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R. Ives Gammell, one of the keepers of the academic flames, makes an interesting point about art teaching:“A painter’s training does not consist primarily in instruction as to the handling of his materials. Such knowledge is extremely important, of course, but it is not the main thing. The essential purpose of a painter’s training should be to equip him with the means of solving any problem suggested to him by …

In 2023, I scaled TokyoDev from a one-man operation to a team. The idea was to get some tasks off my plate, but while I’ve succeeded at passing off responsibilities to others, I somehow didn’t gain any more free time. This is because working with new people also created new ideas and opportunities, which I haven’t been able to pass up. In 2024, we saw the first fruits of this …

When we walk we can walk with our ancestors and future generations. Maybe they had to walk with sorrow; perhaps they were forced to march or migrate. When we … 🐞 Read more about it ➞ ➞ ➞

I was just in Seattle for the Joint Meetings and had dinner with an old friend. I asked her 15-year-old daughter, who’s lived in Seattle all her life, if she knew who Kurt Cobain was, and she looked at me with a slight tinge of recognition and said, “Did…. he play basketball?” I do really love Seattle. I love the rocks coming out of the water, I love the pointy …

Here we are at Catcott Crossing again, for back in olden times very few of the level crossing cottages had running water. So to avoid drinking water from puddles, catching rain, drinking bog water or simply drinking, cooking and washing in cider, fresh water was regularly delivered in milk churns and delivered by passing engine crews. Pete and Dud wait for arthritic Arthur to swap an empty churn for a …

Random reading brought me to Salammbo. It’s possibly not a book I would have chosen for myself, but chance has its way. LibraryThing’s Folly feature then lived up to its promise, pulling from just two shelves of my alphabetically arranged library: a Bernhard, a Beckett, and a Belben. I reread fifty pages of Molloy before putting it aside, wanting something new. The Belben and Bernhard, both minor, didn’t hold my …

This week managed to be a bit better than the last one, though I am still going to the hospital on a daily basis (still 100% attendance so far for 2025). The situation has stabilized for a bit, and I even have someone taking turns with me spending the night, so I don't have to sleep there all the time. It's not ideal, and we're still not sure how long …

stumbling over my own feelings, without meaning to.but not actually that much stumbling. just a little. it's maybe more about the extent, or range of my feelings. and my not always, or - my just - really leaving them be. space. on account of the world being big enough.also i don't have that many feelings. or rather, not directed at many things. *this is night i am writing this at …

It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for another “picdump!” Here are 113 memes, pictures, and cartoons floating around the internet that I found interesting or relevant this week. Share and enjoy! The post Sunday picdump for January 12, 2024 appeared first on The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Four weeks at number one from w/e 19th February 1983Winter 1983 for me was a period of upheaval. The health of my grandfather had worsened, and a family decision was made to move out of suburban East London and deeper into Essex, to a house large enough to take everyone in. Moving to a new town meant I had to go to a new school, (struggle to) make new friends, …

Psyche presents a reflection on Nietzsche and the shaping of the self in an essay titled “When Nietzsche said ‘become who you are’, this is what he meant.” As the author of the piece notes: “Contrary to popular belief, Nietzsche was not a nihilist set on destroying human values. In fact, the unifying purpose behind … Continue reading "Nietzsche on becoming who you are"

A central problem in combinatorics, probability theory, and analysis is to understand the spectrum of random d-regular graphs G with vertices. The following paper marks a huge leap in our understanding of this problem. Ramanujan Property and Edge Universality of Random Regular Graphs, by Jiaoyang Huang, Theo Mckenzie, and Horng-Tzer Yau. Abstract: We consider the normalized adjacency matrix of a random -regular graph on vertices with any fixed degree and …

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Herring Gull next to the Thames by HMS Belfast this week