Recently updated blogs

Happy New Year! We’re heading into 02025. Week #726 was our first full week back at the office, but that doesn’t mean the last 4 weeks weren’t busy! Publishing Schedule At the end of 02024, we decided to pause the ⪮ Good Morning Newsletter in 02025 and instead focus on writing here. We’ll see how things go, maybe the pendulum will swing back. Our ◍ Quarter notes newsletter is still …

Allow me to revisit an anecdote I published in a piece for Time magazine last year. "Do you think people will ever fall in love with machines?" I asked the 12-year-old son of one of my friends. "Yes!" he said, instantly and with conviction. He and his sister had recently visited the Las Vegas Sphere and its newly installed Aura robot -- an AI system with an expressive face, advanced …

My fiddle player friend Darin sent me this documentary about GB Grayson, which I enjoyed: The documentary talks about how very few people even recognize the name despite all of recorded tunes essentially becoming standards in today’s folk/bluegrass/old-time world and having been covered by extraordinarily huge artists. That’s true for me! I absolutely had never heard of him before this. Gilliam Banmon Grayson (1887-1930) was a blind fiddler from one …

Pavement - The Marquee, London, England, August 26, 1992We checked out the Faces at the Marquee in 1970 this week … how about Pavement at the Marquee in 1992?! Why not, they were another one of John Peel’s favorite bands. Of course, it’s not exactly the same club — I think the Marquee changed addresses several times during the course of its lifetime. But we don’t need an excuse! This …

Vanessa Blakeslee’s story “Patient X” opens questions about death, care, and our sense of reality. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:“It's always difficult to pick just one thing to discuss about how a certain fiction came to be, but without hesitation, the most mysterious aspect of this tale--the orbs--are rooted in true accounts. When I was about 12, I awoke in the middle of the night in …

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This one goes out to Will, without whom I would not know any X-Men facts."Lore" is one of my favorite terms to graduate from cheeky internet slang to grown-up conversational staple. Lore is simply legend, often of the unverifiable kind, that accompanies a particular dogma, trait, or decision. The turn of the year is a great time to spin some lore about oneself or one's colleagues, wrapping up accomplishments in …

Enjoying a vacation on a Caribbean porch, and just had a couple hours to kill with good internet access. For some reason I spent part of them listening to the summary panel discussions at Strings 2025, which just ended today. Honestly, this was just completely pathetic. The whole thing was run by David Gross, who at 83 is entering his fifth decade of hyping string theory. Besides the usual claims …

In my days with mountain rescue we would often do a bothy trip a trip we enjoyed was to Culra over the 4 Munroes and then. To Ossian ( Thos is a Youth Hostel Tom rig would hide a key and coal) sadly Tom died many Years ago. He as such a character kind and a great host. Culra One great route was Dalwhinnie to Laggan taking in the hills …

Birthday Girl “Did You Know I Write You Poems?” Eva Smittle’s vocal performance keeps you edge – she’s flirtatious, she’s threatening, she’s afraid, she’s romantic, she’s nihilistic – and moves between those moods somewhat unpredictably. She comes across like someone who can’t decide how she feels about other people’s lust for her, and the moments where she seems totally repulsed ring as true as when she’s reciprocating the lust, and …

Here's what we looked at this week:The Travel Heavy, an aluminum 12" LP carrier for traveling DJs, is an upgrade from milk crates. Nifty tool: A tiny universal workholding device for watchmakers.Now available in the U.S.: This electric-assist screwdriver from Japan. An impressive exploration of material: This monomaterial bamboo projectile weapon.Forever object: This minimalist Mark Two pen, by Studio Neat, is a beautiful piece of industrial design.The cuckoo clock's unlikely …

People sometimes say there is a crisis of trust in science. In controversial subjects, from ecology to health, increasingly many people are rejecting not only mainstream ideas, but the scientists behind them. I think part of the problem is media literacy, but not in the way you’d think. When we teach media literacy, we talk about biased sources. If a study on cigarettes is funded by the tobacco industry or …

I wore my Olukai Mahana slippers all day every day for 3 years. They finally got beat up enough that when my family asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said that I’d welcome a new pair of slippers. Christmas morning arrived and I opened my gift from my wife and daughter containing…a brand new pair of my exact same slippers. I was elated. This in my opinion is …

Le Beau Paradise Garden by Jean Paul Gaultier is "a tribute to the Garden of Gaultier, filled with vibrant flowers and enticing scents. It masterfully blends the salty coconut's freshness with the green fig's lushness and sandalwood's soothing warmth. Hints of zesty ginger, cool mint, and sun-drenched tonka bean enhance the fragrance's green aquatic and woody character, making it an ideal

Grant Schoel, an Eagle Scout candidate from Troop 229 in Harker Heights, Texas, created fish habitats in Stillhouse Hollow Lake near Belton, Texas, to address the environmental impact of drought. His project involved building 10 Georgia cubes — 3-foot PVC frames filled with gravel and drainage pipe to provide stable habitats for fish. These structures help restore habitats lost when water levels drop, offering shelter and promoting biodiversity. Grant coordinated …