Dear Constant Reader, This book is only tangentially related to burlesque — in a couple of ways you might expect and one you probably don’t. Michelle L’amour told me about this book, probably not long after it came out, and I’m grateful. Peep Show Pinups: The Golden Era by Jo and Paul Richardson, 2009. The book is primarily a survey of erotic photographs from the mid-19th century to about the 1920s. There are less than two dozen pages of the history of photography, with many photos included and…
My purpose, and my belief, is that the bombs that killed and maimed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki shall one day open the skies to man. —Freeman Dyson, A Space Traveler’s Manifesto, 1958The nuclear pulse rocket is what you’d get if you hired a 12 year old to get you to Jupiter. It works by farting a continuous string of nuclear bombs (at the rate of about one per second) out its back end and riding the ensuing blast waves on a giant shock absorber, like a pogo stick. A series of hundreds or…
When I try to describe this film, I keep fleeing from the word strange toward poetic — because there isn't much strange about it. If you accept its conceit at face value, everything that follows is fairly naturalistic and straightforward, especially given what else I've seen from Wenders. And the conceit is simple enough: angels, in a spiritual but perhaps not biblical sense, are all around us, invisible to everyone except children, tasked with guarding and observing a given patch of the world.…
Kashmir Hill, of the New York Times (gift link), learned about an A.I.-generated biography of her for sale on Amazon for $27. It is just one of many wholly-generated books available there: Amazon does not mind if people hawk A.I.-generated books on its platform, unless they are truly and deeply terrible. “Charlie Kirk: An Inspiring Journey of Young Political Conservative and Activist Who Fights for America,” published in February 2025, became an Amazon best seller after Mr. Kirk was killed last…
The art of conversation What French cafes are for. Quote of the Day ”Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it’s easier to get away with murder. James Carville Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Keith Jarrett | Shenandoah Link Long Read of the Day From Cockburn to clickbait Lovely essay by my friend Andrew Brown. Claud Cockburn, one of the finest hacks there has ever been, wrote that journalism is very simple: it is a mixture of advertising…
The term Non Player Character is fairly self-explanatory. They are characters that aren’t normal players. They are operated by other forces such as a gamemaster or in the case of video games a pre-programmed script. The term has also made its way into popular culture, especially online, with people using it as an insult. It’s used to refer to people who supposedly lack their own thoughts, emotions or drive and are easily controlled by others such as the media. Let’s move on to discuss NPCs in…
I got a copy of the book free as part of Goodreads Giveaways. I’m a big history geek. Anyone who talks to me long enough has heard me make reference to history, whether relatively recent or in the distant past. So when this book came up on Goodreads Giveaways I already had it in my To Read list and figured it was worth a shot at getting the book for free.Full post
Scribed by Sandre the Giant Released: 23rd May 2006 We’ll probably get a lot more into the creation of Audioslave in a few years when I do the thirtieth (fuck sake) anniversary of their self titled debut, but the short version is three members of Rage Against the Machine, the vocalist from Soundgarden, come together to make the supergroup wet dream of every 90s alternative and grunge fan. Their debut track ‘Cochise’ is a track I still love to this day, but I’ve been honestly remiss in…
Bill Sanderson is a freelance illustrator with a long career in editorial and comercial illustration as well as bok publishing. Sanderson works in the fascinating method of scratchboard, in which a specially prepared board is coated with ink, and the image is created by scratching white areas out of the ink with sharp tools. While not a popular medium becsuse of the painstaking process required, not to mention the kind of reverse thinking of the light out of dark process, the results can be…
🚨 New Wendell Berry essay collection alert 🚨
My book haul brings all the boys to the yard, so it's time we had another. These have been picked up in dribs and drabs from a variety of exotic locations. I.e. Nottingham and Derby. Digging into the B formats first, it's the doyen of British hard SF, Stephen Baxter. His officially endorsed sequel to HG Wells's The Time Machine might just be his best book in my opinion. So what can he do with the Martians? As you might have gathered from the title, The Massacre of Mankind, it's not likely to be…
There’s a ton of information on the internet about baking sourdough. Some present the process as simple, when it’s not. Others make it intensely complicated and nerdy. Some will say that making a nice loaf requires great precision in timing and ingredients. But my process seems pretty robust to my frequent neglect and tolerant of tweaks to the recipe. So this is my contribution – my real-life process for making sourdough bread, avoiding jargon and fancy equipment, and showing you in pictures…
Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry is a delightfully cynical black comedy. It is also a book very much for our times. The eponymous Elmer Gantry is a happy go lucky young man, brought up in a stifling religious home, but now at college he's a partying, womanising and drinking law student. Realising that becoming a lawyer is hard work, and will likely keep him poor, he decides on a different course of
I seem to be turning into an animal rescue as this week I have taken in two injured birds: first Harry the pigeon and then Edith the gull. A couple of nights ago a kind member of the public contacted me wanting help with a pigeon – Harry – that was being attacked by a crow in a local park. She had contained the pigeon in a shoebox but couldn’t hang onto the bird overnight. Once Harry was safe with me I spotted the ring around his leg, indicating he’s a racing pigeon and belongs to someone. I…
Summertime stationery, the Field Notes “Paletas” Edition. LAMY, what are you doing to me? Spending my money, that’s what! Meteorite and Meteora have landed, what are your thoughts? I’m in on what they are doing, but neither will make my “You can only keep 10 fountain pens list.” That’s what Myke and I were up against in this episode, and had a blast sorting it out. Show Notes & Download Links This episode of The Pen Addict is sponsored by: Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a…
Humans are evolving rapidly and our spirit and instincts are changing. There's no such thing as a perfect animal in this world, so a flawless instinct doesn't exist either. We're all animals in the process of evolving. Sa whether or not our instincts match the world is iust a coincidence, and we have no idea what will be considered right in the next instance.
