Equal Earth • Greenwich Meridian A world map for everyone The Equal Earth Wall Map is for schools, organizations, or anyone who needs a map showing countries and continents at their true sizes relative to each other. Africa appears 14 times larger than Greenland as it actually is. And wherever you live, the map has you covered. Download a choice of three versions centered on these regions: Africa/Europe, the Americas, and East Asia/Australia. Other features include: • It’s free. Download the…
Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got deaths, rebirths and football. This week’s big news was something everyone’s been expecting for a while: Humphrey Smith, owner of the Samuel Smith brewery in Tadcaster, has died at the age of 81. Some of the tributes have a ‘don’t speak ill of the dead’ quality about them and use not-so-subtly coded language that indicates he was a difficult man to like. In the world of pubs and brewing, some have…
Daily Drawing 916
There is just something about the Canadian Prairies that I feel compelled to explore in my railway modelling. A curious blend of early first hand memory tempered by HO scale models built and enjoyed with my Dad in my teens. I've traced familiar lines out on paper but have, until now, not tackled this curiosity directly...Last year I found photos of Carlton and was almost tipped over the edge but somehow held my nerve. I'm not quite sure what was the trigger this time, it doesn't seem very long…
Everyone’s trying to understand Trump’s mysterious bond with Putin. There may indeed be kompromat, but I propose that the following is equally significant: Trump lived in a realm of comparatively modest transgression. Petty extortion, fraud, sexual coercion. As a psychopath, he was always capable of far worse, but in his world, deeper evil wasn’t part of his in-game experience. By thinking too small — by needlessly narrowing himself — he’d been leaving money on the table. Then he met Putin, who…
A year ago I took a career break after 28 years of web development. My goal was to study a variety of topics, and pursue hobbies like game development and technical writing. Runway 🛫 To accomplish this, my aim was to live a very frugal lifestyle, to stretch out my savings – some call this Lean FIRE. Despite the chaos abroad and some at home (e.g. furnace repairs), my portfolio did rather well. In fact, I ended up slightly ahead.
Where one would like to see less "meta posts", another starts a month of reply collecting... Gotta love the vibe there!
Nightshade, my angel, turned 12 yesterday. Now that we have his heart problem under control, and most of his teefs out, he is living his best life (apart from every morning when I force a pill down his throat). I love him so much 😭
Here is a guy wearing a shirt covered in images of Shohei Otani's face: I saw a lot of interesting garments at the July 2nd Dodgers game in LA - the "One Piece night" game - but this was possibly the best one I found. If it seems like I am doing a lot of tourist stuff in LA all at once, I am - this is the kind of thing that happens in the summer when you live in a big city and all your relatives want to visit the city at the same time all your friends are having blowout birthday parties and…
Editor’s Note: Post originally published on July 7, 2025. Each year on July 4th, Americans pause to celebrate a powerful ideal: freedom. Enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution are the freedoms of religion, speech, press, and peaceful assembly. These are no small matters; they’re essential to any flourishing civil society. But beyond fireworks … Continue reading What Is True Freedom? A Catholic Reflection The post What Is True Freedom? A Catholic Reflection first appeared on The…
If you’re looking for an easy summer dessert that’s light, creamy, and bursting with fresh berry flavour, this Summer Berry Cheesecake Fluff is just the thing. It’s a no‑bake treat that comes together in minutes — soft, whipped cheesecake filling folded with juicy seasonal berries for a cloud‑like bowl of sweetness. Perfect for picnics, potlucks, or those warm evenings when you want something delicious without turning on the oven, this simple fluff is refreshing, family‑friendly, and endlessly…
Happy Fourth of July! We are going to take the day off to celebrate the holiday and, more importantly, to honor the marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. We'll be back tomorrow with a joint letters/questions post. Click here for full story
An end of week recap “To read books seriously is to be staggered by the knowledge of how many more books will remain beyond your ken. It’s like looking up at the star-filled sky.” – James Fallows Fourth of July… 4th July… I’m sure something significant is meant to be happening today. Ahh yes, of course – it’s International Cherry Pit Spitting Day! How could I forget? And, incidentally, a very happy American Independence Day to those who celebrate. It is also Alice in Wonderland Day, marking the…
Japanese UpdateStarted truly doing more input by setting up a whole NotebookLM with my learning data and a curriculum. The drill is amazing, though it does require a lot of focus which I do not have with kids. I think I will try again tonight, if the night allows, then I can continue that on kids days.Also, considering stopping with my premade Anki decks. I am at a point where I am getting words I actually do not encounter so much to solidify. Having started sentence mining from text is proving…
Philipp Lahm’s articles in The Athletic are one of my favourite perks of remaining subscribed to the New York Times. Having watched him as a midfielder for both Bayern and the German mannschaft, his tactical appreciation for the game and grounded philosophy come as no surprise to me. His recent article on Germany crashing out of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the knockout stages is one example. ‘The disallowed goal was a harsh decision, and to my mind a wrong one,’ says Lahm, ‘but you cannot let…
Hot on the heels of Projectile 3.0 comes Projectile 3.1! Three days apart, yes. There’s a story there. A big chunk of what’s in 3.1 was originally meant for 3.0, but 3.0 was already turning into a monster of a release and I decided to cut it into two, so I’d actually be able to reason about each of them. So think of 3.1 less as “the next release” and more as “the second half of 3.0 that I was too scared to ship all at once”. There was also a bit of calendar mischief involved. I really wanted a…
I’m glad to (finally) see some buyer’s remorse in the corporate ranks about their rapid deployment of AI, often at the expense of jobs (or so they claim). Costs are rapidly rising. Software quality is plummeting. Morale is tanking. The workers are getting angry. People are swamped with slop. About the only ones happy with this change are sociopaths who live increasingly solipsistic lives with a sycophantic word extruder (and maybe some jaded senior developers who want to get paid as much as…
It’s Friday night and I’m registering a domain, as one does.
