Yesterday — in my posting “National days”, a Peruvian (delivering food to my house) celebrated US Independence Day on my behalf: My dinner for June 27 was delivered by a courier bubbling over in delight about the coming Fourth of July, which he identified as my national day (adding that he was Peruvian and his national days came at the end of July…) In the posting, I played things the way the courier framed them and didn’t appreciate that he was probably also full of delight in America’s…
The turret house at 3880 NE Wistaria, built in 1928, has been through hard times the last 30 years. A Portland brother and sister duo who restore old homes purchased the house in February 2026 and are underway with restoration. New owners of the turret house at 3880 NE Wistaria have begun restoration work on the unique and visible 1928 home, tackling the biggest challenge first: decades of unaddressed water damage to the garage, porch and southern exterior wall. Siblings Amber Chang and Kyle…
Physical gaming collectors, enthusiasts, and preservationists got a lot of bad news over the last week or so. First, it was announced that the much anticipated GTA6, probably the biggest most anticipated gaming release of this generation, will NOT have a disc in physical retail, it will just be a code in a box. Then a couple of days ago another bombshell, this time from Sony: physical disc production for Playstation consoles is ending in 2028!! "As consumer preferences and the broader…
1 Therapist - “I think you should morn the children you’re not going to have… as if that loss was measurable and as tragic as it feels.” Drew - “I am trying to but it’s hard since we still talk.” Therapist - “I fall on your discernment of whether us seeing each other is too hard on you or not.” Drew - “I don’t think I can handle a life without you…” 2 Alison Josephine Mouse (she changed her last name so she would share one less thing with her father). Was looking for a choice that did not…
Desktop apps, reimagined by you. Create any app in minutes by chatting with AI. Beautiful, powerful, and truly personal. – Glaze’s description on their site This is a static Hugo site running on GitHub Pages. So my authoring setup was pretty simple. I’d just author the Markdown in a WYSIWYG Markdown editor, preview the site on my browser with a local Hugo dev server, and git commit + push to publish.
Click here to book for the Gentle Author’s Tours On the semiquincentennial, as we contemplate the disturbing irony of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in which the American colonies set out to rid themselves of the tyranny of monarchs, readers may be curious to know that the Declaration in it’s first printed form (known as the Dunlap Broadside) was set in type imported from the Caslon letter foundry in Chiswell St in the City of London. Caslon’s four lines pica of 1766 was used…
A nice and I think effective notification preview in Retro, with a verbatim sample text of a notification right below its name: Not only you can see exactly what you’re going to get and make a much better-informed decision, but the app even uses actual names of your in-app contacts, so you can relate to the notifications more.#attention #preview
I went to San Francisco to attend the 2026 Figma Config conference.
back in 2024, the area near Tokyo Station had all these walls with artwork on themthey were building a high rise The other day, I was surprised to see the artwork gone and the building almost finishedApparently it is part of the Bus Terminal in the area Love that there are places to sit, look forward to exploring this area later this yearLove the art work in the window of Nihonbashi
Saturday ActivityHumid hills. 🥵Comment by email 4.3km 31.5min 53.8m climbed avg bpm
I doubt too many people would be surprised to know that A Midsummer Night's Dream ranks as the most frequently-produced play in the Open Air Theatre's history, although in my personal experience (this is now my third) they've not yet managed a production that's lived up to the perfect summer setting. Atri Banerjee's won't buck that trend, though at least in a year that's not served the play particularly well it's streets ahead of the Globe's current infantile attempt. The big idea behind…
This comic is a promotional comic from Buster Brown shoes. If you went into a shoe store and tried on Buster Brown shoes you would get a comic book with the name of the store stamped/printed on it. Buster Brown (and his dog Tag) were a feature of 1950s and 1960s shoe store. In this case Buster goes to Mars and tames a space dog. But of course the adult at home doesn't believe him even though the Martians gave him a medal.Buster Brown Goes to Mars. (Promotional comic from Buster Brown Shoe…
(You can click on these.) Addendum to last week’s newsletter: I learned from Leia that the last words of David, the patron saint of Wales, can be translated in part to “be cheerful and do the little things.” What a lovely coda! Thanks, Leia. Let’s not get stepped on today. —Brendan
We’re a week away from the 46th Shore Leave Convention, once again being held at the Lancaster Wyndham Resort and Convention Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Like last year, the con has a handy mobile schedule page now available: https://www.shore-leave.com/mobile-schedule You can click on “People” and then on the individual names to find their panel schedules. My own panels are as follows: Friday, July 10 6 pm, Ballroom B: Why Has Godzilla Endured All These Years? Robert Greenberger…
Where: DeBoville Slough, Blakeburn Lagoons Park (Port Coquitlam), Alouette River/Trans Canada Trail (Pitt Meadows) Weather: Mostly sunny, 17-22°C Spoiler: I forgot to wear sunscreen. I am the lobster. DeBoville Slough The slough as we started out. We previously visited the slough in extremes of heat and cold, but today it was in the Goldilocks zone of just right, if Goldilocks was into sloughs instead of stealing porridge from bears. By the way, we did not see any bears, but we did see frequent…
Yes, we would break several laws to climb to the top of the Empire State Building to help everyone learn that the Mai Tai that Trader Vic brought to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1953 did not contain any pineapple juice. It is easy to see how this myth developed, as there weren’t a lot of vintage 1950s era Mai Tai recipes floating around and there was no effort to tie these loose ends together until our work on this started in 2021. Once all the pieces were gathered it was clear that not only did…
One side of this meadow area at the music school is grassy with flowers, the other is flowery with grasses. I treat the grassy side like the hay meadows of old and cut it at some point after midsummer. The flowery side is mass of Knapweeds at the moment which I will leave till they go to seed. I would like to say I got the scythe out but I used the brush cutter, then the strimmer, then the lawnmower...
