Recently updated blogs

“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an airplane. An earthbound ape in my airborne cage of metal and glass, I wonder who we would be, in …

Jeff Beer for Fast Company: This week, Apple dropped two new ads for its Apple Intelligence AI-powered assistant tools. On the surface they both seem like goofy, sitcom-style slices of life. In one, the office idiot turns zhuzhing into a perfectly professional email that impresses—and surprises—his boss. In the other, a woman forgets her husband’s birthday, but utilizes Apple’s AI magic to make him a heartwarming video full of memories …

Book Review – November 2024 Is nostalgia a harmless skip down memory lane? Can nostalgia be used like propaganda to mollify, entice, and seduce: encouraging us to turn off our critical thinking, stick our heads in the sand, and revel in a past that actually may have never been, a past gone mad? While conservative politicians have made nostalgia an intrinsic and explicit part of their political platform, the social …

Statista uses side-by-side stacked column charts to show the size of different religious groups in the world: It's hard to know where to look. It's so colorful and even the middle section is filled in whereas the typical such chart would only show guiding lines. What's more, the chart includes gridlines, as well as axis labels. The axis labels compete with the column section labels, the former being cumulative while …

Here's what we looked at this week:LG develops a stretchable display that can follow compound curves.Material science + fear-based marketing: The Armor-Tex is a stab-proof jacket. Nike showed off their 3D-printed Air Max 1000s.Industrial Design student work: Maoxin Yuan's therapeutic eyewear.Transportation designer Alan Derosier got the chance to turn his Xmas card concept sketch into a real electric motorcycle, the Rocket One.Accessories for your sneakers, courtesy of Adidas and AvAvAv.Industrial …

2021 verabschiedete das ungarische Parlament ein Gesetz, das – unter dem Vorwand des Kinderschutzes – Darstellungen von Homosexualität und Geschlechtsangleichung in allen für Minderjährige zugänglichen Medien und Materialien verbietet. Das sogenannte Kinderschutzgesetz setzt Pädophilie und Homosexualität auf perfide Weise gleich. Faktisch ermöglicht es den ungarischen Behörden, sämtliche Inhalte einzuschränken, die von der heterosexuellen Norm abweichen. Am Dienstag, dem 19. November 2024, kamen die Europäische Kommission, das Europäische Parlament und 16 …

Here is an overview of the new sources, projects and other news announced in the past month. Sources Birth records 1903-1912 from Enkhuizen, Hoogkarspel, Schellinkhout, Venhuizen, Westwoud, and Wijdenes can now be found at the Westfries Archief. The correspondence of Cristofforo Suriano, the first Venetian diplomat in the Dutch Republic in the early 1600s, is now available online. A card catalog of missing persons in World War II has been …

Some of you may have noticed that I have an account on Bluesky. Fear not, I have no plans to start using it. The only reason why I have it is because I wanted to see how painful it was to connect my domain name after a conversation I had with Rob since I was telling him that it was time to abandon the sinking Twitter ship. And if it …

A remarkable collection of artistic experiments lands at Aberdeen Art Gallery this weekend. The gallery opens its doors to Artist Textiles - Picasso to Warhol, a collection that shows what happens when names like Picasso and Warhol work with clothing and textiles.The exhibition presents over 130 pieces where 40 artists have stepped away from canvas, to work with fabric. These aren’t just drawings printed on material - they show how …

Remote Scottish islands are among our more enduringly popular posts, and this latest one, priced at £125,000, is sure to spark the imagination. Eilean Loch Oscair is northwest of the Island of Lismore within the Firth of Lorne. The almost 10-acre island croft is in one of the least explored locations on the West Coast and is accessible only via helicopter or boat. The island is marketed as an ‘opportunity …

Selection: Soldier In The Rain (H. Mancini) https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fukumura-hiroshi-quintet_soldier-in-the-rain_three-blind-mice_tbm19_1973.mp3 . . . (Note: soft tick in the first half minute of the selection) Track List A1 Morning Flight (S. Mukai) 11:14A2 Imagination, Opus 1 (H. Fukumura)13:02B1 Winter Song (John Surman) 5:20B2 Cousin Mary (John Coltrane) 6:54B3 Soldier In The Rain (H. Mancini) 11:31 Artists Tsutomu Okada, bass; Shinji Mori, drums; Hiroshi Tamura, piano; Hiroshi Fukumura, Shigeharu Mukai (向井滋春), trombone ; Yoshihiko …

by Joe Reid Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, also known as Doppelgänger in England, is a British science fiction film directed by Robert Parrish and produced by marionette/miniature wizards Gerry and Sylvia Anderson (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Supercar, etc.). Dig that 2001 type As a movie, it is both visually appealing and … Continue reading [November 22, 1969] Crash and Burn (the movie Journey to the Far …

Charlotte Bilekoff. Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge. University of California Press, 2024. 267 pages. Food processing is a big issue these days (witness RFK Jr’s pledge to get ultra-processed foods out of school meals) and I was interested to see what food studies scholar Charlotte Biltekoff had to say about it. Her thesis: When people say they want to eat “real food” rather than …

Vanessa Kimbell is a sourdough baker and food activist based in Northamptonshire, UK. Here she talks about her very personal journey into sourdough, which led to her mission to change systems in the food industry. Drawing a connecting thread between transdisciplinary research and the role of microbes in human health, she has developed an education system to foster sustainable food practices through baking bread. Sophie Lovell: At The Common Table, …

This is a community submitted press release.Roll for Distraction has just started their new actual play season, Proxy Error, which will be a campaign of the sci-fi horror system Mothership! Mothership is a narrative-focused horror system about the dangers of capitalism in space, with inspiration from classic stories such as Alien, The Thing, and Event Horizon. The gang is playing as a hastily-assembled party of prisoners under the boot of …