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Replacing a 1960s library, the Studium’s characteristic undulating shape marks the entrance to the Esplanade campus. The Esplanade campus was developed at the end of the 1950s to respond to the University of Strasbourg’s growing need for space. Architect Roger Hummel was tasked with a campus master plan, assisted by Alfred Kronenberger, Abraham Weinstein and Maurice Bourstin. A vast open area to the east of the city that was formerly …

Our first episode of 2025 features special guest Brock Dittus. Brock is the guy who started the Sprocket Podcast and he’s just an all around wonderful human, former school bus driver, and cargo-biking dad who’s been a big part of the local bike scene. He now lives in Salem, which he gives glowing reviews to in this episode. Among the many fun things we chat about in this episode, you’ll …

Yesterday, when I dropped off my Hobonichi Five-Year Techo to return it for a usable one, the person at the shipping place commented on the defective paper. A pen friend in the wild! 🖋️🥰 We spent a moment geeking out over pens and paper together. Made my whole morning.

I’ve noticed some erratic behavior with the Spotify for Creators app lately. Every morning, over coffee, I read through the comments on the app and reply when appropriate. However, I haven’t been able to access comments for Sleep Tight Relax.This afternoon, I decided to log in to the web-based interface to see if it was just a bug. Spotify’s podcast creator platform is known for being riddled with bugs. Unfortunately, …

A physically lazy day in Nelson, we still got a lot of logistics work accomplished. Nelson CareFree and I were slow to get up this morning, partially because I was (very unusually) restless last night. The hotel staffer that very helpfully agreed to pick up our food from the Woolworths in Mount Gambier arrived shortly before 11, and we quickly unloaded our groceries. We stopped by the nearby information center, …

One of the consequences of switching to a laptop from a desktop is that my old method of cloning my disk daily has been thrown out of whack. Previously, I kept a USB disk attached to my Mac Studio at all times. Once a day, Carbon Copy Cloner would launch and clone the disk. But now, if I attach that USB drive to the hub my MacBook Pro will be …

‘I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move.’ From ‘Ulysses’ (1833) by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, first published in 1842. Crepuscular rays appearing as sunbeams shone through the gaps in Stratocumulus stratiformis clouds spotted over Toronto, Canada by Kristen-Rose DiMartino (Member 47,377) as she and her …

Back in London this week to do, as I put in an email, the “grown-up parts of moving out”. Also to celebrate the new year. Or at least, that was the plan. You know what they say about the best laid plans? Well lots of things did not go to plan this week, but we still executed on all the important bits. Firstly, and most importantly, I neglected to review …

White Wagtails are one of the most familiar species of songbird across much of Europe and Asia, but here in North America, any time one of these Old World beauties shows up as a vagrant, it causes quite the stir in the birding community. And just before Christmas, that is exactly what happened on the coast of Central California, near the beach town of Santa Cruz.Rare White Wagtail in Santa …

Today’s newsletter begins: Raymond Carver liked to quote Isak Dinesen, who said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. “Someday,” he wrote, “I’ll put that on a three-by-five-card and tape it to the wall beside my desk.” The poet Tess Gallagher said Dinesen’s words were a “quiet banner of determination” that flew over the last decade of Carver’s life. I used to have an index …

I'm fiddling with the dials of social networking... uninstalling apps, retiring accounts, setting strict limits — that sorta thing. I'm bumping into glorious walls of opportunity while breaking habits. One intended upside is to tackle piles of books. Tonight I broke into the chonky first tome of Calvin and Hobbes. I didn't realize Bill Watterson had a brief, failed stint at the Cincinnati Post. “To persist in the face of …

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I often wonder what it felt like for the ancient Greeks, circa 800BC, to be wandering in the ruins of the previous Mycenaean civilisation. These cities they can no longer build; staring at writing they can’t read. The Greeks had to re-discover literacy. I think perhaps they wouldn’t have known what they were looking at. I know that dinosaurs aren’t our ancestors but… it’s adjacent? We live in a world …

Mr. Lewis Sydney playing his Follyphone in September 1912 (Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) The future can be presented in a lot of ways. Sometimes we imagine it in the darkest of terms, a dystopian hellscape that shocks our sense of safety, making us fearful about what’s to come. Other times we imagine the future as utopian—joyful and wondrous with all of the things we could ever want at our fingertips …

Chance Miller listened so we don’t have to: Zuckerberg also took issue with AirPods and the fact that Apple wouldn’t give Meta the same access to the iPhone for its Meta Ray-Ban glasses: They build stuff like AirPods, which are cool, but they’ve just thoroughly hamstrung the ability for anyone else to build something that can connect to the iPhone in the same way. There were a lot of other …