Recently updated blogs

A Nice Quiet Local On a bright November morning, Sekforde Street is London as Richard Curtis imagines it. A steady stream of City University students amble northwards, past the Georgian terraces of Sekforde Street and under the boughs of a slim silver birch that grows at the triangle-shaped intersection with Woodbridge Street.

In December, the California Supreme Court declined to review a decision by the Commission on Judicial Performance to remove a judge for misconduct that took the CJP 114 pages to explain. This might be worth a full article, but right now I can only give you the lowlights. While the judge was being investigated for asking parties about their “churchgoing habits” (already not good), he ran a counter-investigation to find …

I would never want to say a number first -- what if they had a much larger number in mind?!If it is an odd situation -- like, say, it's a smaller/niche publisher and we know they don't have a huge budget (and they KNOW we know they don't have a huge budget), they might ASK first, just to set expectations. "What kind of offer are you looking for" or "what …

As I’ve attributed a large fraction of human behaviors to signaling incentives, I feel I should address a key signaling question, about which I was recently reminded.All else equal, we prefer others to think that we are smarter, healthier, and richer. And we take many concrete actions to promote such impressions. But most all of these actions only indirectly signal such desirable features. Which tends to induce wasteful signaling efforts, …

The jurors who will evaluate submissions from architects interested in exhibiting their work in the U.S. Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia have been The post U.S. Pavilion co-commissioners announce jury that will evaluate submissions for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia appeared first on The Architect’s Newspaper.

Flashlight NameExceed Designs RAMPANTEmitterNichia 519A 5K LED or Luminus SFT-40Max OutputUp to 1,300 lumensBattery14500 (R4) or 18650 (R8)MaterialsTitanium or aluminum, multiple finishesMSRP$115+ buy on exceeddesigns.com ($115+) Exceed Designs’ newly released RAMPANT EDC signals the arrival of the future of flashlight interfaces. After nearly three years of research and development, this flashlight stands out with its sleek titanium or aluminum construction in a spread of finishes and coatings and the ability …

Is this the year that you learn to graft? Would you like to grow a new variety of fig, peach, dragon fruit, avocado, plum, mulberry, or cherry? Then these events are for you. Winter is the season for the California Rare Fruit Growers “scion exchanges,” where growers cut sticks (scions) off their backyard trees and […] The post 2025 Scion Exchanges (of the California Rare Fruit Growers) appeared first on …

Since ZBrush for iPad release last year, I was willing to dig into ZBrush again. I learned some basic ZBrush back in 2022/23 but never actually take it seriously. Until now.So, over the past week or two, I've been learning ZBrush via Rafa Souza course.I still have a long journey ahead, but I just finished the first project, that was to sculpt an alien character based on a concept from …

One of my more innovative new year pledges is to actually talk about the work I do. So here goes.I’m working with the RSPCA at the moment, kickstarting a responsible AI initiative. I’ve been reviewing a new AI-driven project for ethical risks and opportunities, and helping define the artefacts and mentalities the organisation needs to adopt to embed responsibility in its future tech work. As part of this, we ran …

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 …

Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference to announce that he would resign as Prime Minister once a new Liberal leader was selected. He also revealed that he had advised the Governor General to prorogue Parliament and that she had granted the request, with Parliament set to return on March 24. The announcement ended months of speculation about Trudeau’s future. Until September 2024, the Liberal …