Recently updated blogs

When is it better to reflect than at the year’s twilight? Days shined brighter this time compared to the last one, but I can’t say the same about the sonic wreckage left behind after 12 months and 365 dawn to dusk sessions of intense and not so intense listening. Admittedly, I did not step too much out of my comfort zones, or at least not forcibly, just to elaborate on …

transmutationisms:a friend just tipped me off about Fund a Kitchen in Gaza, a free tool that helps you locate and donate to community kitchens currently serving some of Gaza’s most vulnerable!Fund a Kitchen in Gaza - Humanti Projectthis lets you choose a region (south, central, north) and see which kitchens operate in that area, then donate to as many as you can.as a reminder, community kitchens try to buy and …

It’s often claimed that tax cuts will “pay for themselves”. There’s good reason to believe that some historic tax cuts have done precisely this – what does that tell us about proposals for tax cuts today? And what does history tell us about the potential to increase revenues by raising tax on the highest earners? […] Source

I’ve had this idea on my mind for a while, and finally got around to bashing out a first go at the lyrics the other day, along with a demo. When an idea won’t go away, that’s usually a sign that it is worth pursuing. It’s been ages since I so much as picked up the guitar, as you can probably tell. I’m still vaguely pleased with it, to the …

Report written by Neil Gemmell and Richard Brown As a scything community we scythe enthusiasts/afficionados, some would even say addicts, all convene in a field in Somerset to hold the West Country Scythe Championships at the Green Scythe Fair. This year’s event was the 18th West Country Scythe Championship and the competition was once again great entertainment for the revellers at the fair. The headlines often get reserved for the …

GitHub has updated the page template used to list Commits on a repository. Central to this experience is an interactive list component that I was responsible for architecting. This work was done alongside input from James Scholes, whose guidance was instrumental to the effort’s success. An interactive list is a construct that’s more commonplace on desktop applications than the web. That does not mean its approach is forbidden from being …

political opinion (toggle) the grand pay-to-play happening in front of us a train wreck looming (cross-posted to mastodon)

Solstice greetings to all! Here’s a sampling of my recently published writing: * Names of the year for 2024 (Moo Deng, Shohei Ohtani, Piper, and more) Words of the year for 2024 (BlueAnon, snoafer, X-odus, and more) * A few additional words of interest: Kakistocracy Slop Brunchlord Deny, delay, depose * My Q&A with Jesse Sheidlower, editor of the newly published fourth edition of The F-Word (Strong Language blog) When …

At the end of September a crucial silicon mine in Spruce Pine was flooded by Hurricane Helene. Ever wonder what happened next? CC-licensed photo by State Archives of North Carolina Raleigh, NC on Flickr. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. Delayed: this week’s Social Warming Substack post won’t appear today. If you’re signed …

Coming up with my top five records of the year was not a difficult task this year as I already had somewhat of an idea that such and such album would land there pretty much as soon as I heard it. But deciding what was my #1 favorite record of the year was a much harder thing to do. Do I pick a band that has been around for almost …

As the year comes to an end, blog editor Dave Busfield-Birch examines the blog’s content in 2024, and offers some insight into the reach of the blog through the lens of its readership statistics. Posts discussed below cover topics such as the Balfour reforms of the Commons timetable, maiden speeches, how the new voting rules affected May's PCC elections, the abolition of the hereditary peers, the role of the NAO, …

20246″ x 6″ x 1″Bronze, black patina The post Friends first appeared on Doug McCune.

I recently picked up a Bambu Lab P1S 3D Printer for around the house. After staying away from 3D printing for years, the combination of a friend’s experience with this printer (thanks, @make_with_jake!), holiday sales, looking for a hobby, wanting some one-off tools, and a handful of projects where it’d be useful finally got me to buy one. Having done half a dozen prints, thus far I’m pretty satisfied with …

What else would we be going to look at on a suburban street called Helleristningen, other than what this Norwegian word means: the rock carving. Situated in an area of housing in Åskollen, south of Drammen on the west side of Oslo Fjord, this street winds its way past a caged outcrop, which has carved upon it a remarkable depiction of an elk. This is not just an Elk. It …

GLA Economics published its latest macroeconomic scenarios-based forecast for London on 17th December. The two main outcome variables are real Gross Value Added (GVA) – a measure of London’s output – and workforce jobs (WFJ) – a measure of employment. We project both variables over the medium term (to the end of 2026). Further, we have developed three main macroeconomic scenarios for London founded on three sets of plausible narratives …