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In past seasons, I've written holiday gift guides focused on what you might buy other people. These are always tricky; you should usually not buy other people clothes, since you probably don't know what fits them or their style as well as they do. I also listed out some good black friday sales, generally, but you might want more specific guidance. But Jake Woolf inspired me. He showed me the …

Thanks to the excellent Why Don’t YouTube, over on Bluesky, I was made aware of another short-lived Noel Edmonds curio. Noel Edmonds' first new series after The Late Late Breakfast Show's enforced cancellation was Whatever Next?, as seen today in 1987, a single series light oddity in which two pairs are challenged to predict the outcomes of street dares, queries and stunts.— Why Don't YouTube? (@whydontyoutube.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T19:00:02.086Z Coming so soon …

(⏱️ ~10 min read) Another month, another collection of shiny objects (stuff I found in the the past month that were valuable/inspiring). See also, previous Signal Boosts for Oct/Sep, Aug/July, June, May 🩸 Kurzgesagt gets to the bottom of a science myth ↪ 😭 Paper: AI poems are now "more human than human" ↪ 🇺🇸 U.S. Election-related analysis ↪ 👄 The Substance ↪ 🩸 Kurzgesagt gets to the bottom of …

I’ve played 186 games of Forest Shuffle this year. I like it a lot. Here are some new games I’ve played during the past few months. Fishing. Friedemann Friese’s latest curious trick-taking game is a lot of fun. This is an evolving game with a lovely ebb and flow to it. The game starts simple. You play a normal game of trick-taking and score a point for every card you …

I’m trying not to borrow grief from the future, as the saying advises, but the terms are so damn attractive.

The American worker divide: Those who sit, and those who stand.

The road to Dirē Dawa is a long one: an eight-hour drive from Addis Ababa, or so we are told. We left Addis Ababa at dawn, our bus rattling through empty streets shadowed by new-build office blocks. As with almost everywhere currently in Ethiopia, the pavements were piled with concrete rubble, the result of Prime … Continue reading "The Road to Dirē Dawa"

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My grandma died in August. She was 98 ½. 98 ½! A phenomenal run. She outlived Castro, but not Jimmy Carter. She was my last grandparent. My mom’s parents died when I was a kid, and my dad’s dad died over a decade ago. That left grandma, but she had a lot left in her. At one point I hadn’t been home for Christmas for a few years due to …

The third book in Edward Kellett’s series, we’ve now reached 1993 and 1994 – a period of change for The Bill as a third weekly episode was added to the schedule. As with the previous volumes, each of the two sections (dedicated to 1993 and 1994) begin by highlighting a number of key episodes (which are ideal picks for anyone keen to sample the programme, but who might balk at …

I’ll be in London this December to launch the new book, Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies, and to discuss some of my other work. There will be multiple in-person events in London. If you’re in the UK and you’d like to attend, here are the dates and, where applicable, sign-up instructions: Everyday Analysis Event on the … Continue reading December London Tour Dates →

The sashiko pattern yabane 矢羽根 or 矢羽 represents arrow feathers, which is also the literal translation of yabane.矢 ya means “arrow” and 羽 or 羽根 hane means “feather” or “wing.” When put together, the は ha sound becomes soft and turns into ば ba. Thus it is pronounced yabane, not yahane.The yabane sashiko pattern is one of the most popular traditional patterns. Probably not only because of its good looks, …

It’s catchy. And many people feel that’s what they do. And you’ll be doing it a bit I don’t doubt. If you’ve talked to a service designer over the last few years (or been one) you’ve probably heard some variation on that theme. That the job is mostly convincing other people to let them do their job. It’s a good ear worm but it’s a bad brain worm. Telling people …