An exhibition at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University, You Are Here: Transit Cartography and Spatial Identity, explores the evolving design language of transit maps and the relationship of that design language with… More
Keep it coming: the video store resurrection continues. The Video Store Minneapolis kicks off its physical store fundraiser and clinches the base goal in two days Joshua M. Greenberg ponders video stores as a lost third place I recall the iconic Video Update logo adorning my old local spot (’90s)
Content warning: this post includes offensive imagery. One of my tasks for the next two weeks is to put together my syllabus for NYU’s new music history class on 20th century American popular music. To start the semester off, I wanted to find a song that spans many styles and eras, and that lays the thematic foundation for what comes after. I decided on “Old Folks At Home” by Stephen Foster, also known as “Swanee River.” This song was written in 1852, but it had a significant presence in the…
Arrived in Porto, Portugal! 🇵🇹
ScreenshotThe post Kindertrauma Funhouse first appeared on kindertrauma.
A friend on facebook says that Hamnet contains a pretty serious error — naming the Costwolds the Chilterns (or, pretty much equivalently, mislocating the Chilterns between Stratford and Oxford). I’m not sure that would ruin the book for me, but I definitely would find it annoying (knowing both areas very well makes it worse, but even if I didn’t know them!). My, recent, error/irritation, was in the film Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer meets Jean Tatlock at a cocktail party and one of them (I forget…
Calculus professors with no experience in numerical computing will tell students that computers calculate trig functions with power series. They don’t. I worked on the implementation of trig functions in hardware, and I can assure you we didn’t just use power series. Power series are an excellent way calculate functions near the center of the series, such as computing sine for small angles. But the further you get from the center, the less useful power series are. Let’s suppose you want to…
“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common,” goes a quote from Satchel Paige. It’s useful and energizing not only because of Satchel’s incredible story, but also because it reminds us that being common is a choice. Questlove writes in Creative Quest, “Once you start making things, once you take that leap, you have the same status as any other artist. I’m not saying that you’re as good. I’m not saying that you’re as important. But all of a sudden it’s a…
After a week of ghosting round the house by myself, my wife and children and back. Let me share some emotional slop (as opposed to AI slop) about what a privilege it is to have them around. This morning I got woken up early (6:15am) and headed downstairs with the one-year-old to wait for the onslaught. An onslaught that arrived at 7am on the dot with the four-year-old making her way downstairs, closely followed by her big brother. A one-year-old is chaotic. All three of them together is…
Our only aim now is to get home, and it seems that we have a Eurostar ticket that allows us to change it up to an hour before the train departs. Consequently around 7am I walk to Gare du Nord to try and change our tickets. The station is already crowded. I discover that it will cost 50 Euros each to change our tickets, and, although tempted, I decline. I walk back and find a place for tea. I ask for “un tasse du the, s’il vous plait.” The woman behind the counter looks blank. “Tea,” I say, and…
Ian Dunt captures a predicament I often find myself facing:Things in the past only take shape and assume their current form once they are over. Things in the present can therefore never live up to them. They can never provide the same degree of certainty, because they are still happening. So we live with this constant defect where we over-emphasise the innocence of what has gone and we underestimate the quality of what is happening.
Hey two quick reminders if you're new here or have mainly been reading this blog for the blog (no shade) Hello hi, I'm MSD: in addition to the photographer, artist and blogger I am here, I am also the frontperson of this chiptune/orchestral indie music band collective thing called Curious Quail (hence the blog's name) and incredibly bad at promoting our music as time goes on so I'm gonna frontload. If you don't want to buy music I totally get it, you can skip down to the first cat photo - but…
The masses are often overruled. How often do they act against the interests of the people they represent? Clear majorities want a decent minimum wage of $17/hour. Majorities support a host of other downright leftist policies. Most americans say government should run a universal healthcare program. These majorities often hold up across political parties and the urban/rural divide. But even with our broad support, we haven't achieved these goals yet. Why not? Our achievements, from the civil…
Two classic string boards are connected by red string in Mind Thief (dir. Matt Steinauer, 2022). ▲ Mind Thief (dir. Matt Steinauer, 2022) ▲ Mind Thief (dir. Matt Steinauer, 2022) ▲ Mind Thief (dir. Matt Steinauer, 2022) ▲ Mind Thief (dir. Matt Steinauer, 2022)
Tomorrow is International Cat Day. If you know me, everyday is Cat Day so let’s celebrate our favorite feline couch potatoes. Trying to narrow down our combined love for stationery and cats was such a challenge. Van Dieman’s has a 15-color ink collection called Feline with fabulous illustrations on the bottles including Persian Princess which looks 100% like Princess Donut (IYKYK). Midori D-Clips Nano Clips – Cat – Box of 16 ($8.50) “Everyday is Caturday” Cat Rainbow Washi Tape ($4) Uni…
It is of course impossible to predict the effects of new AI technologies on total economic growth in a precise way, but there are strong reasons to believe that the effect will be modest for a decade or two, anyway. Charles Jones Jones explores some of the reasons in “AI and Our Economic Future,” in the most recent Journal of Economic Perspectives (Summer 2026). His arguments readily accept that AI capabilities both have grown very rapidly and will continue to grow very rapidly: indeed, Jones…
A worker at a US government lab got bitten by a monkey carrying a deadly virus, and it turned out nobody knew what to do about it. Around the same time, someone from the same lab tried to smuggle outbreak samples into the country. All of this while everyone's worried about AI making bioweapons. Let's take a look.
