Recently updated blogs

Stonestruck by Helen Cresswell, 1995. It’s WWII and Jessica knows that she will be evacuated from London soon, along with other children from her school. She doesn’t want to leave London and her mother, even though the bombings have gotten increasingly worse and frightening. Her father has already gone away to the front, and she has no idea if he will ever return. Then, one night, the unthinkable happens: their …

Back in April I (finally) started painting up my old metal Ungor models from my Beastmen/Beasts of Chaos army. I got three of them done and planned to keep working my way through in the usual manner, finishing a few and posting them and then finishing a few more and posting those – using the motivation of the feedback from you guys to help keep me on task. As it …

Four books that give an insiders look into how Apple designs its products.

India, 1930. Sarojini Naidu is marching towards a British-controlled saltwork; behind her is a long column of protestors all dressed in white. The great campaigner for India’s Independence, Gandhi, is now in jail. In his place, he’s chosen Naidu to lead this movement against the hard and fearsome British Empire. Naidu and her marchers want change, and they want to achieve it peacefully. India’s fate, they believe, depends on a …

International law, governed by sovereign nations through ratification of conventions, ensures universal core rights for citizens. While general human rights frameworks like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) address equality and non-discrimination, specialised conventions emerge to address specific needs. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) exemplifies this, arising …

Kickers in American football have discovered the benefits of physical training – and are now making field goals almost from the halfway line. CC-licensed photo by Ed Schipul on Flickr. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time. …

First, a couple of things: One, I finally got a Threads account open under my original personal Instagram account name, mikesterjr. For various reasons I had opened one up under a different name, but ignore that one if you know about it…”mikesterjr” is where you’ll find me there. (Alas, “mikester” and “mikesterling” were taken by folks surely unworthy of my good name.) Anyway, not that I need another social media …

Pundits can be a pain in the fundament. I am a big fan of the BBC podcast Sideways which allows Matthew Syed to talk about people who march to a different drummer; who look at the world that standard media and Jan Modal might consider a bit out there. If we all think alike, it may be cosy and non-confrontational but it might also be bzzzt wrong. The podcast is …

As mentioned previously, this year I switched to hosting eardogger.com in what's either a highly unconventional environment or an unusually conventional environment, depending on your perspective. This has mostly gone completely fine! However, I did have one incident several weeks ago, and it was a funny one. I was out reading webcomics on my phone, and got creepy 500 errors on Eardogger; when I got home, the logs showed a …

We’re almost at launch day for the #1970 Club which begins on Monday 14th October! If you’re new to these, the Club Reading Weeks are low-pressure events, co-hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and myself. Basically we choose a year between 1920 and 1980 (because that’s a period we enjoy!) and encourage everyone to read, share, review and comment on any book from the year in question; you …

Photographer: John ChumackSummary Author: John Chumack Shown above is a lunar halo and an aurora as observed from the Chena River Recreational Area on March 15, 2024. I snapped this photo just after as a snow squall moved past. Though only about 1 cm of snow fell, the air was full of ice crystals, just right for refracting moonlight when the Moon emerged from the clouds. The air temperature was …

This was originally posted to the PauseTalk website. PauseTalk Vol. 92 took place on Thursday, October 10 at Bananafish New HQ, and we had another great mix of participants which made for a fun couple of hours of discussion, from the ups and downs of working on projects for western brands in China, to the art scene in Shanghai (and China in general), with other fun diversions in between – …

One of the complaints I’ve heard about the Apple Vision Pro is that there isn’t enough content made for the device. Apple has been quietly working on it and today debuts the first scripted film captured in Apple Immersive Video. From Apple News: Submerged: This immersive fiction thriller, available to Apple Vision Pro users around the world for free, invites viewers onto a WWII-era submarine and follows its crew as …

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 …