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With this work by Alexis Levitin, we continue to highlight original fiction and poetry from writers who either published their first book of poetry or fiction at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish one. Writers interested in submitting work should see our guidelines. It was decades before he ran into her again. By then, he was bald and twenty pounds overweight. He was dining alone in the …

Hello again! Here’s some recent writing of mine that you may have missed: Just Add “Just”: The Four-Letter Word That’s All Over Supermarket Shelves and Advertising Copy (Medium gift link) Skippin’ Like a Dipshit: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz brings a “folksy” profanity into the spotlight (Strong Language blog) Mavis Beacon: How the Betty Crocker of software got her name (Substack) Some notable words of the week: Felon Goon Croissant Reviews …

There are so many translations that I’ll start with a quick overall impression of each, then get into specifics. This is all based only on chapter 10 (I could read that 18 times, but not the whole novel). Overall impressions of each translationHow Bazarov and Pavel Kirsanov talkDialogue as theaterOther voicesThe metasociolinguistic eftim passage1860s key wordsThe painting everyone agrees is badMicro choices that reveal their/affect our understanding of the charactersA …

British film critic David Thomson interviews Greil Marcus on the occasion of his recent book, Why I Write. Courtesy of Yale University Press.

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As part of wrapping up the work I’m doing toward a PhD, I realized the other day that I’d never actually compiled anything like a comprehensive bibliography, and that it’s well past time I fixed that. Here, then, is a reasonably complete roundup of things I’ve published in all the years since I was SPIN‘s worst and most teenaged staff writer, back at the tail end of the foul Eighties. …

In today’s attention economy, authors and publishers are competing not only with each other, but also with the many distractions of life 一 from streaming platforms to social feeds. Book covers have long played a vital role in driving sales by appealing to the book’s target audience. Yet now more than ever, they’re an author and publisher’s best chance to compel people to stop what they’re doing and find out …

Following on from my previous article I added GPS1 (well, GNSS) to my tiny drone – the Meteor 75 Pro. I wanted to add GPS so I could make use of GPS rescue in betaflight as well as see the altitude, speed and distance in the OSD.

In my previous role, we frequently employed ‘living off the land’ strategies, rarely using C2 infrastructure and instead relying on insider threat credentials or access to systems via legitimate means. Consequently, I have developed strong skills in manually searching for data and hunting based on keywords. Using built-in tools, manually searching network shares and SharePoint, and finding practical ways to manipulate legitimate data.The LOLBAS/GTFOBINS projects have been written about tonnes …

Film If you've been wondering why wind has been whistling through this old place lately it's because all of the excitement has been happening on BlueSky where I've been live skeeting (jesus) a read through of Empire Magazine. All of it. You can see the story so far here. Part of the process has included retrospectively catching up on people or places mentioned in articles and while I'd usually do …

A few months ago, a veteran upland bird-hunter on Facebook asked people to list their favorite pocket knives. I have owned a few since I started carrying one at age 11 or whenever. Most popular brands have ridden in my jeans: Schrade, Case, Old Timer, Gerber, Buck, and so on.But then one day I needed a knife -- apparently I had donated my last one to Amtrak -- and I …

I put this East Indian rosewood/European spruce guitar to one side as I proceeded with my usual process of wet sanding and buffing four other guitar bodies, the motivation being that I wanted to compare wet sanding with the dry sanding alternative.There was an unavoidable delay as I waited for delivery of the Eagle Abrasives' Super Assilex and Super Buflex papers from Stewart MacDonald in the U.S., but as this …

(⏱️ ~8 min read) Once again I got swamped with work so I missed last month's Signal Boost / Links post, so here's a two-fer, for all the stuff I recommend that I found last & this month. Previous months' Signal Boosts: July/Aug 2024, June 2024, May 2024 This month's Signal Boosts: 🐦 Trans furry hyperpop conlang musical mockumentary ↪ 👋 DynamicLand is back, bay-beeeee ↪ 🍞 "I put a …

Still chipping away at this quilt I started on a whim in the spring.

Bronx Zoo, New York, NY, 2024