Recently updated blogs

Garden centres and DIY stores used to be relatively straightforward affairs with demarcation between the rough-edged trade-only propositions and the softer consumer-focused retailers. They also operated predominantly from physical stores and maybe had a paper-based catalogue on the side but it was the same product assortment. Over the years things have become increasingly blurred between these two camps and almost all the players in the market have converged to target …

I turned my talks at OSME and JCGCG3 this summer into a paper: “Computational Complexities of Folding”, arXiv:2410.07666. It includes the following results: Flat-foldability of crease patterns can be tested in time polynomial in the pattern size, exponential in the treewidth of a certain arrangement graph, and factorial in the ply of the folded pattern. The exponential dependence on treewidth is necessary under the strong exponential time hypothesis. This is …

• 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 …

One of the Seven Wonders of Ashizuri: the Daishi Sea Turtle at Temple 38 near the Pure Land. Finding a place to stay and avoiding despair dominated my thinking these last few weeks. During this time I was distracted … 🐞 Read more about it ➞ ➞ ➞

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 …

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 …