Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, Frederic William Burton, watercolor and gouache, 37 x 24 in. (95 x 61 cm), in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. Link is to a Wikipedia page with access to a large image. Taken from a medieval ballad is the story of Hellelil, who falls in love with her bodyguard, Hildebrand. This is to the displeasure of her father, who sends Helleli’s seven brothers to kill Hildebrand. Much unpleasantness ensues. Burton has chosen a…
My relationship with my father has always been unstable. As I was growing up, I have always been the "good boy". Every aspect of my life was his design. He even tried to influence my children. I never dare to say no to him, but the resentment builds within me. Eventually everything boiled over in my early 40s. We did not have a fall out; I decided to do what I see and feel is correct. Many times, his words, his actions become my problems as I need to undo the damage or maintain peace at home. I…
A look at the CSS line height unit and how it works.
Since deciding to try and hunt down all of the butterfly species of the UK, I've visited the north of England a couple of times and also spent an afternoon wandering around Grafton Wood on my way back from fishing with Ben down in Pembrokeshire. In the process, I've manged to see another seven species of butterfly and photographed six of them. My first brown hairstreak didn't want to be photographed sadly, so I'll need to try again at some point in the future. Here are the half dozen that were…
Two years and change have passed since I last addressed the topic of other jazz artists doing covers of Guaraldi compositions, back in this original post.To recap, the goal is to compile an ever-expanding list of jazz artists who've recorded a) original tribute compositions honoring Guaraldi; and b) covers of Guaraldi compositions other than "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and the Charlie Brown Christmas quartet — "Linus and Lucy," "My Little Drum," "Christmas Is Coming" and "Christmas Time Is…
A quick one to take you into the weekend. Tokyo Shoegazer have released a second video clip from Remains, and like the video for『Missing』, it’s a pretty straight performance clip of a banger of a song given a distinct visual aesthetic by trading the multiple exposure camera techniques for high-key lighting. Short and sweet. The post Tokyo Shoegazer -『The Reckoning』 appeared first on Space Echo.
Jake Casella Brookins Hello, fellow readers! Lots of exciting things happening at ARB: we just sent out our first round of contributor honoraria, which is a huge milestone for us—thanks again to everyone who made that possible. Misha & I are also ironing out the last details in sending out rewards for our fundraiser: if you contributed there, please keep an eye on your email in case we need any details from you. And, on the actual magazine-contents side: we’ve got some very cool articles in…
This article tells part of the story of Maxis Software. I don’t think people realize how much tactical and strategic forethought goes into their daily lives. There’s a whole subconscious time-efficiency layer in our lives. In essence, real-time strategy is our lives. — Will Wright On the morning of October 19, 1991, two weeks after writing his last bit of code for SimAnt, Will Wright climbed out of bed and smelled smoke. Looking out the window of his home in the Oakland Hills of California he…
Pasteis de Nata.
One of the surest ways to infuse my existence with misery is to sit me in front of a computer screen for multiple hours on end. Unfortunately for me, this past week has been mostly that, and the next week will likely entail more of the same. Some days I find myself clocking in something like 12 hours straight at the computer. Needless to say, this is not the life of the artist one aspired to as a child, but it is exactly what the job necessitates (at least for me I guess) in this evidently…
You know what's hilarious? Scientology speedruns.If you, too, are late to the party, this is a shadowbanned TikTok trend from April of 2026. It takes effort to run down actual footage without feeding the attention economy lampreys, but hey, wait, was that a “Subway Surfers” meme‽ ((Bonus points for the Jesus and Sonic outfits. Anyone got a Travolta mask?))I, much like L. Ron Hubbard, fucking hate runners.^[Look up “fair game” in Scientology. Also, see Leah Reimini's decade-old AMA on Reddit.]…
SPIDER-MAN — SPIDER-SENSE SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TOY BIZ) Hey, whoah, it’s Friday! Welcome to Friday, here at the Figure in Question, where we like to celebrate the week with a little bit of flashing back, with some addendums to older reviews. Today? We’re taking a second look at a Spider-Man variant that really should have seen it coming! “Perched on a ledge high above the city, Spider-Man’s ‘6th sense’ begins to tingle – providing a split second warning that imminent danger looms…
Like anglers, beekeepers often obsess about the weather.They both need something to blame when things go less well than they had hoped. How many times have you heard “too little rain, no nectar” or “too hot, they weren't biting” ?Or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, this compulsion healthy concern simply reflects the influence of the weather on their hobby.I was reminded of this at 7 am today when I listened to the weather forecast … there's another 'heatwave' on the way, but overnight…
It’s a meme at this point. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov, Go players could say that their game, unlike Chess, was too complex to fall to a computer program. Then AlphaGo showed they were wrong. It just took a better approach. When AlphaFold leaped ahead of human experts in predicting how proteins fold, it was due to a mountain of carefully labeled protein structure data. Other scientists and mathematicians could argue that nothing like that existed in their field, so a similar success was…