View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Calm and surprisingly muggy. How did I overachieve by only running 2.5 km, especially when my recommended workout from Garmin was a 27-minute run? Because I had a doctor appointment at 9 a.m., walked home from that (3 km), then walked to the lake (4 km) and did a bunch of walking around between these two things, meaning by the time I started the run I had already covered something like 10 km on foot. I was tired before I started, I just didn’t know it. I found…
AI flooded the internet. Google broke search. Company poisoned the river. Pharma knew, shipped anyway. Parliament voted. Fairy tales. A man did every one of those things. With a name, a face, a paycheck.
Web Novel Review: I Ruined the Long Ao Tian Script by Jiu Qian ShangThe Story Xu Shulou has been having nightmares. In these dreams the newest member of her cultivation sect, a young woman named Bai Roushuang, starts a relationship with Xu Shulou’s longtime fiancee. Her fiancee, Lu Beichen has never liked her. Their engagement was a political arrangement made by his elders. When he falls in love with the beautiful, and perpetually in distress damsel Bai Roushuang he breaks their engagement.…
[Supposedly, it’ll be a good thing!] Scientists have developed a diving suit for cyborg cockroaches why not? The most immediate practical application is for enhancing search-and-rescue robots. …Using live cockroaches solves a lot of problems because you can use their own muscles and metabolism, which biology perfected for efficient energy use over millions of years of evolution. The electronics only steer them. OK, that’s pretty clever. Now imagine a swarm of hundreds or even thousands of these…
Finish reading the book traveling home by train.
Last updated 6 minutes ago Robert Birming of Junited is running the 3rd year of July Reply this month. It's a challenge to reply to blog posts! So get ready to see a lot of "re:"/me actually posting here for a bit! I have two ideas fo things to reply to already, and I will scout around for other posts as well this month. They will all be listed here once I have posts! if you liked this post, please: message, email, or follow me online tip me share this post follow my posts by rss or atom…
What is needed now is an unwavering discernment, the ability to unmask being as being, to closely interrogate an ever-present awareness at the heart of all experience. At the outset of any such investigation, we must forget all priors so as to come back to awareness afresh, to sit in silence with being, arms outstretched, to receive an untainted understanding. Abandon all preconceptions and beseech awareness. Retreat to being. The task should turn neither to intuition untempered, nor to reason…
David Sheiner, who had a recurring role on the short-lived sitcom Diana, guest starred on shows from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to Murder, She Wrote, and appeared in such movies as The Odd Couple (1968) and Blue Thunder (1983), died on June 5, 2026, at the age of 98.David Sheiner was born on January 13, 1928, in the Bronx. He graduated from DeWitt High School and then served in U.S. Army Air Forces. After his service, he took acting lessons for eight years on a scholarship from Lee Strasberg.…
There are few things in angling quite as satisfying or quite as nerve-racking as watching a great slab of floating crust drift lazily towards a summer chub that has already spotted you before you've even spotted it. Clear water has a habit of making an angler feel like he's wearing a fluorescent jacket and tap shoes, while the chub sits beneath an overhanging bush looking as suspicious as a home office inspector at a cash-only car wash in Coventry.Chub have earned their reputation for caution…
"The Unicorn in Captivity" from the Rochefoucould Unicorn TapestriesSam Sorensen (plus Misha and Walid) did a review of Unicorn Meat over on the Dead Letters podcast earlier this week and I think it touched on some important points and quite a few bits worthy of response, so I’m breaking the prime directive and writing up a response.(And just to defuse any worries that any beef is involved here, Sam directly encouraged me to write the response up like this instead of just letting it go as…
Don’t comfort me by wizard’s craft, Seeing twice a witch’s eye spells are ready to my hand, and needn’t further lye. The wizards beg dusty books, but they haven’t roots nor bone. Cut out parchment, bleached, knowing no growth beside tone. A wizard sings! Songs of mud. A witch, the dirt-dance. Dancing tonight with us and together dirt-dance. Oh listless, listen! Know what witch bare truths loudly. Remember which truths tonight. Heed little flashes of light. Electrokrill!
One thing I’ve been discussing with Rudi, Michel and Max is union find annotations. Union find enhancements that still feel like union finds.
