Recently updated blogs

• Island Line services resume with completion of vital maintenance programme (Rail UK) • All change on the Overground (The Newsletter of Not Quite Everything) • The Purplewashing Paradox: Big Talk, Little Walk (The Accessible Link) • New York suburb plans to reconnect a Black neighborhood split by a 1950s interstate (Smart Cities Dive) • Exploring the RER E’s westbound extension (Fabric of Paris) • The Shinkansen’s legendary operation & …

[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 …

Creator David Mirailles and French studio Bobby Prod tell us about how they're developing this online hit for a TV audience.

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 …

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 …

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 …