Because another fact many wish to ignore is that gatekeepers’ influence is at an all-time low. Book reviews and awards have shrinking influence on sales every year. Self-publishing, in various forms, is enormous. Some gatekeepers (like Big 5 publishers) are still powerful, yes, but they are increasingly reacting to public taste rather than the shapers of it. Of Course It’s The Screens Related 🗨️ being popular is what causes you to become unpopular 🌰 social networks are designed to make…

Nicholas Magand on the unshakable attraction of the kitchen as the social hub of a party: To summarise, the living room was the familiar place to sit and chat with people you already knew: it was a great way to spend time with friends. The kitchen was the crowded space to talk and meet new, weird, interesting people: it was the social network lubricant. Both rooms managed to coexist, and in many ways were codependent. Our house has been in my wife’s family for its entire existence, and was, for…

Flying for the first time since July, to Chicago. To vote. In the Serbian parliamentary elections. Lily Lynch has a good writeup of why these are really really really really important. There are no absentee ballots in Serbia: if you are away from home you either have to haul your behind back, or register to vote abroad. The number of Serbs in Denver being too small to open a polling place there — not that there would be one even if there were more of us, as the soon-to-be former Serbian…

Gosh, we’re getting into the final stretch of the year. And I have now secured a trip home for late December: I’m really looking forward to some catch-ups! People have been very complimentary about the photos taken last weekend, thank-you. Grammar has been, well, tough this week. Allegedly my grammar is now at a beginner N3 level, but I don’t agree with this assessment、それに、俺の日本語力もまだちょっと低いともう。 This week marked the inaugural two meetings of the burger club. Both interesting in their own ways.…

When I was growing up (around like 12 or 14 maybe?) I listened to a lot of Nu Metal. I played in a band in a friend's garage that covered Slipknot and KoRn and System of a Down, and I generally positioned my own teenage difficulties inside that ultra-specific USA-masculinist-performative malaise (a lot of hip hop from this period was confulent with Nu Metal). When I got older (around 18/19), I went to art school and started meeting people from way outside my lower middle class networks; kids my…

these John H. Howe pieces and many more, are at Wright20 My first reaction to the 25 pieces of instantly recognizable Frank Lloyd Wright furniture being sold in Chicago without a single mention of FLW was trademark outrage. The “Private Midwest Commission” they came from was probably a FLW house, I imagined, that’d been stripped of its original furnishings, and in 1980 a dutiful owner was trying to make things right. And all of that might still be true. Also. John. H. Howe was Wright’s chief…

12:36 - We each had 6.5 pancakes. Is that too many pancakes? (Don't answer that.)

Last time I posted here it was almost two months ago and I said "My post break-up spiral seems to finally be leveling out" and it was true, for like two days, and then I spiraled right back down. Am I better now? somewhat. I've been trying really hard to pull myself up. So I thought I'd look back at the last posts and see what I did, what I didn't and so on. Mostly cause I need to put some order in my bain and I don't know where to start. THIS POST IS GONNA BE LONG AND CHAOTIC Here's the plan:…

Another Noita session with music improvisation. I used RealityRipple’s Home-Made Emote Wall for this one and it worked : )

I found this and wanted to share it on because I thought it was a good point to make and its the way most 90s and 2000s website were Source

The night before last, on Gardeners' World, the estimable Monty Don was talking about the beautiful and fragrant shrub Myrtle, which reminded me that I really must get a bush for the garden – and also reminded me of one of those Browning poems with an instantly memorable first line, 'The Patriot'. The first line I remembered was 'It was roses, roses, all the way', but wasn't there something about myrtle too? There was indeed, as I discovered when I reread the poem (after many years, I think). I…

Funny, definitely unexpected in some scenes… But the finale is too much! Rating: 😳Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!

I finally started this game a couple of weeks ago, and I’m loving each tiny detail of it. Wow! *Still in progress* 🏃Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!

A bit boring, but overall a good movie that can be easily remembered… And what a cast it has! Rating: 🫩Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!

Well, this was a thing! Did I like it? Not sure. Rating: 😯Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!