A week of Blaugust, a honkaku mystery, some music for Bandcamp Friday, Traitors NZ, and more Zelda. We are a week into Blaugust and I have managed a post a day so far. However next Monday I'm back to work for a full seven days so will probably not continue that pace. Probably another link post on Monday or Tuesday and a digest on Friday at least. I also need to spend some more time job hunting. I am only really employed at my current job until the end of September. Which isn't that far away.…
I saw this Spotted Eagle Ray last weekend and it might be the biggest one I’ve ever seen. The head was huge. Compare it with a photo I posted last month (below) of a juvenile Eagle Ray.
Pega Um! mini music player widget (2026/08/07) As I'm working on the site for the local fanzine project Pega Um!, I want to welcome with music the people who pick up the zine and find it interesting enough to visit the site. The playlist is made up of songs by local artists they won't hear on the radio, and is an homage to old alternative events called Junta Tribo (Tribal Gathering) that would have rock, hip-hop, punk, reggae, metal and ska groups all in the same line-up. Check it out here.
Loads of anglers have been a great help to me over the years. I always try and help others when I can as it's always good to give something back to the community. It's also nice when someone tells me that they enjoy reading my fishing related ramblings and if it's helped them get more out of their own fishing then that's even more satisfying. Welsh angler Ben Price is an acomplished match angler and specimen hunter who turned his attention to species hunting a few years ago. Finding this blog…
Last month, I visited Lawers Dam in the Grampian Mountians with my mate Nick, for a day stomping around a boggy hillside hunting for mountain ringlet, a species of butterfly that's only found high up above an altitude of 350m in the Scottish highlands and also down south in the Lake District. Having managed to find the remaining thirty three species of butterfly found in Scotland, the mountain ringlet was the last one I had to see. After a long drive, we spotted one very quickly and my…
The results to the State of CSS 2026 survey are now available. Here's my summary from the parts of the survey that are most relevant to my work on the web platform. My findings are almost entirely based on the free form comments which developers left in the survey. Features developers love Before we get all depressed and dive into pain points and missing features, let's start with some positive stuff. Favorite new features (Results) Developers really like the following new CSS features: Anchor…
tag(s): #fútbol #español Estuvimos de visitas familiares por el sur argentino[1], y tuve dos encuentros tan improbables que quise documentarlos en un post. El gallito en Neuquén Fui con mi sobrino a hacer unas compras cerca de su casa y me presentó al almacenero como "hincha del gallito de Morón". Obviamente como producto de la Zona Oeste de GBA[2], la mención del equipo local inició una conversación con el buen hombre, que me contó que se mudó a Neuquén hace como 20 años. Si bien emigrar a…
Lunch break conversation at Pete Galbert’s school/shop can be as educational as the class itself; George is even taking notes. Maybe it’s Pete’s chairs that ease conversation. We did get up from time to time to make shrink pots and … Continue reading →
In Stonington for an iced tea (and WiFi) Wind filling in and heading west.
*Poor little Mistral
Think I found this at Asian Family Market on 130th & Aururoa. Anyways, it’s all in Korean with a nondescript info sticker. A little image translate and bar code lookup helped with this one. Last one of the week. Kidari Instant Noodle Kimchi Flavor – South Korea A distributor / import sticker (click to enlarge). Detail of the side panels (click to enlarge). Contains ancovy. To prepare, remove lid and add everything in. Add boiling water to line and stir and stir. Finally, stir some more and…
The arbitration award surfaced in the last week of January 2026, and if you listened close enough over the Los Angeles freeway hum, you could almost hear a Stratocaster set down for the last time. Mick Mars, the crooked-spined riff wizard who spent forty-plus years welding sleaze-metal to a Marshall stack, lost. Got flattened. The arbitrator ruled entirely for the band, ordered Mars to repay over $750,000 in unrecouped tour advances, and added a coda reading like a shrug in a black robe: he…
On her blog, Lea Verou makes a case that each user-facing website dark-mode toggle should only ever show two options, but in a smart way. The challenge is that any dark mode toggle needs to actually accommodate three options: dark, light, and the default “whatever the system says” (which can be always dark, always light, or change with the time of day). Many toggles simply pass that complexity onto the user: I want to get something out of the way: I don’t think Verou’s article as an article is…
