Today is the first big smoke day of 2026. The past five years we've had some brutal streaks of smoke days from all the smoke coming south from Canada and northern Minnesota but this one is extra bad.
there are many instances of sentences written to specific people – love you all – that are also just thinking out loud, so this here below is one of those I want to keep to remind myself to take such advice sometimes…. [the context was a long overdue comment on some work sent by a colleague. Finally getting some time to respond, I wrote]: ______________________ Dear A As promised – well overdue – I returned to this. I find a pdf harder to comment on – cannot add track changes etc but, a few…
Thinking back a month and a half about my first attempted pizza in an outdoor oven. Kept it sliding on a mountain of semolina for the launch, it turned out well, and now I’m ripping a few of these every week for us. These pizzas can be elite, and with care, anyone can (probably) do them.
We often forget how inexpensive it is (often free, in fact) it is to completely make someone’s day/week/year or, even, give them a memory they will cherish for life. - Patrick RhoneReading this Rhoneism reminded me how impactful "small kindnesses" can be. Whether it's a smile, a simple hello, recognition of something someone has said or done, or just a kind gesture to show appreciation, these small kindnesses can go a long way.While I would like to think I follow the advice I often give my…
This update covers Sunday 07-05-26 through Saturday 07-18-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 Hello again. I’ve been busy of late. 📕 My mother’s ashes are buried, and a chapter in my life has concluded. 📜 It’s nice to see things through to the end and bask in the accomplishment without having to rush forth to find something else to tackle. ❤️🩹 Travel didn’t take much out of me last week, thankfully. A vascular scan on my lower legs happened on Thursday 07-16, with results to follow in the…
Status: Slept for a very long time last night, maybe 13 hours. Didn’t even need my pillow-friendly headphones to send me off. I was feeling pretty antsy last night and on reflection I did do something every day for four days, so even though those were limited, well managed and not harmful in themselves they did add up. Today I’m feeling much clearer but the lesson has been learned, keeping it on the down-low. Reading: Energy and the Matter Problem — This has been sitting in my tabs for a while…
A few hours ago, I completed my first edition of the Zwem4daagse, which is a yearly even here in The Netherlands where you swim a certain distance for four days. After swimming 500 meters four days, I am now a proud owner of a cute little medal! Looking back at the past six and a half months, it’s crazy to see how much I’ve achieved in the swimming pool. After years of wanting to swim, but avoiding it due to my fear of deep water, or rather, me not knowing what else to do in the water besides…
I biked yesterday in suffocating heat to capture this Focke-Wulf-Piaggio P149D (reg. D-EHJK), only to discover, to my utter dismay, that it had a cover on. Argh!
sourceyes YES YES YES 1 MILLION PERCENT YES ONLINE FRIENDS ARE REALif you happen to be one of the 5 people reading my microblog youd know but likei have an absurd amount of difficulty making any friends in real life everi have exactly one irl friend at the moment, and that was something i kinda stumbled intoat a art jam event at collegediscord might have a LOT of problems, i know, but like it basically saved me from doing absolutely nothing everbefore that i basically never talked to people…
lingthusiasm:ALTLingthusiasm gets into zines! We hear from people a lot who are enthusiastic about linguistics, and many of you have been trying to get other people in your life also into linguistics, which is amazing!Whether it’s linguistics fans trying to articulate their (our) excitement to family and friends, linguistics academics trying to spread the word to future students who might want to take a linguistics course, or when we go to in-person conferences and events and we’re trying to…
Vacation time is a good time for experiments and trying out new things. So over the past week I’ve been forcing myself to sit down and write something new for my blog every day. I guess this is sort of an exercise in practicing in public. I want to become a better writer and I want to write more, and the only way to do that is to try and build the habit of writing regularly.So far it has been a fun challenge and I’ve gotten to stretch my brain muscles a little trying to come with anything at…
Heading into subject selection for next year at school, I'm always getting told to "keep doors open". An example of this is doing a higher level of mathematics if you are thinking of doing any engineering adjacent things. But really I think the better way to think about this is opening doors to pathways based on your subjects. Because you probably aren't going to do too well in a science field I'd you took no science classes. And if you want to become a therapist then you should probably do…
Last night a friend was telling me about her recent date with a younger guy. For whatever reason, the date didn’t ‘hit’. “He works in financial tech,” she told me—a late addition to her anecdote. “Fintech! Ugh! Let him go,” I laughed. Catch and release! “It’s pretty evil stuff,” I added. She looked startled. “He told me all the information they use is publicly available—” my friend began. “Did you know your home address is publicly available?” I asked her. She balked. “Yeah,” I continued, “if…
More often than not in our culture, when someone is talking about "success" we assume they are referring to either material wealth or the result of someone having achieved some sort of victory or prize. And often they are. Most of us are less superficial in how we define our own successes. Oh, we'll take the cash and the laurels, but our drive to success tends to be motivated by more personally meaningful measures like a sense of satisfaction about a job well-done or having good relationships…
Not feeling it lately – the photo blogging, I mean. But I am pushing through. There will be brighter days with more motivation ahead, there always are. Lots of the same recently, same schedule, same streets, I need a change of scenery.
