Recently updated blogs

Miseristhenes the SocialmediaiteThis is part V of my all the things(!!!) blog series where I attempt to make sense of all the things I've gotten myself into these past 5-10 years, and I figure out how to Marie Kondo my professional hobbies. In this post, I turn my attention to social media! The topic that connects us, and divides us, and has gotten the "it's complicated" label since Elon Musk …

Three painterly Pomme Gris apples bask in today's mellow September sun.

Kyoto City Map Kyoto, just a three-hour bullet train ride from Tokyo, feels like a world apart. As Japan’s cultural capital, it boasts a unique charm with its picturesque streets and distinctive architectural style. Traditional wooden houses line the charming streets, while temples, colorful shrines, imperial palaces, and zen gardens dot the landscape. Unlike bustling Tokyo, Kyoto exudes a calm and tranquil energy, inviting visitors to slow down and savor …

Matthieu (Pierre Deladonchamps) just received the call that his father died. The father he never met. The father he didn’t even really knew existed. The father he couldn’t meet in life but now must get to know in death. His mother always told him that Matthieu was the result of a one-night stand. But the affair was much more complicated than that. Matthieu travels from France to Quebec for the …

Retro Kid You & Me Retro Kid is the musical pseudonym of producer Jake Juba. Based out of Copenhagen, Retro Kid constructs tastefully arranged pieces of electronic music, blending ambience and hints of pop to create abstract-yet-emotive sound collages. In his latest single, You & Me, Juba has made a dedication to his girlfriend, Gry, and the challenges they experience as new parents. In the face of the multitude of …

Here’s some stuff I’ve experienced lately (and not necessarily only new releases). In addition, our free Stream Team community has a lot more daily action happening on the recommendations front too. Slow Horses (TV): This lowkey might be the best show on TV Will & Harper (Movie): Touching and funny Blue Sisters (Book): Still in the middle of this now that I’m a BOOK CLUB GUY, but really feeling each …

I continue to check my little dashboard of San Francisco COVID numbers each morning to figure out whether going into the supermarket to pick out the best avocado is worth the risk or will be an embarrassing thing to explain to the medical professionals treating my long-COVID-induced dementia. Lately, all the SF numbers have looked pretty-safe. (I blogged a few weeks ago when the numbers, overall, looked safe enough to …

I love hat puzzles, and this one, posted on Facebook by Konstantin Knop, is no exception. Puzzle. The sultan decided to test his three sages once again. This time, he showed them five hats: three red and two green. Each sage was blindfolded and had one hat placed on their head. When the sages removed their blindfolds, they could see the hats on the other sages but not their own. …

Harsh conclusion, but summary of the conflict between Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine

Mandy Brown wrote this fantastic piece about building a space on the web for yourself: A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both constrains and makes possible what goes within it. This is, I think, one of the primary justifications for having your own website. Not just so you can own your stuff (for some meaning of “ownership,” in a culture in which any …

I’ve recently got into a bit of a rabbit hole with FPV quadcopter drones.1 Specifically with a “mini-whoop” style drone, the Meteor 75 Pro. ...sneak preview of the end product!

This recent piece in Fast Company was bothering me. I’ve been in work for almost 20 years soon and I’ve heard people talk about the lack of business acumen in design since I was a student. I posit that something else is happening as ‘design thinking as a service’ enters its mid life crisis. Design isn’t special anymore. Most people in the knowledge economy have had to sit through a …

I like Charlie Stross in general, I really enjoyed Accelerando, and many people talked positively about The Laundry Files, so I decided to give it a go. I like the universe, where unspeakable horrors exist and governments have secret departments in charge of keeping the world safe. I like this premise already. But it’s a well trodden trope, and what differentiates this from, say, Hellboy, or Man in Black§ is …

Well, that's it. I can officially retire from comic book collecting, because I did it. I FUCKIN DID IT:I finally completed my set of Air Pirates Funnies.Yes, I know about Dan O'Neill's Comics and Stories, and the Tortoise and the Hare, and Dirty Duck, and the Air Pirates newspaper, but I don't care. Like Ash Katchum, I caught them all. Stay tuned for this blog's new focus: Collecting Loungefly backpacks.

I wrote about the WordPress vs. WP Engine drama a couple of days ago, but it’s still taking up space in my head. For better or worse, WordPress powers about half of the web. I care deeply about the web, and I think it’s being harmed by this nonsense. Part of the reason is uncertainty. It seemingly started because Matt Mullenweg’s mother thought WP Engine was an official WordPress product. …