CFCF featuring Touching Ice & TECHG1RLS “Let’s Kill Ourselves” Don’t let the title freak you out. This is a song about using “I’m gonna kill myself” in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way, and poking at that turn of phrase a bit. Is it funny, is it cute? Is it annoying, is it insensitive? Is it actually hyperbole at all, or is it just making light of actual dark urges? Will getting your blowout screwed up by a sudden rain storm really push you over the edge? It’s a fun song, so don’t expect it to do…
Strange Animalsby Jarod K. AndersonGenres: Fantasy Pages: 320 Rating: Synopsis: After a series of inexplicable encounters upends his life, Green finds himself alone and terrified in the Appalachian mountains, full of questions about the transformation he’s undergoing and the impossible creatures he’s starting to see. When he meets a hermit named Valentina, he realizes that something more than chance has brought him to her door. For she has devoted centuries to researching the hidden world of…
I wish I could remember how this podcast came across my radar so I could give credit where it’s due. But alas, I cannot. It’s episode 217 with Dr. Iain McGilchrist. At one point, he shares his perspective about how science and reason can only take you so far: [science and reason] have their limitations. Most scientists and most philosophers are very well aware of that. Some people who are not terribly aware of [this] think that [science and reason] can answer all our questions. The fact that…
→ The New York Times
Vinay Prasad: The Future of Medicine. Extrapolating the modern tendencies of removing humans from the equation, Prasad (unintentionally?) presents a bleak scenario indeed. For a reality check, here is Cory Doctorow. The anonymous Slime Mold Time Mold author: You Can Discover the Drives. An interesting analogy between human drives — from the basics like thirst and hunger to the more complex ones like the need for recognition — and chemical elements. Chris Good: Not your keys, not your songs.…
Read Developing your mindfulness practice 🙂! now!So… read any good pamphlets lately?I love a good pamphlet, and by that I mean crazy pamphlet, even when it was Jack Chick telling me that I am going to hell. The internet has ruined them. A pamphlet is like a mode of poetry with constraints imposed not by rules (length of stanzas, rhyme patterns, etc) but by size and cost and commitment to get the thing finished and to the printer in time to hand out at the next demo or march. Hand out enough of…
Dead links just makes me sad... (2026/07/16 15:26)
How very British. And you know exactly what I mean by that. To officially open Mosquito Month on Hush-Kit, we hand you over to the Pub Warlord himself, historian, comedian and drummer, Al Murray. “I am not a fan of overpraise, hype, too much buzz. Something in it makes me baulk, refuse the hurdle. Whole […]
Cal Revely-Calder (who has an interesting Three Things substack) writes about faces in the New Yorker (archived); I was enjoying its brio and historical tidbits, but when I got to this passage I knew I had to post it: Yet there’s another side to this coin. Our vocabulary also speaks of invention, even artifice. The English word “face” derives from the Latin facies, implying a created form; so does the French visage, from videre, suggesting something seen from without. “Mask,” “masque,”…
The first copies have arrived of my strangle little boxy book about murderous women, vampires, bird-girls, and wayward governesses. You can pick up a signed copy here:https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/marry-kiss-kill-kristy-bowen(or, you could subscribe to my Patreon $13 tier and I will automatically send a copy with other goodies.)
Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. ***I think we're all familiar with the joke that starts with the words, "What's a Greek urn?"And, this week in 1976, one Greek must have been urning a fortune.That's because he was Demis Roussos and he'd just hit the Number One spot on the UK singles chart, courtesy of his never-to-be-forgotten EP The Roussos Phenomenon.The neighbouring album chart, on the other hand, found its roost still…
Dear Pilgrim,Hallo! We are so glad that you chose our little pamphlet. Thank you for trusting us enough to connect!Recall a blessed moment from childhood. You pause in a dappled glade. Insects drone, the machine noise that underlies everything. Butterflies dance from flower to flower.Beautiful.Mindless.Then a special visitor emerges.A timid kangaroo, deciding all was safe, hopped from shelter to nibble fresh grass shoots.You were in the moment, totally absorbed.You were mindful.Choose your…
The cover is a simple, cardstock cover with simple gold foil lettering on the cover. I picked up the Midori “Commonplace Book” ($5 and available in 2 colors) . This A6-sized, 61-numbered-page mini notebook includes a paper bookmark that is printed with lines to add your own key, a place to store your key in the book, and a 2-page spread index that is numbered to match page numbers. The Commonplace Notebook Features There is a little brochure included with the notebook that includes information…
Homer, Odyssey, tr. Daniel Mendelsohn (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2025), p. 57 (from "A Note on the Translation"): Wherever possible, I have tried to avoid words whose modernity would jolt readers out of the world that is the epic’s setting. In Book 11, for instance, the ghost of Agamemnon describes how he was murdered at the feast given to celebrate his return from Troy, a passage in which he uses the word eranos, often translated as “picnic.” But “picnic” is what my late friend…
