Recently updated blogs

With it being a fowlish day outside, so what better than another dip into the negative folder from 3 December 1990. Here we are during a sound check and rehearsal of the Jan Garbarek Quartet at the much missed Town & Country Club in Kentish Town. I remember Jan Garbarek giving me the evils a couple of times, my Nikon FE MD12 motordrive making quite a clatter, something these things …

For those who don’t know, Kirkus is one of the major publishing trade magazines, and a starred review means that they are holding out your book as one of special note. And guess what? Kirkus gave When the Moon Hits Your Eye a starred review! (You may have already surmised this from the headline, mind you.) I am delighted, of course. Moon is a little different from most of my …

I was going to use the word “hoarder,” but it felt too serious for a lighthearted SQ. I decided to rephrase. As I discovered, various characteristics are attributed to this small furry creature and meanings of that comparison range widely (including quite cheesy pickup lines). I’m using it in a fun and lighthearted way to […]

Our review of The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Medieval Near East, by Nicholas Morton, first published in October 2022. The story of the Middle East in the thirteenth century - buffeted by the storm clouds of war unleashed by the Mongol Empire. Mighty empires were uprooted while the seeds of others were blown into new soil.An excellent book, giving you a wide range of perspectives - …

Last week William Woodruff wrote an excellent blog post about the implementation of PEP 740 on PyPI: digital attestations for Python package releases. Apparently the release of this feature was controversial because of decisions like using GitHub as the identity provider and using OIDC rather than PGP signatures. The specifics are interesting in the context of security engineering, but I wanted to highlight a major similarity between efforts to improve …

ROD MODELL - MUSIC FOR BUS STATIONS Anyone who ever travels by public transport knows the feeling you get when you just miss the bus or train and have to wait for the next one. And how it raises your blood pressure, not just from running trying to catch the one that just left, but also from irritation. With this release, you can comfortably retreat into the audio bubble that …

Recently, in social media posts, Dr. Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute discussed the intriguing caves on the side of the giant martian volcano called Arsia Mons as interesting places for future exploration and even human residences. As it happens, my very first published science-fiction story, “The Cave in Arsia Mons,” in a 2015 anthology was about one of those caves and a remarkable discovery that is made in it. …

Eight weeks at number one from 24th July 1982When we bumped into Yazoo’s last single “Only You”, there was a sense the new duo were just settling into their working relationship. For whatever its strengths and commerciality, “Only You” was a track Vince Clarke had lying around before Yazoo came into being, and had initially considered hawking around to other groups. At the point of writing it, his working relationship …

{Herewith our Fifth Anniversary episode of this weekly series. Please enjoy responsibly…}Through the thick falling snow Addison trudged, not without difficulty, so deep was the fallen snow on the sidewalk. It was a shame he was not wearing stout knee-high Wellington boots such as his mother had outfitted him with as a child, no, alas, all he wore were the same old brogans he had acquired when he first went …

James Walvin’s book A World Transformed provides a wide overview of the transatlantic slave trade and of the nations that benefited from it. The scope of this book is massive Read more The post Derek G. Handley on James Walvin’s *A World Transformed: Slavery in the Americas and Origins of Global Power* first appeared on Society for US Intellectual History.

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These weekends creep up on you, hm? Besides a whole lot of snow and a surprising amount of jet lag there’s not much to talk about. I didn’t even get to consume a lot of media because I slept so much – the moment it gets dark out, I’m sleepy and oh boy, does that work well with winter. At least my Apple Health app keeps telling me I slept …

Fresh takes on classic tracks from Bauhaus, Kate Bush, Nine Inch Nails, and more. The post Run for cover: Synthpop cover songs of 2024 appeared first on Synthpop Fanatic.

New data suggests that one third of the farm estates affected by the Budget changes aren’t owned by farmers – they’re held by investors for tax planning purposes. This suggests the Budget proposal doesn’t go far enough to stop avoidance, but goes too far in how it applies to actual farms. There’s a better approach […] Source

As mentioned, I spent a couple of nights in beautiful Malvern – sadly I felt pretty ropey with a cold, but it didn’t stop me popping into the excellent Malvern Bookshop, and Amnesty secondhand bookshop and the Malvern Book Collective. For a small town, it is well-served with bookshops! On my way home, I stopped for chips in Tewkesbury and a pop-in to Cornell Books, which has a very well-selected …