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  1. The Neglected Books Page, , more info

    Miss Abby Fitch-Martin, by Kataryn Loughlin (1952)
    History is written by the winners, George Orwell said, and this goes for family history, too. After finishing Miss Abby Fitch-Martin, you sigh in relief that the adage is true in this case. If Kataryn Loughlin and her little sister Esther survived to adulthood, it was despite the best efforts of their Aunt Abby. “Aunt Abby” sounds far too familiar for this forbidding woman. She was, Loughlin writes, the “final …
    By editor, 1,169 words
  2. Junk Charts, , more info

    Small tweaks that make big differences
    It's one of those days that a web search led me to an unfamiliar corner, and I found myself poring over a pile of column charts that look like this: This pair of charts appears to be canonical in a type of genetics analysis. I'll focus on the column chart up top. The chart plots a variety of gene functions along the horizontal axis. These functions are classified into three …
    By junkcharts, 239 words
  3. Jazz Collector, , more info

    Podcast: Coltrane, Sideman, Prestige, Part 2
    This week’s theme: John Coltrane as a sideman on the Prestige label, Part 2. This one features all of the Coltrane solos on alto sax with Gene Ammons, as well as tracks from The Cats, Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane, and other records from the early Prestige catalog.The post Podcast: Coltrane, Sideman, Prestige, Part 2 first appeared on jazzcollector.com.
    By Al, 65 words
  4. COVA - ARGH!!!, , more info

    Cascavel – The Myth of the Bloodthirsty Lioness (EP 2024)
    Band:CascavelCountry:BrazilGenre:Death MetalYear:2024Buy the original!BandcampDownload
    By Joseph Mayrink, 14 words
  5. Start here, , more info

    Forensic storytelling
    Have you ever read an autopsy report? It’s brutal. You peel a person apart, pick them over for information. You tour through their body, their organs, their selves like it’s the index to a book. In just a couple of pages of banal medical description, you are turned from an ordinary citizen into the holder of a dark secret. The autopsy makes you a witness to somebody’s most intimate moments. …
    By Bobbie Johnson, 525 words
  6. Atlas Minor • Journal, , more info

    Five Early Autumn Classics
    I've been pondering my love of reverberations. Last week, I received a request from a very kind listener: the filmmaker Grace Wang suggested a Linda Rondstadt track, and my first impulse was to drown it in static and reverb. Why?Perhaps the answer is simple: echos and fog generate mystery. In 1973, the painter Gerhard Richter said, "I've never found anything lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can …
    By James Reeves, 497 words
  7. Cameras and Photography Explained | News/Views | Thom Hogan, , more info

    Initial and Long-Term Impressions
    I was struck by something important to understand during my recent trip to Africa. I was carrying two new (to me) "pocket cameras," the Fujifilm X100VI and the Leica D-Lux8, alongside my usual top-end mirrorless kit. Curiously, my initial impression of both the compact cameras changed. When I had unboxed them, I was frustrated with the Leica and familiar with the Fujifilm (uses the same menu structure and controls as …
    272 words
  8. Retail Insider, , more info

    Mixing it up at MAPIC
    As the days tick down to the major European retail property show, MAPIC, on the South coast of France in Cannes the key themes to be covered have been highlighted at a preview event in London. Catherine Stevenson, Cushman & Wakefield This year’s exhibitors and speakers will again highlight the ongoing move away from old school retail involving simply flogging goods to a broader proposition. Whereas back in 2020 75% …
    By Glynn Davis, 375 words
  9. Stephen Knight Photography, , more info

    Lightroom's AI denoise moves the hardware goalposts
    Until recently, Adobe Lightroom Classic was more of a heavy user of a computer's CPU and RAM, than the graphics processing unit (GPU). However, the AI denoise functionality introduced in 2023 has significantly changed the goalposts. The AI denoise functionality is extremely reliant on powerful "AI enabled" GPUs. So which graphics cards work well, and which don't? There are only limited benchmarks available, so this article is based on a …
    By Stephen Knight, 975 words
  10. CD-ROM Journal, , more info

    Lucha Doll and Poranger Fonts
    As long as computers have existed, we've had the desire to type funny little symbols into them. Until emoji was standardized globally in the 2010s, though, we really didn't have that many options for typing funny characters—unless you had a computer with dingbat fonts. Windows users of a certain era probably remember the Wingdings font that came with the operating system, but for many people that was probably their only …
    630 words
  11. Comics Worth Reading, , more info

    Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies
    I’m not at all surprised Anaïs Nin: A Sea of Lies by Léonie Bischoff is a European import (translated by Jenna Allen). It pretty much has to be, given the subject matter: a woman as famous for whom she slept with as what she wrote, and when she wrote, her work involved sex and desire. (Plus, a lot of biographical comics seem to start outside the US.) What struck me …
    By Johanna, 87 words
  12. Notes from a Room, , more info

    Beacon
    I got friends in New York City‘Cause everyone I know left townThat’s the place your daily dreams goWhere you can’t see the sun go down Hold your head up, you’re a beaconYou pull me northward in my carYou don’t have to hit the big time, babyWe know who you are I got friends in LA CountyWhere the hillsides shine like starsAnd the people float like gold dustThrough the red rope …
    By notesfromaroom, 148 words
  13. Tales of Times Forgotten, , more info

    Advice on Reading Homer in Translation
    The Iliad and the Odyssey are often regarded as being among the greatest works of world literature and many people have an interest in reading them—but how does one go about starting? Which translations are the best? In what manner should one read them? In this post, I will give advice in response to all these questions and discuss both the strengths and shortcomings of the most widely read translations, …
    By Spencer McDaniel, 5,901 words
  14. The Pudding, , more info

    Every Outdoor Basketball Court in the U.S.A.
    Explore Satellite Imagery of 59,507 Basketball Courts
    14 words
  15. John Quiggin, , more info

    We or They
    Like most academics these days, I spend a lot of time filling in online forms. Mostly, this is just an annoyance but occasionally I get something out of it. A recent survey in which the higher-ups tried to get an idea of how the workforce was feeling, asked the question “Do you think of the University as We or They?”. Unsurprisingly given my reference to “higher-ups”, my answer was “They”. …
    By John Quiggin, 389 words