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Why do governments go after companies and executives of services of more weakly encrypted tools? It’s very hard, this early, to pierce through what’s going on with the French authorities’ arrest of Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram — but that doesn’t stop people from having pet theories. Was it retaliation from the US and the FBI for not backdooring Telegram? Was it a favor to Durov so he could …

You know that thing where your memory starts playing tricks on you? Yeah? Well, recently I was playing a 2CD compilation, Northern Soul Underground. It’s a great set, with the focus on the early ‘soul’ years, and I love the fact that the cover proclaims that the ’50 Soulful Rarities’ include The Profiles, Squires, Drapers and Laddins. I bet that got people rushing to the shops. Anyway, the second CD …

It’s been a minute, as they say. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve published on other platforms: Does Anyone Still Write Letters? (Other Than Me, That Is.) (Medium gift link) What I Like About American English (An Open Letter to Our Friends Across the Pond) (Medium gift link) And speaking of American vs. British English, here’s Bamboozled by Bits and Bobs (Substack) * What you need to know about some …

Is Steely Dan cool these days? Or is it the case that they’re deeply unfashionable? Either way, every person should make it their mission in life to listen to The Nightfly by Donald Fagen (the lead singer of Steely Dan). If I was writing one of those ‘100 Albums You Must Listened To Before You Die’ lists it would definitely feature.The reason I mention this record is that there is …

Source: Alan Bennett, extract from ‘Seeing Stars’, London Review of Books, vol. 24 no. 1, 3 January 2002, pp. 12-16, reproduced with slight emendations in Untold Stories (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), pp. 160-173 Text: In the 1940s within a mile or so of where we lived in Armley in Leeds there were at least half a dozen cinemas. Nearest was the Picturedrome on Wortley Road but others were just …

"Dark matter makes up 85% of the universe. Recent scientific theory suggests dark matter is information—a fifth form of matter—and that we can wake it up. But waking it up can let dark things out.James Callis is Dr. John Carnack. Five years ago, his dark matter experiments led to tragedy. His redemption is working for the Department of Midnight, investigating dangerous dark matter experiments, trying to prevent further disasters. But …

I was going through the blog archive the other day and noticed that it's coming up on three years since I started reviewing again. Three years! The time has flown by for me. I also noticed that I'm posting way less often than I used to, which is a little depressing. At this point I have an enormous backlog of dolls that I'm dying to look at! I always set …

Fonts: Brauer Neue, Agentur

CORS, and the browser’s same-origin policy are often misunderstood. I’m going to explain what they are and what you need to do to stop worrying about them.Note: I’m going to talk about CORS and the same-origin policy as one thing and use the terms mostly interchangeably. This is because they are basically one system, they work together to decide what you can do with what cross-origin resources. Basically if your …

I found out today that the UW-Madison library has digitized copies of old Wright Directories of Madison. A Wright Directory is kind of like the white pages, but it also has a section where people are listed in order of their address, and it lists peoples’ occuptations as well as their phone numbers. I’d never heard of this book until earlier this week when AB and I ran across the …

Paulo Uccello’s The Hunt in the Forest, c. 1465–1470 This post is a work in progress about a talk I gave on August 24, 2024 at the final XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon. The Saturday talks were all recorded, and videos will be up in three or four weeks; when the video of my talk goes up, I will a.) feel slightly sick and b.) link to it here. The …

I moved to Kaohsiung City in January 2023 after falling in love with its arty, relaxed vibe. Now, one-and-a-half years later, I’ve nearly mastered its pronunciation.There are two complicating factors when it comes to pronouncing Kaohsiung:Chinese is a tonal languageTaiwan has different ways of romanizing Chinese wordsLet’s ignore the tones for a moment—ignoring tones is something I’m unintentionally good at—and focus on the spelling.Although Taiwan has officially used the Hanyu …

It isn’t, as the Celestron website one-sidedly states on its page about observing Pluto, a “fun holiday to celebrate.” What today is is the anniversary of a terrible day for science and knowledge, a day in which a very political vote was taken, which has done tremendous harm to science education and communication over the last 18 years.“It” is the 18th anniversary of the highly controversial vote by four percent …

The open-air Voss Folkemuseum in Voss, Norway, is a wonderful place to visit. They have a great museum with a number of farming artifacts, and folk arts. Some of the most interesting artifacts are historic chests. Two examples are shown below, illustrating differing forms of assembly. These chests are both small, and simple in construction. The first uses butt joints fastened using wooden dowels or pins. The second chest uses …