Recently updated blogs

Jean-Louis Trintignant as Silence.The most acclaimed Spaghetti Western filmmaker not named Sergio Leone. That's an apt description for Sergio Corbucci, a prolific Italian director and screenwriter whose career spanned four decades. Although he directed comedies, horror films, and sand-and-scandal epics, Corbucci is best known for his Spaghetti Westerns, especially Django (1966). Inspired by his friend Leone, Corbucci crafted a violent, allegorical Western that generated dozens of imitations and grew in …

This is a test to see if I can write from the comfort of my bed using a wireless keyboard with my Onyx BOOX Note Air 2 e-ink tablet. The answer, with a bit of tweaking in the ‘e-ink centre’ of the Android settings pane — which I think is custom to the Onyx devices — is ‘yes’. I’m not likely to turn into Patricia Highsmith, author of The Talented …

Come, love of country, fill my heart… I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag on the car during the World Cup). So I really don’t want to sound like one …

Do You Believe in Miracles?![1] When something miraculous happens, we have two mutually exclusive choices to explain it. Either its cause is supernatural or within the scope of known natural laws. For example, the famous magician David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. His audience was blown away, but when later it was discovered how he did it, it was clear that it was just a brilliantly orchestrated stunt. …

Pnårp and his huzzey-muffet had an out-of-order horse adventure this week—which also solved his printer problems!

If there's ever been a position in the camera world where the majority of the Japanese companies keep their butts clenched, it's APS-C. That really boils down to a simple thought: in order to provide lower priced entry products they need the cost savings implicit in APS-C, but they really don't want those lower priced products to compete with the higher end and higher margin products they make. Almost by …

We’re currently witnessing the death throes of social media. As is always the case when something monstrous dies, it’s not a pretty sight. None of it would matter much, though, if social media did not have the power to drag along liberal democracy into the abyss. As photographers, we’re all citizens of some country. Thus, at least in theory we have an interest in improving our general life conditions. I …

The Vulture recently published There Is No Safeword, a rigorous deconstruction of the ongoing history of predation by author Neil Gaiman, acting against multiple, vulnerable women. This, alone isn’t new information. Nor is the role by which he used BDSM to try to justify his actions. What the article did did, which other discussions didn’t tend to go into as much, was talk about the role of how… Source

Just before Christmas, I enjoyed a very lengthy lunch at Sweetings in the City of London. It’s an institution, and I’m embarrassed to say that it was my first visit, despite working in the City for eight years in the early 1990s. Regardless of when I’d visited, it would no doubt have been exactly the…

Look, I wanted to pick out highlights like I’d done for ribo.zone so I’d know that you’d get the force of the recommendation, the weight of it. But every time I go back to find more to narrow in on, I get massively distracted by just how good this site is. And it’s been ages now that I’ve not posted this and I’m guilty about it, that you haven’t seen …

Guten Tag! Guten Tag! 👋Do you know why Node.js didn't add complete TypeScript support? Do you use the new baseline feature scrollbar-gutter? And what's the difference between HTML attributes and DOM properties? Turn on the Web Weekly tune and find all the answers below. Enjoy! Antoine listens to "Furniture - Slow Motion Kisses": I discovered this beautiful song in the closing set of a French music festival! And the clip …

A new article of mine has just appeared in the journal Anglican and Episcopal History. It is available in JSTOR, and so is accessible both to subscribers and to non-subscribers after creating a (free) JSTOR account. ‘George Bell, the British… Continue reading →

First new work of the year in support of the ongoing BDS boycott of Coca Cola products, and in recognition also of Coca-Cola's murderous repression of union organisers in South America. In 2017, Coca Cola donated $14000 to the extremist Israeli far-right organisation Im Tirtzu, which aims to "promote Zionism" by attacking and delegitimising Israeli left-wing and human rights groups and individuals. Coke also operates facilities in Atarot, an illegal …

I do love a wander in a cemetery. I visited all of London's 'Magnificent Seven' last year, some for the first time, others were repeat visits because there's always something new to see each time whether flora, fauna or man made monuments.Kensal Green Cemetery as designed to resemble Paris's Père Lachaise, indeed some people have memorials at both sites (I say 'some' becausee I know of one, so it's likely …

The best way of experiencing 90% of the fun and frolics of a top-end restaurant whilst shelling out less than 50% of the usual cost is to go for a weekday lunch or early bird menu. Some of the most exciting dining spots in the country have some remarkably reasonably priced off-peak offers, designed to fill tables at times where otherwise they'd be empty, and as we all know there's …