Recently updated blogs

This post was originally intended for the actual friends I share on Facebook, not necessarily the ‘added friends’ who I don’t know in real life. Over the decades, I’ve made many worldwide acquaintances; sadly, my only link to some is as a Facebook connection. This screed is about deleting my Facebook account, which means forever severing connections with some people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. This is not a …

If you’re going to be in northern Europe in December, you need to be prepared for the darkness. Every day gets darker than the last, and by early December, you’ll find yourself wondering just how bleak it can get. But that’s where the Christmas lights come in. And the markets. And everything becomes a little more bearable. Table of Contents ToggleDestinations VisitedDo You Want to Move Abroad in 2025?HighlightsChallengesBlog Posts …

The Midwest will likely benefit from “farm productivity, economy and in overall comfort” as a more habitable place to live than anywhere else in the US. It’s sad to say, as so many live elsewhere, but it looks to be a bastion of safe haven if climate change continues its inevitable march.

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 →