Some philosophy professors, on top of all the work they do for the universities at which they’re employed, write public philosophy, and sometimes such writing is on the Substack platform, with some or all of what they write available only to paid subscribers. Is there anything wrong with this? Walter Veit (Reading) thinks there is something wrong with it, and makes his case here. Richard Chappell (Miami) responds here, arguing that we shouldn’t criticize philosophers for paywalling their…
My compulsive response to the deadest Blog Days of Summer ever, exponentially deader than the deadest ever before (I'd like to take credit for here's decline but it's deader and getting deader everywhere), is of course to post an exceptionally self-indulgent autoblogographical bleggalgaze on a Friday, the deadest day of the week every week, and as many angry apocalyptic doomlinks I could collect since the last grid before pushing PUBLISH I used to burn off my extra-manic impulses by pruning the…
We have to remember that our bosses are also human beings. [T]here are days that they could be a certain way. Maybe not the most positive examples of being a boss, but it is what it is. You know, and this is where we give and take just like how we ourselves are not optimally performing every single day, right? — Gerald Lim, Work It (podcast)
The post about the dark mode toggle reminded me of two similar things rattling in my brain. On the positive side, here’s a delightful interaction from macOS. I can easily maximize the window to take up half the screen, but the moment I start dragging it, it recalls and nicely restores itself to its original size: macOS designers correctly figured out that the window being maximized or half-maximized is a state – but it has to be a state dressed up as a size. The button entry point is the…
A little over a year ago, my marital status officially became “Divorced.” Prior to that, for fifteen years, my divorce case was before the courts. Lots of people have been incredulous that a divorce could be so long and complicated (and expensive), but in telling others of my case, I learned that myths about divorce and related matters are common, even among people who got divorced (but didn’t go to court). I also saw flaws in the justice system. Wrongful convictions for serious crimes…
Something new and purdy just arrived! 😃 I’m stoked! I know what I’m doing tonight after everyone goes to bed. 😂
VS Code is a good editor, but its defaults no longer feel quiet to me. The editor has accumulated tabs, sidebars, breadcrumbs, minimaps, notifications, source-control indicators, language services, AI controls, chat panels, inline suggestions, and dozens of small visual prompts. Each feature is defensible on its own. Together, they make the tool feel as if it is constantly asking for attention. I wanted the opposite: a fast window for opening files, moving through text, and writing. Nothing…
It’s been fifty years since information architecture’s coming out party in Philadelphia. Alas, the discipline is still widely misunderstood. The main obstacle? The very thing that brought it to many people’s attention: the World Wide Web. I’d venture most people who’ve heard the phrase ‘information architecture’ have done so in the context of designing website navigation systems. That’s understandable: The web is a huge deal and IA was exactly what it needed early in its development. But IA has…
On this page I was watching a video from Tasting History where Max said: I wanted to let you know about the second channel I recently started. Its in conjunction with YouTube. Essentially, it's marathons of old Tasting History videos. It's a way to give old dead videos a second life. If you go to the channel, you will see that the videos are all around 2 hours long. The channel setup and video naming doesn't feel like something Max did himself. Yet I can understand why Max would agree to this.…
I subscribe to more podcasts than I have the time to actually listen to, and so I’ve got a large backlog going back several years. Currently, I’m working through mid-2021. Hush. I know I have a problem. You don’t need to point it out. Anyway, what I’m finding both simultaneously charming and soul crushing is how so many people are referring to Trump’s presidency in the past tense: how glad they are that he’s gone, how it was such an insane time, how we’re lucky to have survived it at all. Hello…
I don’t have a clear idea about how Austen and Dickens handled their social media platforms, but I suspect the videos of them unboxing their author’s copies were quite popular. I decided to join in the tradition and open “the … Continue reading →
Walking in to the room was an overwhelming experience. The triage nurses in the lobby of the Accident and Emergency unit took a few brief details then asked us to check in using the iPads on the wall just around the corner. As we turned the corner, it hit us that the waiting room was absolutely full. All the seats were taken, and people leaned against the walls and in the passageways, so that they had to shift every time someone went past. It was around 23:30 on a Tuesday. At this point, we had…
image by AI; my own somewhat hyperbolic prompt Reconnaissance The ravens come to feast upon the deer. Their talons are too dull to tear like claws. They smartly team with wolves, as hunting peers And point the way to road kill with their caws. These creatures love to play, nurse others’ chicks, Do barrel-rolls and bathe collectively, Use rocks for self-defence and play with sticks And flying upside down proclaim they’re free. But still, to man, an animal can’t feel — We daren’t believe they…
It’s been a hectic but active week. As usual, I continued with my two P.T sessions. I played a game of Pickleball on Thursday. I also ran twice. This week has been my most active week in quite some time. I took some time to write a blog post about return to running. My trail run training is progressing okay. It’s not spectacular, but I am on it, which is what I think matters. I am nervously excited about it. I am inspired by Soham’s posts about his trail runs. Hopefully, I get to run and…
