Recently updated blogs

Matt Harder is the founder of Civic Trust, a participatory budgeting company that provides technology infrastructure, communications and process methodology to help citizens participate in their governments’ budgeting process.In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Harder joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss participatory budgeting, a method of getting resident input on how a city’s budget is spent. They talk about the three phases of participatory budgeting, the benefits and …

Quoteable Noir: Part 2 Back in 2019, I kicked off the new year with some of my favorite quotes from some of my favorite noirs. So much has changed in our world since then – but one thing that’s remained … Continue reading →

The American mink is not endangered and lives all across North America in wetlands with the exception of the American Southwest, but the subspecies that occurs in the Everglades is considered threatened. Mink are weasels well adapted to living in freshwater marshes where they prey upon rabbits, rodents, fish, frogs, tadpoles, birds, turtles, snakes, and insects. They often kill more than they can eat because their primitive brains don’t shut …

Plans for hundreds of student rooms in Woolwich town centre have been approved by Greenwich Council – and hundreds more could be on their way. Former council offices at Riverside House that are currently being used as artists’ studios will be redeveloped and turned into 332 student rooms along with a 265-room hotel, with part […] The post Woolwich ‘will be a student town again’ after developments approved appeared first …

Ghost Box Records work and releases often have a very playful element which intertwines with the more parallel world or occult side of things. This is particularly present on the Belbury Poly album New Ways Out from 2016, which was described in Electric Sound magazine as: “…transporting you to those especially daft places only Belbury Poly can – Tizer-fuelled 70s youth club discos with side-rooms for Ouija boards…” That quote …

I’ve had mixed experiences with Rose Tremain’s books, enjoying some and struggling with others. Absolutely and Forever was shortlisted for last year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and as it’s a personal project of mine to try to read all of the shortlisted titles, I decided to read this one despite it not sounding particularly appealing to me. It’s a short book (under 200 pages), so at least it …

Saint Jerome in His Study by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1480) Today’s post is excerpted from Deliberate Practice for Creative Writers by Jules Horne. Do you believe excellence is in someone’s nature—an innate golden gift they were born with? Or does it come from nurture—learning, effort, passion and commitment? Of course, nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy. Born talent and learned talent—in any skill—can’t be separated. They reinforce and inspire each …

After a very long process, Garmin’s ECG feature is now available in the EU and Australia, along with previously available countries, including the US and a slate of countries in Asia. At least for the Fenix 8, Enduro 3, and Venu 3, however notably, not for the Epix Pro and the Fenix 7 Pro, which share the same sensor and already have US ECG capability. Nonetheless, for EU and Australian …

This is an Art Deco styled bakelite medium format camera made in France. Mine is a series III model made from 1947 to around 1956. This one is the deluxe or blindé version, meaning that it has a push-on bakelite lens cap (blindé means armoured). This camera is about as simple as you can get for roll film, and bears comparison with the Ilford Sporti I borrowed. The Photax cameras …

After spending some time with a bunch of rogues earlier this week, my #JanuaryInJapan thriller week continues today with another trip to Tokyo. This time around, the crime has long been done and detected, meaning the focus is far less on the what than the why. Let’s head off to prison, then, where we’ll be making the acquaintance of a young woman, and putting together the pieces of a story …

Over the holiday break Exponential View republished a piece by Azeen Azhar it had run earlier in the year on GLP-1 drugs. (In other words, drugs like Ozempic.) First time around, I’d noticed the headline, but not had time to get into the detail. But seeing it during the holiday meant I was able to give it more consideration. The Exponential View headline story is this: I reckon that they …

Photo books are one way of sharing your story now.Are you taking the time to tell your own story? Be a good ancestor and share your own story so future generations will have a sense of what your life has been like.My choice: photo booksI began to systematically document my life and family experiences in 2007, when I made the first of what became an annual series of photo books. …

Imagine there was a city that was, in many ways, Melbourne, Australia, but that, in equally as many ways, was Mexico City, Mexico. Imagine you’re walking along Bourke Street Mall but, simultaneously to looking around and seeing Bourke Street Mall, you look around and you’re seeing Paseo de la Reforma. That city, and the lands around it, is the city in which this story takes place. The protagonist of this …

I had to ask Chat GPT how to delete my Instagram account. Living in the twenty-first century feels not only slightly embarrassing but increasingly like an ultimatum: embrace the future without complaint or be left pining for the textures of the past. But there’s always a third way.1.Salvation Mountain, 2019Near a decommissioned military base between the Chocolate Mountains and the Santa Rosa range, there’s a candy-colored hill shellacked with religious …

Last week was the busiest yet for the NHS this winter, amid sky-high virus rates which have left hospitals ‘jampacked’ with patients. New data published today shows that more hospital beds were occupied last week (w/e 12 Jan) than at any point so far this winter (97,636), with 96% of adult general and acute hospital […]