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I blather about an interview with Kurt Vonnegut where he suggests going out to buy a single envelope is a fine use of time. I agree whole-heartedly!Currently Listening: George Michael “Something to Save”Reply via email

November 25, 2024 Tip of the Week How to Do a Relentless Three-Point Attack. Teams, Coaching, and Foot I’m rushing to get this blog out since I’m coaching at the MDTTC Teams Camp over the next three days, getting our players ready for the North American Teams, Fri-Sun, Nov. 29 – Dec. 1. There are currently 910 players and 226 teams – here’s the listing. There are 14 MDTTC junior …

Beyond US military and economic support for Israel as its imperial outpost in the region, an estimated 160,000 Americans live in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are some of the most active participants in the ongoing campaign of terror against the indigenous Palestinian population. Israeli settler terrorism as a movement also draws inspiration from two Americans infamous as the godfathers of the campaign of …

Vincent Price shows us how to cook trout in a dishwasher. Also cucumbers, pears, zucchini, and some kind of sauce: Not a joke, as our right-now-current and soon-to-be-ex-president would say. Apparently, you can cook trout in a dishwasher. Who’da thought? Something about the machine’s steaming capacity, I gather. Just…don’t use the rinse cycle. Seriously. When it comes to cooking, I’m a Thank-God-for-the-defrost-button-on-the-microwave type. Cooking was a skill I could never …

The pyramid of the 1975 Seward time capsule in Nebraska, billed as the world’s largest, photographed in 2021 and scheduled to be opened in 2025 (Library of Congress) Time capsules are fascinating to me. They can be incredibly boring, as people often stuff them with rather mundane items like coins, American flags, and bibles. But every once in a while they can be thrilling, with unique items just waiting to …

Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver a JSON based firehose of atproto data. Here’s an overview of the simple project I built with that data. I was inspired by a post from Simon Willison where he showed off a tool for viewing raw Jetstream content. I was surprised to learn that Jetstream is offered as a WebSocket that doesn’t …

by Dennis Crouch The USPTO's position within the Department of Commerce means that Commerce Secretary nominees warrant careful attention from the patent community. President-elect Trump's nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, brings particularly relevant experience to the role, shaped by extensive involvement with the U.S. patent system both as a prolific inventor and as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that has operated on multiple sides of patent disputes. …

Slow living has been my strawberry chia seed jam since autistic burnout hit me so hard I couldn’t deal with any sensory input this time around 2021. Since losing what felt like the best-fitting job ever due to an asthma attack, I’ve been keeping to myself. I kept myself busy all last week because I didn’t want to feel it yet. I don’t know if other people are able to …

When Americans think of a highway rest stop, if they were feeling generous they imagine a gorgeous park, filled with children playing and couples strolling. Maybe a second-rate Starbucks and ice cream shop. Possibly even a nice view of the water. But nothing like this. This puts them all to shame.

Well, here we are again. I’ve returned to the cool damp climes of Britain, and apologise for the long break in entries, time slips away quickly when on holiday. Now where were we . . . Ah yes, Woodstock. After Woodstock, I travelled east to Massachusetts to visit new acquaintances. We drove around central Massachusetts searching for elusive autumn colour one day. The colour wasn’t spectacular this year, but even …

Hi CA, In the last year two people have gone no contact with me (she/her). One is a former colleague (she/her) who has burned many bridges in our professional community. She’s been basically blackballed in our specialty area and had to take a position doing similar but much less exciting work after she was fired from her last job. Around the same time she stopped talking to me because she …

Writing in Practicing New Worlds, Andrea Ritchie documents a pattern of crisis response that, far from interrupting the crisis, merely serves to continue it. I will quote at length here: Yet, as conditions worsen and urgency increases, as millions are increasingly mired in economic and climate crises while billionaires bank on our suffering, as the Right rises around the globe and comes for our throats with a clear intention to …

Feeling a bit blocked on the writing front to be honest. Which isn't great when a book chapter about the crisis of the Conservatives is due this Saturday. Ho hum. Past experience suggests that when I moan about "not feeling it" or having "nothing to say", it's enough to uncork the barrel and watch the torrents of words spill forth. Here's to hoping this is one of those occasions. On …

A book of conspiracy theories about the Titanic; a manifesto for reforming society by appointing a ‘War Minstrel of Supernatural character’ to lead men into battle; a volume of erotic poetry dealing with ‘aspects of love usually passed over’. These were just some of the manuscripts turned down by the...