Recently updated blogs

The Mechanical Turk was a machine built in 1770, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, that supposedly beat Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin at chess. It toured for 84 years before being destroyed in a fire and, although many suspected it was a scam, it was only revealed to have been a hoax as late as 1834. It seems obvious now, but it was essentially a box with a person …

by Diana Miranda Death and The Cat, directed by Penny Gkritzapi, explores life’s ultimate and inevitable outcome – death – wrapped with absurdist humour and a surprising amount of heart. Robert Emlyn Slater’s debut play gives life (ironically) to Death. What starts as a comedy full of quirky characters slowly reveals itself as a deeper reflection on questions about what infinity means, and how the power of connection may ground …

Satellite images of a horse, pomegranates, and a camel, created from Solar Panel installations in China and Mongolia.Via @[email protected] Horse image was created in association with Huawei, in a project that also includes agrivoltaics (growing crops between and underneath solar panels):In the Kubuqi Desert of Inner Mongolia, the State Power Investment Corporation used Huawei’s smart PV solution to build a 300 MW solar power station. The power station located in …

Even when it’s online, and you can shop from the comfort of your home, Black Friday always feels like a mad dash to find the best days. To simplify the landscape, I round up the best menswear-related promotions every year and post them here, along with a selection of notable picks at each store. These [...] Read More... The post Ten Of The Best Black Friday Sales appeared first on …

Today (2024), generative artificial intelligence allows us to generate infinite solutions, but the problem is that we cannot prove that these solutions are related to a particular real output. We can, correlate them and approximate the solution as a function of a given distance in a latent space, but we cannot prove this as a fact. To me, this is a problem whenever we want to apply this to deterministic …

My notes on the thought-provoking book The Collapse of Complex Societies. Recommended to me by Eli Dourado, whose notes you can find here. This chart sums up the thesis of the book, but it’s mislabeled. It’s the benefits of complexity vs level of complexity, not the marginal product of increasing...

Here’s my regular post of old photos from ten years ago. This time, it’s November 2014, plus a few from October 2014 that I missed last month. Another day, another train disruption. Plenty of unhappy punters at Richmond. For a while, Metro was putting ads on the windows. Not good. This was how a Comeng train looked from the outside. …and here was the view from the inside of a …

The post Happy Thanksgiving appeared first on Mia Rabbit.

This post adds another chapter to my previous series of posts on line signatures in maps. Back in the first part of the series i explained and illustrated how the sophisticated techniques in using line signatures in pre-digital maps have practically largely been replaced by rather primitive line drawing in digital map production. And i showed some methods how you can, in digital rule based map design, work around these …

The Trump administration has made aggressive threats against immigrants in the US. It’s not clear what’s coming, my biggest fear is a violent display of fascism. (Don’t call them camps!) But even if it’s a polite legal process it will be chaotic and disruptive to many neighbors. Back in 2018 I donated reactively to the Trump administration’s cruelty to immigrant families. This time I’m trying to get ahead of it. …

You wouldn’t know it was the very end of November from the verdant hydrangea leaves. History is about to be made. The latest recorded first frost I could find for our area ranges from November 23 in Bellingham, 15 miles north, to November 29 in Everett, 40 miles south of us. Today is November 27, and there is no frost in sight, even through December 6, when the high is …

Book Now Available [limited] & Paperback Launching February 10, 2025. It took over a decade, but perhaps that timing is perfect? There is much concern and plenty of gloom-and-doom about the future. I’m reminded of one my favorite M*A*S*H episodes in which Hawkeye jumps upon on the table, bangs his tray, and leads a chant of “We Want Something Else.” This isn’t just another book about what’s wrong with capitalism; …

One of the most enduringly popular articles on this website (at least in terms of clicks and re-posts) is a very early one, from 2013. It concerns the graphic identities created for Railtrack’s major stations by Citigate Lloyd Northover. These ones… Firstly – have I really been writing this website on and off for that […]

Tirzah Garwood, untitled embroidery (woman watering)It's always gratifying to get some press for an exhibition, but the reviews of Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious have been particularly enjoyable. Writers seem to have enjoyed coming face to face with an artist they haven't really seen before, and to have been affected by Garwood's peculiar magic as I was and as visitors to the gallery seem to be. We're not making claims about …

A few years back a little small-goods store opened down the road. They had pricey hams and smoked meats, fancy cheeses and an array of handmade artisanal stuff in jars. The absolute star of the show for me was the marmalade they made themselves – super chunky bits of peel and a perfect blend of sweetness and sourness. I would frequently just take a teaspoon from the jar, but my …