Recently updated blogs

I’m trying to write a little bit about some of the materials, techniques and equipment that I use for my printing. These will be my personal opinions about what works for me and how well. Anything I say about cost, value and quality is from my personal experience and I’m well aware that the way we all work and our preferences and values are very individual. Out of all of …

Vincent Simonetti collected his first historic tuba - a ~1910 Cerveny BB-flat Helicon - in Boston in 1965, while playing tuba on tour with the Moyseev Ballet Company. Today the collection has grown to more than 350 tubas, and is now the largest private collection in the world that is dedicated exclusively to members of the tuba family. The collection entirely fills five rooms of a bright yellow house in …

Thought experiment: What’s the ugliest game book you’d still pick off a shelf if you came across it again for the first time? Indie snobs will of course claim it’s a whole long list, but the reality is that we really do judge a book by its cover. That’s why they have covers. Fair warning: it’s not a great movie! But I did appreciate the (ham-handed) message. Last week I …

Discussing climate change alongside The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu 2017-) is unorthodox but offers an alternative and marginalised perspective. Typically, when thinking of climate change, David Attenborough, Britain’s national treasure, comes to mind. But while attending the 2024 online CST Conference: Sustainability and Television, which ran from 24th June to the 4th of July, that all changed. Source

I was touring a grove in Ventura County that had some large GEM avocado trees and many of them had respectable crops, but then I came to one whose branches were cascades of new fruit. The other two people I was with also stopped in their tracks to admire the amount of avocados. And we […] The post GEM avocado tree next to Bacon has most fruit appeared first on …

Old age can be a silent tribute to beauty. I imagine my own case. Maybe I live the tail end of my life alone in elder care. My wife, six years older than me, is already gone. My children are living full lives in distant towns. What will I be doing? I've always been a writer, a teacher, a worker, but maybe 89-year-old me will lack the creative energy or …

I started this as another edition of Assorted Stupidity, but after noticing that my first three items all had to do with the same person, I decided to devote the entire post to him. As many sources have reported, rapper/producer Sean Combs, a.k.a. “Puff,” a.k.a. “Puffy,” a.k.a. “Puff Daddy,” a.k.a. “P. Diddy,” a.k.a. “Diddy,” a.k.a. “Love,” a.k.a. “Brother Love,” now a.k.a. “Inmate No. 37452-054,” is facing federal sex trafficking and …

Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that amateur astronomers can image due to it's sheer size in the sky—many times larger than the Moon appears to us, but also many times dimmer.With the naked eye, even in dark skies it appears but a tiny little fuzzy patch. But once you start collecting those photons photographically with long exposures it comes to life.Total …

What if I told you I had a from-scratch cinnamon roll recipe that was effortlessly veganized, required no kneading, and could be coming out of your oven in just over two hours? And what if I told you’d I’d been making it for years and didn’t tell you about it because I thought, for some bizarre reason, that the site didn’t need another breakfast bun recipe? Yes, I’d throw a …

Presents insights on student debt from the author’s book, Leben auf Kredit, which examines various forms of precarious debt in the US from the end of slavery to the present.

Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant […]

Here’s a line you don’t often hear in a classic movie. A man greets a friend with, “How’s everything in Winnipeg?” You heard that right: Winnipeg. And why not? There was a time when Winnipeg was touted as the “Chicago of the North” with its rail transportation systems and rapidly-growing population. Big money was to be made, until it wasn’t. … Continue reading →

We are slowly making our way up the country to the Glasgow Worldcon via interesting places. Today, we stopped at Belvoir Castle.Belvoir CastleWe looked around the castle, which had castly things in it. Then we went for a walk around the grounds.The woodland walk was excellent, with many weird, wonderful, and magnificent trees.weird : lots and lots of brancheswonderfulmagnificentThere were also several buildings constructed of wood, or cut into the …

"life is a highway, and i'm gonna ride it, every day's a winding road, yeah, my rollercoaster's got the biggest ups and downs, so long as it keeps going round it's unbelievable" - my rollercoaster, kimya dawson WDC2024 was amazing! come along in 2025? i lost an apple wall charger and a borrowed usb c to usb c on my travels so god bless to whoever finds them, hope they're …

Last week I visited the University of Pennsylvania for a fireside chat with Roger Greenberg, a Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology, as part of the Wharton Undergraduate Healthcare Club (WUHC). I shared my personal history and answered questions from an audience primarily consisting of Penn undergraduate students. This inspired me to write down advice that I wish I could have given to my younger self. This blog is …