Another rough week — still coming to grips with last week. Highlight of the week: our remaining cat is being a sweetheart — the night we had her brother put to sleep, she played with me for the longest I think she’s ever played with me before, then the next morning she snuggled under the covers with me which she doesn’t usually like Looking forward to: long weekend Stuff I did: 1 hour consulting + 1 hour business admin took Friday off for the holiday settling into our new one-cat life — she…
The best thing about Independence Day in the United States is that no one is obligated to observe it. And if you do, regardless of how eccentrically or offensively, that’s your business. Don’t impose your protest or drunken shenanigans on me or my family but otherwise you have carte blanche to express your patriotism, or its absence, as you wish. That’s what “the freedom of speech” and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” mean, according to the First Amendment of our Constitution.…
The bad (but not really that bad) news is I went a bit overboard on the steps today, walking so much before my run that I turned my 5K into a 2.5K (see previous running post for details) after slogging along for 16 minutes. The good news is that despite all the steps, I’m not totally exhausted or anything. During the run it was muggy, and I was slow. At one point I felt a bit of a stitch coming on, but it retreated, and I was fine. I think I mentioned this before, but as I hit the six-week…
Saturday 4th July 2026 Thanks for all the positive comments following last month’s blogpost marking the publication of the first issue of Bus Business in June 1986 . Among the reactions was the following from the newspaper’s founder and managing editor Peter Stonham: “thanks for your delightful reflections on the 40th anniversary of Bus Business. You have excellent memory, an obvious great archiving capability, and a ‘news nose’ that seems strangely familiar to me ….Thanks a lot for this…
The Daphne Falls band had a really good rehearsal last night. And it just reinforces that this band kind of ticks all the boxes for me. Via the MPC, I’m doing drums, bass, keys, and some samples too. And it’s really exactly in my zone, and it’s a really great fit for me. I told them when I started playing keyboards with them, probably a year and a half ago, that this is the only band I really qualify to play keys for. And that’s very true. It’s certainly the only band I qualify right now to do…
Bruce Schneier: AI agents are agents of the person or organization that deploys them—and should be treated by the law as such. If a company hired human writers to write its summaries, that company would be liable for inaccuracies in those summaries. If a company’s human agent signed contracts in the company’s name, that company would be bound by those contracts. And if a doctor gave dangerously wrong medical advice, they would be liable for malpractice. To allow businesses to hide behind the…
I thoroughly enjoyed myself tonight downtown for the First Friday drum circle. It was very warm, and at first there were only 3 or four people there. The soccer world cup was taking place, so at first glance, it seemed to impact the turnout. Anyways, a friend from another drum circle showed up too, and she smoked out with Dave early on. Well, I guess David didn't warn her that his pot is super high yield, so pretty soon she was having a super great time and was laughing so much, it was great to…
I feel like I'm more androgynous than I give myself credit for, which makes me happy. I want to lean into it more, find more outfits that kinda toe the gender line. Something to work on, but it makes me happy.
When I was an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr, I remember reading Edward Saïd’s “Orientalism” and having my mind blown. It has colored my perspective of the world ever since. One of the things I love best about food writing … Continue reading →
I fell asleep for a couple hours earlier, so when I woke up, I didn't really feel like going to bed, so I decided to drive down to the waterfront and find out what the nightlife was like. I did not expect there to be a big event going on, though I should have with the holiday tomorrow. I ended up walking a lot, being a ball of nervous energy. Then I went to a little wine bar I was interested in, sat around at their rooftop bar for a while with an expensive mocktail (would it be rude to just ask…
📍 mango tree cafe 😋 Location: Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanComment by email
Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Earlier this year, my wife read M. L. Wang's Blood Over Bright Haven at my recommendation. While she was in the middle of reading it, she suggested the Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. The Bone Shard Daughter is the first book of the Drowning Empire series. There's quite a few mysteries that drive the plot, making it difficult to make a spoiler free review. But that honestly is it's greatest strength - the book presents a…
