Recently updated blogs

[Extended cut of two pieces for The Wire: a longer online piece (available here) and a shorter piece for the print edition (issue 491/492).]Always, already there: an incubator for Afrodiasporic New MusicHaus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 4-10.11.2024Over the course of seven days at Berlin’s HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt), a programme of concerts, panels, and lectures focusing on Afrodiasporic composition offered one of the richest, broadest spreads of …

Dream. I’m sitting around a table with a bunch of writer friends. I say “You know what my biggest challenge as a writer is?” But then someone else jumps in to say something slightly related and the conversation moves in a different direction and I’m feeling somewhat put out until someone says, Wait, Jordan was going to tell us about his biggest challenge as a writer.” And I said, “The …

There's been a lot of rubbish written in the right wing press about the budget and the changes made to farmers' inheritance liabilities. Taking to their tractors for a demonstration in London on Monday, there were joined by self-confessed tax dodger Jeremy Clarkson and, among other things, drove one of their machines through a police barrier. Needless to say, Just Stop Oil activists have been handed hefty sentences for less. …

As Charlie Brown would say, Good grief!Talk about a growth industry...By mid-December last year, this annual round-up of Guaraldi-themed concerts had grown to an astonishing length, with a whopping 171 entries — several of which cited multiple bookings for the given group — which was a massive jump over 2022. I expected some increase, given that Covid fears had eased ... but I sure wasn't prepared for an explosion of …

Brazilian Alliance for Long-Term Governance Against the background of global calls for financial and climate justice, the G20 remains a pivotal platform for fostering meaningful collaboration and actionable change. With Brazil leading the G20 in 2024, SOIF has been actively shaping a future-oriented agenda through the G20 Intergenerational Hub on Governance and Futures. This initiative is designed as a multilateral space to catalyse networks and pilot innovative approaches for implementing …

We cannot truly know whether we are not at this moment sitting in a madhouse. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books) An astounding percentage of Lichtenberg’s quotables are just as relevant today as they were in 1789 when they were written. What’s more 2024 than this particular one?! 🫠

After reading some posts on Steve Grunwell’s blog, I was admiring his theme and how much I liked it. I have been running the WP22 theme, but his is better. It’s called “Lovecraft” and Steve was kind enough to share the link. So here we have it – what do you think? It’s immediately better to my eye. I also swapped in a new header image from Morro Bay. Not …

Alright! From my last post you are aware that I was able to visit the London Missionary Society archives kept at SOAS in London and it was super cool. The box with the photos is a box of a few different sorts of things, so it also had a chunk of incoming letters about the SS Good News, my favorite missionary steamship. Since I didn’t have a whole lot of …

Even in the largest landscapes, the small scenes bring the world alive. No amount of time would be enough to spend noticing, contemplating and interpreting all the fine details of the Grand Canyon Bright Angel Shale and talus River cobble Brittlebrush My black and white photography is generally opportunistic, but as soon as we saw this bighorn silhouetted on the skyline, I knew it would be a monochrome shot: On …

Small update for gradient.style, the provided CSS for your creation is now custom properties and not classes. Check it out‽

My early morning walks continue, although since these photos were taken about a week ago, it's now pretty dark at 7am. I guess we are rapidly coming towards the end of the autumn season now, as the Winter Solstice (the shortest day) is just over four weeks away. Autumn has been especially charming this year, well, maybe I should say that it's me that's felt charmed more than usual by …

Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next season, and also a “home version” of the game. I’ve written about Jet Lag: The Game before, so you might want to start there if you don’t know what I’m talking about. On the latest episode of The Layover (a Nebula subscriber exclusive podcast), the Jet Lag team discussed the rules for the …

Axios: Apple is selling Apple News ads directly for the first time. Apple has started selling its own advertising inventory for Apple News, two sources familiar with the effort told Axios. It's pitching new ad units that it hopes will maximize revenue for itself and its publishing partners. I've been meaning to write about this for a while now, and since this popped up on Axios, now is a good …

A few months back, I played in SFPursuit, a San Francisco challenge hunt. Uhm, where "challenge hunt" is a phrase I made up just now for "Something like a puzzlehunt, but most of the activities aren't puzzle-y, but they are still challenging." One of the activities involved looking over a physical book that had been created for the hunt. A few bookstores across San Francisco had one copy each of …

‘While it was dark, I climbed up and put remote control cameras in the tree. I’d never have got the shot if I’d been up there. An orangutan always knows you’re there’I was following orangutans in Borneo with my wife, Cheryl Knott, a primatologist who has spent 30 years working in Gunung Palung national park, in the Indonesian part of Borneo. I am a biologist by background, and did my …