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This little site is doing the rounds so no doubt you’ve seen it linked to already. If not, why aren’t you following Kottke? The premise is simple, leave a short recording with your location tagged on the map. Why? Well the creators say: VoiceDot exists so that people live and love each other. So that no one ever reaches for what is not theirs — someone else’s land, someone else’s home, someone else’s peace. That is the whole idea. There is no other.The stories here are all different — joyful,…
This weekend, we celebrate. Zoya is turning six years old, and this Saturday we have planned a small party to celebrate. There will be a few kids, a few grownups, good food, a space-themed cake, space-themed balloons, and some merriment in our backyard pool, if the weather holds up. This is not an elaborate celebration, but instead an excuse to bring together people we love in a small gathering to commemorate our wonderful daughter turning another year older. Every photo I have of my birthday…
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash I've started a quest for the “perfect” typewriter. I don't know what that means: I don't know what perfect is in the case of typewriters. When I find it, I will know it. There will be mistakes made along the way, but so be it. There is something that has fascinated me already, however, in my search for a typewriter. Originally I was thinking that an IBM Selectric I was the most likely candidate for my perfect typewriter. Why? Mainly because I've used one in…
People often encourage reading and journaling. I do enjoy reading but I struggle to write [pen and paper]. It’s almost like I’d rather be doing anything else. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to writing posts in different formats. I usually use my phone but I wanted to use a notepad to write during the day. When it actually came to doing it I was so tired and couldn’t think of anything worse. I had planned to use my typewriter next but I just don’t want to do it. I’m finding with…
Hi everyone. I really want to write more and also to cherish the positives in my life, both past and present. For this reason, I opened the Gratitude app on my iPhone and had the journal feature give me a prompt. It was to write a gratitude letter to one of my grandparents. I have shared quite a few times how my paternal grandmother positively impacted my life. I could write her a gratitude letter and I may do so later on, but for today, I’m choosing to write one to my paternal grandfather.…
Read these two sentences and see which one you find yourself nodding to before you've even finished. The government's gotten fat and lazy, and it's high time somebody made it earn its keep again. The richest country on earth ought to be ashamed that so many of its own can't afford to get sick. If it was the first, I already know how you vote. If it was the second, same trick, different jersey. And if you nodded at both — well, that puts you in the company of much of the country, whether they'd…
it feels wrong that I can leave my plate unsupervised on the table it feels wrong that the pet store is having a sale and I can't go pick a new toy it feels wrong that I can leave the house and not have a reason to hurry back it feels wrong that in the dark I try to see the shape of a sleeping dog and then remember
Status: My monthly-ish occupational therapy for the chronic fatigue was today. The general consensus is I’m doing pretty well at pacing and keeping to my baseline while pottering around the house. That baseline is pretty unproductive though and while productivity is a toxic concept, I do need to feel like I’m contributing something. So the next task is to try to do more things, see if and how they harm me, regroup and then try them differently. The goals we set are to go to a cafe/bar once a…
mostly for my own remembrance. Friend told me you can pick your discomfort now in fitness or later when you get (even) older.
We used to call it global warming, for some reason nowadays we call it climate change, either way there are still people who refuse to believe it, saying it’s all a hoax. Coincidentally many of these people believe in the trickle down economy and considering the amount of evidence they choose to ignore, presumably a flat earth too. Whatever, I cannot remember such a run of high temperatures this early in the year and it’s been too hot for fishing really but I can’t resist going anyway. After a…
This was the first stop on a road trip south to visit my wife's family. We've driven past Newport countless times over the last decade, but somehow never realised that one of the finest brick houses in Britain was sitting right there, barely a minute off the M4. We headed down in the morning and arrived at Tredegar House just before lunch. Access here was easy, with no single-track lanes to negotiate! The junction getting back onto the M4 west afterwards is a slightly odd one though. We started…
Well, it's been a while. It's not that I haven't had the time to post. It's just that I sort of fell off the wagon and stopped writing and posting regularly. That's something I want to remedy, because both are positive habits that make me feel better about myself. So, instead of procrastinating while waiting for the perfect ‘I'm back!’ post to be delivered through divine intervention directly to my brain (I'll be honest, I've already tried that approach for a couple of months and it's been less…
