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For over 20 years, Nancy Wilson was a mainstay of the Capitol Records label. Deftly blending jazz, pop, soul, and rhythm and blues, the late chanteuse's distinctive tone anchored collaborations with the illustrious likes of Billy May, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, Thom Bell, Eugene McDaniels, and numerous others. A sprawling […]

Western Film Book Library – Part 9 It’s time for another survey of books on Western movies! This month’s column is prompted in large part by the publication of an important new book, The Cavalry Trilogy: John Ford, John Wayne, and … Continue reading →

More than a decade ago, I wrote about how one game I’d love to see remade was overhead driving title Tranz Am, which required you to survive a barren wasteland. And while it might look a lot more hectic, I’m definitely intrigued by the top-down survival car combat game Driveloop due in 2025 for the […] Top-Down Survival Car Combat Game Driveloop Due In 2025 OnlineRaceDriver - Sim Racing News, …

Last week, Jaguar announced a major rebranding. I think it’s stupid, and not just because I don’t like it. (I don’t, but I’m neither a branding expert nor the target audience.) Instead, it’s stupid because of how it discards the brand’s past. It’s a common error: faced with a suboptimal system (e.g., declining car sales,) its stewards call for scrapping it altogether and starting anew. You see the tendency everywhere: …

Really digging Tom Bihn’s holiday product release aesthetic — dripping in that 1970s/1980s magazine ad style. Hoping they have some kind of digital circular they release onsite to showcase this work (and products, of course). Speaking of which, if you don’t already know — they make excellent bags.

Shawn Reynaldo's latest newsletter starts by asking what are the defining sounds of the first half of 2020s and then talks about how the current scene is dominated by revivalism, before reaching its reall subject (wait for it):Yet even as dancefloors have warmed to a wider range of tempos and drum patterns, they’ve also remained stubbornly in thrall to the past. Recycling has always been big in dance music, and …

While I’m still perplexed by the ever-present penguin in the new series of videos from Geoffrey O’Connor, I’m totally thrilled by his pop penmanship, as he’s written another swooning pop track I adore. Casually shimmying into the verses, he works the track like a singer controlling his audience; you can almost feel him moving across the stage as he locks

There is a crisis in technical education. The golden road to a career has always been through a college education. However, this “golden road” has developed deep cracks and is badly in need of maintenance. Postsecondary education is rapidly becoming unaffordable, even at public colleges and universities. Tuition has risen at a rate 50% greater than inflation. But there’s a deeper issue. Beyond the out-of-control cost, there is evidence that …

Okay, I lied. I will tell you about some deals—all software—that are afoot that might interest photographers. Unlike the other sites, though, none of this is via affiliate links or any kickback scheme (bold indicates the company has one or more products that are in my recommended software list): Adobe Creative Cloud (full suite) — It's a first year savings only, but at US$29.98/month represents a good value if you …

A fantastic Mail Call Tuesday today! I got my copies of Thirteen Parsecs.I am very pleased with how these turned out. The leathers look great and great with NIGHT SHIFT and Wasted Lands.I even grabbed a new dice bag!Can't wait to share more of this with you all.

One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the same coin — the currency of life that is attention — he was suddenly wonder-smitten by the exquisite elegance …

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, baffling objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned. “For every five people who read this book“, wrote one reviewer, “four will go insane”. Joshua Blu Buhs recounts Fort’s early life, unfinished manuscripts (“X”, “Y”), and the philosophical monism that informed his research.

Buy the book! Sheidlower, Jesse. The F-Word, 4th edition. Oxford University Press, 2024. 449 pages. US$22.99. Back when I was a teen, c. 1980, some friends and I were cruising the streets of Seaside Heights, New Jersey on an off-season night. With us was a friend-of-a-friend, someone I did not know. He got into a verbal altercation with some other teens we had met on the street, and afterward as …

I recently had the pleasure of participating in Digital Promise‘s inaugural AI Education Exchange “Ask Me Anything” series, hosted by Kelly McNeil. This was my first LinkedIn AMA and was great fun, in large part due to the team that helped set it up and the broader community that raised a wide array of critical […]

Ownership and control of social media platforms is a first-order concern for both domestic politics and international conflict. The most important battleground in the Russia-Ukraine war is elections in NATO member states. And there, Russia is clearly winning. Trump, obviously, but yesterday saw the stunning success of formerly fringe right-wing candidate C?lin Georgescu. In an unimaginably large polling error, CG won 22% of the first-round vote (and thus made it …