Around one year ago, I was browsing Wikipedia as I usually do, and in some article related to David Bowie, I discovered a mention of a book: 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Curious, I followed the wiki page link to the book itself to find out what it was about. Turns out that it’s a musical reference book, and it was probably no wonder I’d stumbled upon it on a David Bowie page, as he holds the record for the amount of albums in the book. And once I’d gotten to the end of the page,…

§ At work I made a second revision of the table design I started last week. The primary change is that I replaced the unistrut nuts with their 5/16”-18 bolts for much smaller rectangular weld nuts and 1/4”-20 hardware. This new smaller hardware is 1/3rd of the price, easier to work with, and I don’t notice any difference in the sturdiness of the final product. It seems like a win all around. § Halloween is next week, already. We’ve been making a lobster costume for baby Kieran inspired by my…

Bookmarked The Right Words in the Right Order by William Davies. As the education scholar Gert Biesta has argued, over the 1980s and ’90s the very idea of “education” was displaced in favor of an ideal of “learning.” Education implies a teacher, a subject, and a purpose; learning is something an individual does. What Biesta termed “learnification” meant that the transmission and application of knowledge became a priority across society and the economy in order to produce more active,…

I'll say here at the top this isn't a well-researched essay or a grand point I'm making. I'm just thinking aloud. What is a tool? As in, what defines a tool? I consider myself an artist and a craftsperson, so tools are pretty important to me. Not that I am a wizened veteran, but I'm lucky to be doing this full-time for a while now, and I've never had to consider this question. I find AI programs repulsive, in the literal sense of the term, in that I am repulsed by them. I am negatively…

Writing a blog is an interesting experience. So is reading them. The best blogs are the ones where the person behind the keyboard shines through. You can say it takes courage to put yourself and your opinions out there. You would be correct. A lot of that got diminished when social media took over because of its hit and run nature. But blogs and the writers behind them are still there and surface now and again. Today’s Sunday Morning Reading features a few along with a few other tricks and…

DOLMENWOLVES - WEDNESDAY #2-3 The group was still in Oistace Ard's tomb. Curlip was helping to reassemble Wym, the talking skeleton they'd freed last time. Apparently he'd ended up in the spider's web after losing a bet with his skeleton friends. Then they heard panicked shouting from down the hall. The spider they'd chased off last time had run straight into the three remaining skeleton guards. Guillem and Curlip scared it off again. The guards seemed more interested in gambling than actually…

DOLMENWOLVES - THURSDAY #2-3 The Magpies were still waiting for help with the stone dogs that had killed one of their companions. The dogs' chains looked long enough to reach almost everywhere in the room, and the mangled corpse was still lying nearby. Shale edged closer and closer until they could actually touch one. Nothing happened. Just stone. They also tried calling out the name of a hound, Flaegr, in Old Woldish, taking their cue from a poem and the inscription above the door telling them…

I’ve talked about wilding my garden and our wildlife pond. There are so many plants and wildflowers that have popped up through the years since I started doing this. For instance, around the edge of the pond I currently have various wildflowers that come and go as the seasons change, such as dog violet, stinking iris, mullein, various species of poppy. I didn’t plant any of these, they’ve just turned up. Same with the common (yellow) toadflax, which is in flower again for the second time this…

25 Fracture | INDEX | 27 Dumb Self-imposed constraint: Use the letters of the prompt word inside a 2-inch square to illustrate its meaning. Hongdian Black Forest fountain pen, EF, black ink on 120 gsm paper.

The Legend of Zelda, played by two boys on paper.

Notes from the jungle

Baltic Amber. Photo: Harry TabinerThere is something rather wonderful about people who can hold a small piece of stone or amber in their hands and see an entire ancient world waiting to be revealed.My friend Harry Tabiner, based in the United Kingdom, is one of those people. A passionate fossil collector with a particular fondness for amber and fossil preparation, Harry has a wonderful eye

This one might have worked, if it had been able to pull off its core conceit. A supernatural reverse harem about a ghostly librarian sternly correcting a collection of wizard college students, by itself, not a bad premise. Where it fails is a double barreled issue of undermining the power of the dominant to the point of defanging her, and failing to make the male leads distinct enough to create any chemistry. Reverse harem can be hard to pull off, just from the point of sheer logistics. Stories…

The Small Stuff was this month's book club book. Join 3000 other readers to talk about books each month. November's book will be How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff. The main ask of Bogost's book is to get readers to slow down and enjoy the physical experiences already existing in their lives1. Don't just go rake the leaves, enjoy the fresh fall air, the feeling of the rake on the grass. Enjoy the feeling of the carpet on your bare feet. Don't just rush through the chore to get it done so you…