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The full Apple Music description of GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR’s new album, NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD, reads “The Montreal collective continues to say so much without saying a word.” This in its own strange way, is projection. The title is a direct reference to the 2023-2024 Gaza genocide. It is a clear statement on what is happening in the world and the circumstances of the …

Some notes from three days of teaching a small cohort of leaders in the art of participatory leadership. —- When we teach the four fold practice of the art of hosting (also the art of participatory leadership) I’ve taken to doing it in a World Cafe. We use Cafe to essentially recreate the conditions that created the insights of the four fold practice 25 or so years ago. We invite …

They followed John Henry through the barroom, past a crowded bar and towards the sounds of loud crashing music.Mr. Whitman took Milford's arm again and spoke into his ear."Hey, Mel, you got another five in that poke of yours?""What?" said Milford."Let me have a five-spot, will you? All's I got is twenties on me.""If you have twenties why do you need a five?""Come on, just let me have a fiver, …

School is back in session, sports are in full swing, we’re tossed and turned by the weekly routine. This past month has been a season of fixing and repair and I’m thankful everything went well and we’re (hopefully) through the hard parts. Fixing electrical problems Ramping up to Spooky Month, the lights in our house were acting up. We’ve always had the occasional power problem; lights dimming, oven clocks resetting, …

What will affect the earth’s temperature the most in the next 10 years?Aerosols“Aerosols” is a fancy name for “tiny particles in the air”. Aerosols are the most potent climate lever in the world, because they act near instantly.Some aerosols warm the planet, for example, soot (‘black carbon’). Some aerosols cool the planet, for example, sulfur dioxide.CO2 and methane have to accumulate for decades to cause the warming impact shown above. …

Peter Bagge is on my shortlist of my favorite cartoonists, and Hate is perhaps my favorite comics series of all time. Since ending the series in 1998, he's periodically returned to these characters in roughly real time, as the series leads Buddy and Lisa had a kid. Bagge has said that Buddy Bradley is a version of him, approximately ten years in the past, so it's been interesting to see …

Four-Gone Conclusion It’s just before 5pm on a Saturday afternoon and the Fourpure Brewing Co taproom is quiet. Very quiet. A space that could easily accommodate 400 customers contains about 25 mostly middle-aged men. Much of the noise - beside a generic rock soundtrack - is coming from a group sitting on the mezzanine level, whose banter (they’re wearing identical straw hats) occasionally rises to near raucous levels.

Yours Truly and Gill from Realweegiemidget Reviews proudly present the John Saxon Blogathon! In the world of character actors, there are a select few who stand out. Mr. Saxon (born Carmine Orrico in 1936) left an indelible mark on cinema and television, commanding attention whenever he was onscreen. The Italian-American actor often played his roles with intensity and conviction. Often typecast in authority figure roles (frequently as a police detective), …

I guess I'm going to have to change my mystery game tagline. I'm playing more of these and getting better at them. Or maybe more designers are picking up the Obra-Dinn-ish static deduction model, which is the format I'm most simpatico with. (Speaking of that model, the next Golden Idol game will be November 12th. And the revamped Roottrees is coming on January 15th! With new material and new puzzles. …

As designers, our imaginations are the most powerful tools in our toolkit. They help us bring static mocks to life by thinking about how a user might interact with our ideas. Imagination can also hold us back sometimes, as it can be very challenging to communicate these interactions to others. It can also only get you so far when working with data because data visualizations can surprise us. It’s generally …

One of the mysteries about pop is its repeatability. The way that repetition of a song doesn't dim its power, or only at extreme degrees of repetition (absolute blanket radio coverage causing you to get temporarily get sick of a song). A great song is that seemingly contradictory thing: the repeatable surprise. The classic pop single as a radio drama that never wears out.This degree of repeatability is not unheard …

There are plenty of ways to use LLMs ineffectively. For best results, lean into your own intelligence, experience, and creativity. Delegate the boring and routine stuff to closely supervised assistants whose work you can easily check. Mix Human Expertise With LLM Assistance for Easier Coding Part of the LLM series at The New Stack.

I’m not technically a boardgame designer, but I will be at the Hythe Community Games Day on Saturday 9 November taking place inside St. Leonard’s Church in Kent. I’ll mainly be hanging out by the Frostgrave table run by some friends. I expect it to … Continue reading →

About last weekend …