Recently updated blogs

A sample of some of the photographs from the Natick Soldier Systems Center Photographic Collection. Source: US Army / Digital Commons Natick Soldier Systems Center Photographic CollectionThis story has been updated.The US armed forces is made up of 1.3 million people — soldiers, pilots, plumbers, lawyers, logistics specialists, doctors and even dog handlers. And those active duty forces need uniforms, cold weather gear, backpacks, shelf-stable rations and all kinds of …

Near the end of December 2020, I saw Jupiter and Saturn very close in the sky just after sunset. I didn’t know this was called a great conjunction. The next one will happen in November 2040. And it will happen in a very different part of the sky: close to 120° away. This is how it always works. People have known this for millennia. They just forgot to teach me …

A hole isn’t really nothing, but rather shows you nothing. This is an important distinction. You see it by the shadow it casts. Before even their shadows were seen, black holes were imagined, were what the researcher David Burrows has called ‘a discovery of the mind’[1]. In 1783, a country parson and amateur scientist named John Michell conducted a thought experiment, a hypothetical method of determining the mass of a …

Letterform Archive wraps up a banner year in publishing. Here’s the latest on our final releases of 2024 — plus a limited-time deal for members. At Letterform Archive Books, the team has the honor and the privilege of crafting books that tell the story of our collection. This year, we have been delighted to deliver up a dozen beautiful titles — ranging from an entertaining and visually splendid autobiography by …

APHA and Cefas staff visiting the team at the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Sierra Leone Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a critical global issue that poses a significant threat to public and animal health, the environment, and the global economy. The UK is committed to addressing AMR through its National Action Plan and by supporting global partners. The adverse effects of AMR are expected to be most severe in Low- and …

YES! THIS!!! A ban on tracking-based personalised advertising will provide an incentive to reinforce sustainable alternative models and, in fact, will be a condition for making them viable. The advertising industry already has sustainable, proven concepts for effective online advertising that do not require targeted tracking and personalisation (e.g. contextual advertising). adactio.com/links/21569

[web] Today I learned that Europeans spend 575 million hours clicking cookie banners every year … ‘On average, a user visits about 100 websites per month, totaling 1,200 websites per year. With about 85% of these websites displaying a cookie banner, a user will encounter about 1,020 cookie banners every year. Assuming it takes an average of 5 seconds per interaction with a cookie banner, this amounts to 5,100 seconds …

Jasmine rice is our go-to white rice for serving with Chinese dishes and making fried rice. In this post, we’ll answer all your questions about rice measuring, the “finger trick” every Asian kid knows, and the rice cooker we all own. And of course, we’ll teach you how to cook jasmine rice perfectly every time, ... View Post

I’m a fan of the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Palettes but for the past few years, I wasn’t interested in what they released. This year though, when they launched the limited editions, I found myself drawn to two of them — Dragon and Evil Eye. However, I decided to get only one of them so I […]

More UK pirate interviews.This time with Killer, former owner of Y2K Essex. He features in an episode of the now informous BBC mini series 'Tower Block Dreams' in 2003. Elements of this episode were directly parodied in early episodes of the comedy 'People Just do Nothing'. After this period he became better known within pirate radio circles as a prolific rig thief and racketeer, preying on stations throughout the uk. …

Heavy refactoring of models can leave a Django project with “ghost tables”, which were created for a model that was removed without any trace in the migration history. Thankfully, by using some Django internals, you can find such tables. Use the database introspection methods table_names() to list all tables and django_table_names() to list tables associated with models. By casting these to sets, you can subtract the latter from the former …

It wouldn’t be #GermanLitMonth without a bit of Thomas Bernhard, and I’ve had a book in mind for the event for quite some time now. However, where most of my previous Bernhard reads have been of the Austrian writer’s novels, this time around we’re taking a slightly different approach, with a look at some shorter fiction, instead. So, do Mr. Grumpy’s circular tirades hit the spot as sweetly when he …

Frost on windows from a frosty overnight is enjoyed the next day. A frosty one Frosty, too No telling what the next frost will look like!

Hello from sunny Birmingham. The weather has been alternating between rain and grey all weekend. This week in data: Magazines issues thrown into a recycling bin: 37 Heartfelt emails sent: 9 Spent some time steeling myself for a few conversations that I thought would be difficult. No, reader, they all went swimmingly well. I’m genuinely pleasantly surprised. I got here in a van: Despite having multiple train lines from Birmingham …

The hardest weeks to write about are the ones in which it feels like nothing happened. The new management took over at the workspace in Peckham Levels. I decided to stay on, but as they’ve abolished the pay-by-the-day option, I had to choose a dedicated desk or nothing. I chose the dedicated desk as it’s not much more than I was paying for my frequent attendance anyway. The bean-to-cup coffee …