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Last week I wrote about the designer furniture district, and I pointed out that these high end corporate big businesses are the direct competition to furniture makers like yourselves. If you're a professional furniture maker, you are competing for customers who walk into this these giant showrooms, see a lot of similar furniture from showroom to showroom, and are convinced to buy by professional sales people who work on commission …

The reviews have been savage. “the worst film ever made”, “The worst film I’ve ever seen”, “I beg you not to see this movie” are just some of the reactions to Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in twelve years. Can it really be that bad? Only one way to find out. Well, it is not the worst film I’ve ever seen – believe me I’ve seen far worse- rather it’s …

Amy Sillman, Faux Pas I’m reading Amy Sillman’s Faux Pas and when I was searching her name in the Podcasts app I came across this conversation with writer Sheila Heti: SHEILA HETI: With my novels… at a certain point I just have to do the thing that I absolutely don’t want to do, that’s going to embarrass me, or that’s going to make me feel like I’m doing something bad. …

Do I always have to write a tldr? I live in Britain, I like to talk about the weather. While all my favourite writers on the internet are pouring their thoughts on the current debate about what a social web is, I deleted my Echofeed account, de facto quitting my sterile 'social media' broadcast routine. Instead, I'm enjoying the sound of heavy rain battering the roof. There was this brief …

In the next decades, climate migration will redraw the demographic map of America. Two recent books tell an unsettling story of migration and displacement that is already underway. Read on Places Journal

Every can needs a tram.// Disneyland Resort, 2007[Source: Jason Schultz / Parkendium. Used by Permission.]

September EditionWho thought the algorithm behind machine learning would have cool complexity implications?The Complexity of Gradient Descent: CLS = PPAD ∩ PLSJohn Fearnley, Paul Goldberg, Alexandros Hollender and Rahul SavaniLet's unpack these classes, subclasses of TFNP, where for every input we know there is an easily verifiable solution and we are looking at the complexity of finding it. PPAD is the class famous for having finding a Nash Equilibrium as …

"From what I've seen, I shouldn't think there's a house or cottage in Thornden where they aren't chewing over the crime at this very moment."[Mrs. Haswell] and Miss Patterdale were agreed that although it was disagreeable to persons of their generation to have a murder committed in their midst, it was very nice for the children to have something to occupy them, Thornden being such a quiet place, with really …

I got the latest volume in The Red Menace series by James Mullaney from Bold Venture Press: The Sky Is Red. Mullaney is probably best known as a ghost-writer for The Destroyer #111-131, along with the later “new Destroyer” novels. I had gotten into The Destroyer in the late ’80s, reading many of the earlier […]

Earlier this year, Zach Leatherman published an epic article on the good, the bad, and the ugly of Web Components, based on his talk at JSHeroes. One of the most interesting and surprising things I learned was just how widespread Web Component usage already is… Despite some notable criticism, web components are already widely used across the web. In August 2023, Chrome Platform Status reports that 19.4% of page loads …

A great list this month, possibly the largest number of high quality history books published in a single month since my records began! (in 2019) There are four in particular that I'm looking out for, detailed below. Click the book covers to see a zoomed in image and links to Amazon if you like to buy your books there. ✕ book cover [title] [by author] [publish date] Our Review Amazon …

I’m joining the inimitable Carson Ellis for a conversation at Bart’s Books this month! Come help celebrate the release of her new book, One Week in January, on October 12th in the Bart’s courtyard from 6-7pm. We’ll be chatting about creative booms in funky towns, spending time with our younger selves, and finding community in rural spaces. Event details here. Here’s a bit more about the book: In January 2001, …

For this year's bike tour, Meg and I rode our ATBs from Littleton, New Hampshire, in a loop around Vermont, and back to New Hampshire. Along the way, we checked out some new spots, and visited some old favourites. We connected it all with a collection of class 4 roads, singletrack, dirt roads, and -- occasional -- pavement. On the eighth day, we rested. OK, I took a ride up …

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans published 2024 Young people use a phrase: IYKYK, which looks like you banged on the keyboard, but means ‘If you know, you know’. It describes how I feel about Lissa Evans: I, and many others, love her books and wait impatiently for the next one. All her recent novels have been set in the mid-20th century – though there are also the children’s …

“Busy” is a relative term. It’s not the same as a cashier handling a Christmas rush, a doctor managing an emergency room during a hectic night, or a delivery driver working all day for Amazon as a side hustle. For me, “busy” means my mental capacity to handle things in a timely manner has greatly diminished. I’ve been so consumed by work every day that things are starting to slip. …