Recently updated blogs

Wojciech Kaftanski’s book is a wide-ranging treatment of Søren Kierkegaard’s unremitting engagement with the topic of mimesis, not only in the latter’s early aesthetic musings, or in his trenchant observations on the dynamics of social levelling, but also in the philosophical anthropology woven throughout the Dane’s reflections on art, religion, and human existence. Kaftanski traces the theme of mimesis through signed and pseudonymous works, as well as Kierkegaard’s journals and …

Some of my books are on sale! BREAKING LOTFP EU WEBSTORE NEWS: * NEW SHIPPING METHOD! * 25 % OFF SALE ON BOOKLETS + SOFTCOVERS * JUST SEVEN COPIES OF MIDVINTER LEFT LotFP EU Webstore: https://www.lotfp.com/store/ We've got the Global Mail option on the EU webstore up and running, which will result in much cheaper shipping rates for a lot of customers on lighter (under 1kg or especially

I feel like I'm slipping out of my daily blogging era. Life feels busy with weekend travels and mini getaways. New hobbies, pulling for first-place attention. But I miss it. I miss the soft struggle of marshaling my thoughts onto the screen. Capturing life experiences and sharing them to the void. On the other hand, life feels full, leaving fewer moments for written reflection and self-analysis. My inner fort of …

Over the years, I’ve immersed myself in a sea of perfume literature, and one of my biggest pet peeves is when people misidentify the classification of a fragrance by claiming it belongs to the wrong genre. This confusion is especially common with fougères, chypres, and aquatics, with the latter being the most perplexing. While I understand the confusion around fougères, given the tricky

The past few months have been some of the most tumultuous so far in our journey with Toby. We'd spent a long time researching and making plans for his life after college, and things looked for a while like they would work out as planned and begin to be a basis to build upon, encouraging him to be more independent of us, with an eye to the future as we …

Folks, I have some exciting news to share. 🤩 Today I start a new chapter in my career. After a decade at MIT, teaching and doing research at the intersection of usability and programming language design, I wrapped up my PhD two weeks ago (yes, I’m a Dr now! And damn right I will — once it actually sinks in) and today I start my new role as Product Lead …

The cheatsheet that came with the Teenage Engineering KO II was pretty but a bit hard to parse, at least for me. Meanwhile the manual seems to leave some features undocumented. So I scratched together what I could, plus tips from forums, and condensed everything down to this.Things still unclear:The difference between "Reset fader" and "Erase fader"Does group FX send (hold FX, move fader) override the fader's own FX send …

A crowd lined up for a screening at the 2024 Wisconsin Film Festival (Source: Wisconsin Film Festival Facebook) KT here: About a month ago, August 17 to be precise, Variety published an essay by Owen Gleiberman. In it he decries the fact that while national grosses of mainstream films, especially blockbusters, have been recovering from the problems caused the pandemic and the writers’ strike, art-house films have not seen a …

Years ago I bought a cheap chinese E-Cigarette 510 box mod, the Eleaf iStick Pico 25. It's running the ArcticFox custom firmware which sadly seems to be no longer available. I never really used it for anything, but for reasons I want to get it going again. Unfortunately the display is so dim that it can no longer be used. So I wanted to repair the device. I found this …

Book Review – September 2024 I had for some time believed the key to effective writing was to concentrate on the surface of things. Record them faithfully, and they’d do the work for you. After all, the world is manifestly absurd and provides you with everything you need in the way of character and environment and plot; why complicate – or simplify – things with undue authorial mediation? Recently, however, …

Image: Bathhouse built on top of a hot pool, Taiwan. Photo from early 19th century, public domain. No Running Water at Home For people in industrial societies, few activities demand more privacy than washing and grooming the body. We usually do it alone, in our private bathrooms, with locked doors. Seen in a historical context, that is unusual. Bathing in the presence of others has been the rule rather than …

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman is a rip-roaring read and simultaneously terrifying. The reader is left with the clear impression of fragility in the world financial system – bad enough in itself – that could tip over into armed conflict. Eek. The book is about the intersection of the discovery by the US of physical choke-points in the global internet with …

A while ago I went to north Wales with my daughter. I posted here a few pictures from that trip. We wanted to visit a place I saw in various websites, that at first looked like a mistake. Someone must have taken the wrong pictures, I first thought. These pictures looked like a place from another country. And actually, that is the intent of Portmeirion, a fake Italian village someone …

Today’s Washington Post has an opinion piece from Brian Greene, running under the demonstrably false title Decades later, string theory continues its march toward Einstein’s dream. In the piece, the argument of string theory critics is given as: Critics argue that the situation is untenable, noting, “If you can’t test a theory, it’s not scientific.” Adherents counter, “String theory is a work in progress; it’s simply too early to pass …

The Communal Table is a weekly art jam at The Drawing Room in San Francisco. There are plenty of tables, art supplies, beverages, and even a live band. I had a great time at the event and highly recommend checking it out if you are in town. It happens every Friday from 6-10pm at Drawing Room SF (on the corner of Valencia and 17th St). It is all ages and …