Recently updated blogs

Barnett v. Raoul, S. D. Ill. The beginning is unusual, and the end is wonderful: "Most importantly, considering all of the evidence presented, the Court holds that the provisions of PICA criminalizing the knowing possession of specific semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, magazines, and attachments are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, the Plaintiffs' request for a permanent …

When you’ve flown 52 different aircraft types (and counting), you often get asked what your favourite is. So, it was a welcome change when I was asked to choose the ten worst aircraft. No holds barred, the more brutal, the better, was the brief; but, despite my best efforts, I can only think of seven […]

Smithsonian magazine offers a summary of the topic: “Ornamental Hermits Were 18th-Century England’s Must-Have Garden Accessory.” Includes many illustrations and a short video of Gordon Campbell’s comments. URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ornamental-hermits-were-18th-century-englands-must-have-garden-accessory-180982469/

"November 1968" from Dennis the Menace Giant #51 [Dennis the Menace Christmas Special] (Hallden/Fawcett, Winter 1967), creators unidentified and unknown Dennis, you jive turkey!

Our design trends are about to get a facelift. Grid Layout is coming in the next release of modern browsers. It's important to get a grip on its utility. Let's take a common trend in editorial and marketing design - the "cover page" banner area.

The new book, edited by Réjane Dreifuss / Simon Hagemann / Izabella Pluta (eds.) Live Performance and Video Games Inspirations, Appropriations and Mutual Transfers 2024. Narrative strategies, immersion, interaction, participation, identification, multimodality, characters and the connection between physical and fictional or virtual worlds: the fields of inquiry into the complex relationship between live performance and video games are numerous and diverse. For the first time, this collection brings together international …

Sometimes, when we’re just hanging out having fun, I’ll tell Kim, “I need you to add something to my urn.” Like ‘he sure could make a sub!’ or ‘he was a friggin’ genius!’ Sure. I care about my legacy especially at my age. Nope. Ain’t telling. I never suggested she add ‘damn! he was really, really old!’ to my urn. 😎 My upbringing was full of shouting and sometimes violent …

I recently guested on The Incomparable to talk about one of my favorite science fiction movies, "Pitch Black" (2000).Host Antony Johnston with Erika Ensign, Tony Sindelar, and Todd Vaziri. Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Keith David, and a lack of bozos… It can only be 2000’s “Pitch Black,” one of the finer entries in the always-popular “Alien” homage movie genre. We enthuse about elevated filmmaking, great decisions, and low-budget effects.Listen: https://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/741/

New DNA studies have been done the remains of residents of Pompeii who were killed in the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 Common Era (CE). The findings challenge previous interpretations about the identities of many of the victims. The Washington Post reports that “Plaster casts of Pompeii’s victims preserve moments of human connection as the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city in ash. There’s a …

By Tess Little. This is an extract from Writing the Murder (Dead Ink Books, 2024) edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst: IT BLEEDS You are invited to open a door. Behind this door, you are told, you will find a room, and within this room you will find a question. Everything you need to answer this question sits within this room. You push open the door. Behind it …

I spent past three weeks working on refactoring and fixing legacy code (the oldest of which was from 2013) that handled positioning Plasma desktop icons, and how this data was saved and loaded. Here's the merge request if you're curious: plasma-desktop: Refactor icon positioner saving and loading The existing code worked sometimes, but there were some oddities like race conditions (icon positioning happens in weird order) and backend code mixed …

We are visiting our family in San Francisco to celebrate our youngest granddaughter’s 5th birthday. Yesterday when she came home from school she recited the morning verse that the children say each day at her kindergarten. (It’s a Waldorf school.) This is our house, so good and so strong. With windows, a bright yellow door and the floor made out of wood. Come in my neighbors, and come in my …

A few weeks back, I was invited to be a critical friend on a futures project by Paul Graham Raven & Keri Facer. The artefact in the centre, the central vehicle to invite people into this world, was a newspaper. Newspapers are, of course, a brilliant container for giving people just enough context of a complex other world. They are (still) a familiar form of media for people who understand …

Trump’s win is a return to the default state of centralised, hierarchical societies – like ours. That’s the problem. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 7th November 2024 We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics. Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have …

Brum Rush PANDEMONIUM, if press reports can be believed, broke out in the family room at the 1990 Great British Beer Festival. A rabbit leapt from a magician's hat; 20 children, plus organiser Pat Waters, went in increasingly hot pursuit around the family room. It was “one very lively bunny,” Pat later told reporters, no doubt with a rueful shake of the head.