Recently updated blogs

If you’ve spent any time in conversations about autism online, you’ve probably come across debates about self-diagnosis. Let’s cut to the chase: self-diagnosed autistic people are valid — full stop. This post dives into why that is and why we need to stop gatekeeping autism. Barriers to formal diagnosis First, let’s talk about why formal diagnosis isn’t accessible to everyone. Getting a diagnosis can be expensive, especially in countries where …

“Review and Evaluation—Tulsa Race Massacre,” by the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, January 10, 2025. In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings, and locked the survivors in internment camps. Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about this race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa. This report breaks …

Saturday 11th January 2025 Welcome to a new blog series featuring towns and cities around Britain which, by a quirk of history, are blessed with having two railway stations on different lines serving completely different destinations. To kick things off I’ve been to Hertford and had a look at that town’s contrasting pair of stations: Hertford East and Hertford North. As you can see from the map, Hertford East is …

SCORE! About a month ago, I visited the Strelitz Academy in Virginia Beach and it gave me SUCH HEART! Everyone in the elementary school is doing The Let Grow Experience, so there were paper trees in the hall festooned with Let Grow “leaves.” These are leaf-shaped pieces of paper where the kids wrote the new things they’d just started doing on their own: learned to ride a bike, made dinner, …

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I have ascended. The post Domi and JD Beck – SPACE MOUNTAiN (Live) appeared first on Sampleface.

December was a good reading month and three of my reads were Christmas books. I included some notes on my reading in 2024 at the end of this post. Here is my list of books read:FictionTom Lake (2023) by Ann PatchettThis was a very good book and an enjoyable read. Basically it is the story of a woman telling her daughters about a summer love affair she had with a …

The first wave of the new Yoroni faction for Conquest can now be pre-ordered from Para Bellum Wargames:Link: Para Bellum Wargames

The Vikings, often romanticized as fearsome raiders, were also adept navigators, traders, and settlers. But beyond the swords and sails lies another fascinating aspect of their lives: how they understood and managed health and healing.

Of course you want to help. You're a human being, you're horrified by the destruction here in Los Angeles and you want to do what you can to help the folks whose homes, jobs and lives have been damaged by the fires. So once again, I refer you to my favorite charity, Operation USA. There are many fine agencies out there but I know some of the people behind this …

To tastes warm bosom & to healths flusht cheekMorns flushing face peeps out her first fond smileCrimsoning the east in many tinted hueThe horison round as edgd with brooding mistPenc'ling its seeming circle round so uniformIn ting[e] of faintly blue—how lovly thenThe streak which matchless nature skirting sweetFlushes the edges of the arching sky& melting draws the hangings of the mornDaily #JohnClare postings#poetry #environment

It was just a little over a year ago that I briefly softened in my general disdain for Meta (which I held not only for their overall anti-web walled garden approach of the last 20 years, but especially for their role in the last decade’s rise of misinformation). Watching what was going on with their new Twitter clone, I raised an interested eyebrow as I followed their rapid progress in …

September 1937. Washington, D.C. "Capital Transit Locomotive 1135 on Pennsylvania Avenue at Post Office Department. Wheel arrangement: PCC." 4x5 glass negative by C.W. Witbeck from the Louis A. Marre Rail Transportation Photograph Collection. View full size.

What happened was, there was a pretty moon in the sky, so I got out a tripod and the big honkin’ Tamron 150-500 and fired away. Here’s the shot I wanted to keep. Sadly, the clouds had shiftedand Luna had lost her pretty bronze shading. I thought the camera and lens did OK given that I was shooting from sea level through soggy Pacific-Northwest winter air. But when I zoomed …

Morning all, here’s a quick Saturday round-up for you. If you watched Mikel Arteta’s press conference yesterday, you might have come away with the same conclusion that I did – which is that a January arrival is, while not impossible, more or less unlikely. The manager was asked what he’d be looking for if he were in the market for an attacking player this month, and said: First of all, …

I had an enjoyable little discussion with Joe Murray of The Human Podcast, part of his new series, called 10 questions in 10 minutes, in which he asks his interview subjects for short answers to ten quick questions on their … Continue reading →