that lovely blossom scent. My apologies for …

The tale of David Scarboro isn't one I was overly familiar with, but his short life and career on British television is, in itself, very much like the soap opera which defined his early fame. Full of highs, lows and tragedy, it's almost as if the infamous EastEnders doof doofs were positioned perilously above his head once he found fame. And the excellent 1989 edition of Scene entitled My Brother …

JW Francis Orbit JW Francis is an intriguing individual. Born in Oklahoma, raised in Paris and now based in New York, he was once the assistant to someone who won a Nobel Prize, is a licensed NYC tour guide and owns a murder mystery business. His scratchy, lo-fi indie-alt-pop has a similarly eclectic feel to it, taking inspiration from the city Francis now calls home. Taking inspiration from The Velvet …

If you love the rich flavor of black walnuts like I do you're going to love black walnut milk. I've made a number of dairy-free nut milks before but the flavor of black walnuts really shines here. It's easy to make and only takes 1 cup of nuts. Here's how to make it, and what... Read More The post Homemade Black Walnut Milk (Dairy Free) appeared first on Forager | …

Whereas someone like,...say...Jandek,has a vision of life as a grim pointless reality; our Norwegian buddies in all those Death/Black metal groups,live in a fantasyworld almost as life unaffirming and silly as a Christian UFO Death Cult....but with better music. Especially when its as lo-fi as this jolly jaunt into the permafrost of the arctic Tundra of Metal.They think they're frightening us but their ,frankly, daft, game of thrones world is …

[For Blanchot] the essence of technology, which enables the repetition or the reproduction of the artwork … is located in the abyss from which the call of the Sirens and the whale [Moby-Dick] emanates. To listen carefully to this call is to hear a tone that differs from the usual apocalyptic foretelling of technology.from Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot by Holly Langstaff

Every Saturday we round-up the best writing about beer from the past 7 days. This week we’ve got pessimism, optimism, and pure Belgianness. First, there’s been a flurry of news about brewery closures and changes: Adnams has begun to explore options for outside funding to “fund further growth initiatives” and (muttering quietly) “pay down bank debt”. We wonder how many businesses gambled on interest rates staying low and are now …

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 …