Recently updated blogs

Last week, in the Perfume Chat Room at the Serenity Now blog, rickyrebarco told about having to evacuate because of Hurricane Helene and shared which perfumes she took with her. I commented that I was recently thinking about how hard it would have been to make such a choice. And Old Herbaceous suggested that it […]

As I write this, OggCamp 2024 (which I have subtitled The Return in my head’s inner monologue) is a little over a week away. You can still get a ticket and join us! A few of us have done a little bit of promotion of the event that you may not have seen, heard, or read, so feel free to explore these: I was on Tom’s Hardware PiCast Dan wrote …

Below is the mid-term for my Modern Japan class. You can see the syllabus here. I wanted to think about this a bit, because I am trying to do several things with it, and I am not sure how well it will work. First a bit of background. I have usually liked take-home tests, since asking students to analyze history without looking at any sources is….1 less than ideal. I …

What’s going on, Internet? Another Bandcamp Friday has been and gone. Did you pick up anything interesting? I’ve continued my mission to backfill my catelogue of Aotearoa music. This month is all about NZ Hip Hop. Melo & Blues by MELODOWNZ AVONTALES by MELODOWNZ The Prequel by Raiza Biza Respect The Process by Team Dynamite WHAKAREHU by MOKOMOKAI If you’re going ot check out any of these, check out MOKOMOKAI. …

Continuing a thread about vintage TV ads we last did on September 8, today's post delves into 1950's and 1960's Commercial Land, specifically cigarettes.To get in the mood, it's time for a cuppa joe from Conquistador Coffee!Since the September 8 post started with animated ads, here are some very good ones plugging Lucky "LSMFT" Strikes.While I don't know offhand who produced the stylish "It's Light Up Time" ads, they are …

Well this is just a really nice piece of flattery, and a nice breakdown of my design system masterclass I delivered at HATCH Conference in Berlin last year. I truly enjoy teaching masterclasses, running workshops, and working with teams to help people understand important concepts, provide resources, and share my own experience working with dozens of teams on design system efforts. Thanks Zoi!

The New York Times recently ran a one–two punch of stories about the ostensibly softening political involvement of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta — where by “punch”, I mean “gentle caress”. Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac on Meta “distanc[ing] itself from politics”: On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, political content is less heavily featured. App settings have been automatically set to de-emphasize the posts that users see about campaigns and candidates. And …

Endre Penovác (Serbia, b. 1956) paints cats using a unique wet-into-wet technique. He uses a wet-in-wet technique, which involves applying wet paint to a pre-wetted surface. This approach allows the pigments to blend and spread organically, creating soft, ethereal effects.More about how he paints these cats on my Substack post

It has been a week. It’s not going to fix anything, but maybe watching George Clooney chilling at the end of a movie will help you in some small way. He has perfected the art of just chillin’ out silently for an extended period of time during the last shot of a movie while the credits roll… (via laura olin) Tags: George Clooney · movies · video 💬 Join the …

Nancy Friedman is one of my favorite writers on language, so I was over the moon to read her write-up of my book Gobsmacked! I can’t imagine a better appreciation of what I’ve tried to do with the blog and the book. Her piece also reminded me that, some months back, Nancy had suggested I write about “pap”–a noun for paparazzi photographers, and a verb for what they do, as …

• 4-star hikes • 4 mile out-and-back • Medium difficulty | Gain 1,750 feet • Sandwich, NH | White Mountains . Looking towards the White Mountains from the summit. Standing at 2,636 feet of elevation and located just four miles north of Squam Lake, Mount Israel's trails lead panoramic viewpoints in all directions. From up here you can enjoy sights that include Squam Lake and the ragged Sandwich mountain range …

Back in 2015, after having weepily documented the long, slow demise of storied record shop, Bleecker Bob’s at 118 West 3rd Street, I posted an entry about myself and my friend Steve having lunch at Miyabi, the Japanese restaurant that had assumed the long-contested address on West 3rd. Late last year, however, Miyabi quietly closed without a great deal of fanfare. I’m not suggesting there’s any sort of cause-&-effect correlation …

“Committees are an infrastructure designed to race you to the bottom of opportunity!” – Futurist Jim Carroll Committees kill ideas. Committees kill all initiative. Committees kill the idea of innovation. Committees are the destroyer of all things. Did I mention I think committees are a bad idea? “Let me check with the committee.” “We’ve got a committee looking into that.” “There’s a committee involved with the decision.” “We’ll send that …

In searching for a prototype modern hermit, one is confronted by the reality that after the Middle Ages, hermits in modernity were destined by authorities to disappear. In order to survive, eremitism transformed into solitude, and hermits transformed into solitaries. Unlike historical hermits, however, who seem so similar regardless of geography, culture, or era, solitaries present more variable phenomena. Life styles of modern solitaries depend more on circumstance and personality. …

“Nevermades” are a conceptual evolution of Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades,” pushing the boundaries of authenticity and creation even further into the digital realm. While Duchamp recontextualized everyday objects as art by simply selecting them, nevermades are works that were never physically created at all. These virtual fabrications exist purely as digital constructs, challenging the traditional notions of art’s materiality and the value placed on physical objects. In the spirit of Duchamp’s …