Recently updated blogs

Part I, Part II, Part III, and now Part IV: The debate moderators did not fact-check all of Trump’s lies. Can you imagine Trump or Vance sobbing with regret? I predict the adults in the room will prevail again, but if the government shuts down in two weeks, it’s because of Trump and his House MAGA minions. That word doesn’t mean what he thinks it does. He’s no fan of …

Original airdate: October 6, 2024 The premise: The Simpsons get the once-in-a-lifetime chance to stay at the luxurious Yellow Lotus resort, until their free pass is yanked out from under them and they’re forced to leave. Laying low in an empty room to avoid getting caught, they overhear a familiar guest next door: Sideshow Bob, there with his new wife and seemingly plotting to kill her to inherit her fortune. …

PC In 1439, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg was working on an ill-begotten project to create polished metal mirrors designed to capture the holy light from religious relics, to be sold to pilgrims visiting an exhibition in Aachen, Germany. However, after flooding led to the event being delayed by a year, Gutenberg found himself out of money, and instead turned to his other project, a press that would use movable …

Not much reading again this month. I gave up on The Aleppo Codex because I didn't have the brainpower to follow all of the names and dates. The premise is interesting, but I can't dedicate reading time to something so intense during the school year. Maybe I'll revisit it during winter break. I did finish two books. The Monster in the Hollows - Andrew Peterson This is the third book …

Genteel English 'manners" mystery fiction arguably achieved its apogee in the late mid-to-late 1930s and the 1940s with such crime writers as Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Georgette Heyer, Patricia Wentworth, Michael Innes and Nicholas Blake, to name some of the subgenre's most prominent exponents. Even writers not directly association with manners mystery, like Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, published manners-ish mysteries like Five Little Pigs and …

Autumn is a great time to get outside and enjoy nature with your family. The leaves are turning beautiful colors, the air is crisp, and there are so many seasonal treasures to find. A fall scavenger hunt is a fun way to keep kids entertained while making the most of the season. Fall has always been one of our favorite times of the year—we have so many wonderful memories of …

Council elections are happening this month. In a lot of areas there’s been a change. Here in Glen Eira we used to have 3 wards with 3 councillors each. Now we’ll have 9 wards with 1 councillor each. I’m not so sure this is a good idea. Unfortunately some elected councillors aren’t great. In the past if you had an issue and needed to contact one, there’d be at least …

LP – Dischi Fantom An unusual union was created from the meeting of essayist, editor and translator Ginevra Bompiani with sound artists Caterina Barbieri and Tomoko Sauvage. The result is an original narrative with an allegorical-classical slant, where the relationships between sound, words, voice, media, and technology are explored through orality and poetry, with texts that belong to the world of fable and myth. The techniques implemented – as opposed …

Even in the coldest months we keep our house at a moderate 66 degrees, both to save energy and money, though I've been known to sneak it up a degree (to 67!) if the chill begins to seep too far into my bones even under several layers of clothing. In the past couple of days our furnace kicked on for the first time this fall, which inevitably signals the beginning …

Days, it turns out, are rather easily made. The time required varies, but trends closer to making the bed, or making a cup of tea, than to making Ravioli. (If you are crazy good-looking and smile at people who aren’t when you pass them on the street, it can be much quicker.) The effort required is approximately equivalent to taking out the trash. And as with taking out the trash, …

My paternal Chazan cousins in Manchester, England are DNA matches with me, and we also have evidence of close family relationships via photos and letters exchanged by our ancestors in the 1930s/40s/50s. But we don't know how, exactly, their matriarch Hinda Mitav Chazan (1864-1940) is related to my paternal matriarch Necke Gelle (Mitav?) Shuham Burk (no dates). These names are at the top of the "most wanted" list of ancestors …

Kiki may be vibrant, but it’s still a pretty bare bones 3D platformer. View the action in first person perspective as you jump over pits, avoid obstacles like sawblades, and collect stars and trophies as you make your way to the exit. Kiki is available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 […]

I went off to see Megalopolis excitedly knowing that a lot of people think it sucked, because even if it sucked I figured it would have some interesting thing to say about “the Future” and would also be something of a spectacle, part “neo Rome” and part art deco. But mostly, I am one of those people who often think about the Roman Empire! Danny, Mikayla and I escaped from …

On August 2nd, 2022, just three days before its release, Konami dropped an announcement for Amazing Bomberman out of nowhere. Released exclusively for the subscription-based Apple Arcade service for iOS devices, Amazing Bomberman embraces music as its central conceit, combining rhythm game-isms and music genres like chiptune, dubstep, rock, and pop with classic Bomberman gameplay. Due to the combination of its sudden release and platform exclusivity, the game feels like …

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