Recently updated blogs

[comics] Harvey Kurtzman: Seriously Funny … Drew Friedman fondly reminisces about Harvey Kurtzman. ‘Harvey would slowly unwind, sip beer, and reminisce about Bill Gaines and his days at EC, his continuing dislike of Al Feldstein, Will Elder’s wild practical jokes, his admiration for R. Crumb, his theories about the coke bottle design, current politics (at the time he admired Ronald Reagan) and his assistants at HELP!, Terry Gilliam and Gloria …

Summary from the back of the Melville House edition:One of the biggest bestsellers of all time, and one of the first and most influential spy novels of the twentieth century, this delightful romp is now back in print after fifty years.Taking place after the Russian Revolution shook Europe to its core, it tells the story of Lady Diana Wynham, who relishes trampling on the sensibilities of British Society, and her …

With programs that also include the New York premiere of MIKE by Dana Michel, concert performances by Kite and Charles Curtis, talks with Constantina Zavitsanos, Raven Chacon, and SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, and the start of the year-long Ephemeral Organ series—which explores choreography and bodily motion as technologies for transmitting memory, history, and Black lived experience—the 16th fall season continues EMPAC’s commitment to artists who are making challenging new work, and …

I stumbled across Sydenham Garden (Wynell Road SE23) last month for the first time, a community well being space with various mental health, dementia and other projects .The day I went it was participating in the Sydenham Artists Trail, including displaying some of the banners made at the garden for their participation in the 2024 Pride parade.I liked this banner mapping Lewisham Urban Oasis green spaces:

When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at the “sustained two-shot,” which captures a stretch of dialogue between two characters without the interference of a cut. Though it’s become something of a rarity under today’s shoot-everything-and-figure-it-out-in-editing ethos, it was used often in classic Hollywood pictures. Take, for example, the work …

Over the years, Jonas Staal has created various works that enable the political empowerment of the individual through collective action. In Propaganda Station, he builds an information and meeting structure in the form of an inverted panopticon. There are ’cells’ in which various contemporary propaganda is presented (ultranationalist propaganda, financialisation propaganda, climate propaganda, etc.), that can be surveyed in a ‘reversed balance of power’, while at the centre there is …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 – …