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Email's been here for years. But the reason Substack wants you to call your creative work by their brand name is because they control your audience and distribution, and they want to own your content and voice, too. You may not think you care about that today, but you will when you see what they want to do with it. I know you think you have control over your subscribers …

3 scenes of the great show Mr. Robot with my trusted mechanical pencil Pentel 205.

Drawing comics is how I learned to let myself be happy. My friend Bridget McElroy was the one who told me what I needed to hear to take the first step toward cartooning. Everyday, I think about the gift of what she said to me and it still keeps me going. Thank you always, B.--After some time offline, I've started sharing updates again, on my blog and Ko-fi page. I'll …

I needed a song with lots of secondary dominants in it for aural skills class, and I realized that Norah Jones’ adult-contemporary smash “Don’t Know Why” has a bunch of them. The song came out in 2002, though it could have been recorded at any time in the 50 years previous. “Don’t Know Why” was written and first recorded by Jesse Harris. (He plays guitar on Norah Jones’ recording too.) …

I wasn’t very concerned with the Dead Internet Theory1, until my daughter mentioned it asking for my views. “The internet is dead. They’re all the same. Perfect grammar. Perfect spacing. No soul.” It’s dead like a carnival when all the people have gone home, and only the machines keep running. The lights flash, and the music plays, but no one is there to see or hear it. Once upon a …

See how Amsterdam’s Weesperzijde transformed from an ordinary street to a cycle street prioritising walking, cycling, and greenery. A side-by-side comparison of the before (2022) and after (2024) shows the city’s commitment to people-friendly urban design. Watch the video and explore the story!

Coming HomeColleen (Addison Timlin) used to be splatter-goth; now she cleans up in modern ash cardigan accented by a silver crucifix. She's come to Asheville to visit her brother (Keith Poulson) who has also arrived home, living in an apartment detached from the main property. The entirety of his head has become disfigured by burns suffered during a tour of duty in the Iraq War and its associated conflicts. Now …

Wool and stone and dancing light They would not have called it a trading hub in the 1770s, when it was built, but the Piece Hall in Halifax was just that: a place where hundreds of textile makers could come from the surrounding countryside to sell pieces* of cloth. Its construction was a huge collaborative effort by the small business people who had to raise the money for the building …

Decadently thrillifying in every possible regard, eagerly awaited movie Wicked: Part One faithfully serves the stage musical’s legion fans while ingeniously expanding its universe with dazzling creativity. Many a stage-to-screen movie musical has been thwarted by unnecessary interference with the book, song list, and design that made the original musical a success. Part of the joy of experiencing Wicked: Part One is realising what a close adaptation it is; every …

I’ve been talking a lot about this game’s features and mechanics, but I haven’t said much yet about the experience of playing it. It’s quite enjoyable! Easily my favorite of the three classic arcade game remakes I’ve played this month. As I once said about another game, the pleasure of a game such as this has a lot to do with the pleasure of just moving around in the environment, …

Though well aware of its existence, and familiar enough with it that I knew of its dynamic cover by Carmine Infantino and Ross Andru, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin, I had never actually read the 1976 Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1, the very first collaboration between the two biggest American comic book publishers* and the first time any of their characters would meet one another in a shared story.I …

May 2024 This was the first day of what was planned to be my last trip to walk the coast of mainland Britain (and turned out to be so), so I was starting the day at home. I took a couple of trains to Gatwick Airport where I was booked an Easyjet flight to Glasgow. This trip was a little over a week long, so I had to take checked …

I realize it represents critical malpractice at this point, but I still haven’t tried Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala’s Seven Wonders Duel. Then again, maybe that’s a good thing, since I’m effectively immune to any questions about how much The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth shakes up the format. Check out Sauron’s sick tower in the Shire. Exactly as J.R.R. Tolkien intended, this war for Middle-earth is all …

Bhaji is a word in several Indian languages–Hindi, Gujarati, and Marathi at least–meaning vegetables or greens. Culinarily, the term describes 2 different vegetable preparations of which I’m aware. The first is a type of fritter made with chopped vegetables, often onions, suspended in a batter of chickpea flour and deep-fried, similar to a pakora. The second is as part of my own personal favorite vegetarian Indian dish, a spicy vegetable …