Camper Van Beethoven Telephone Free Landslide VictoryGet It At Discogs Camper Van Beethoven were one of the great, pioneering indie rock bands. When Spinart released the Cigarettes & Carrot Juice box in 2002, legions of Camper fans probably rushed out to pick up remastered versions of great albums that had been out of print for years. Two years later, when Spinart made the individual albums available again, this time augmented by bonus tracks (the box set contained just the original albums, as…
Verdict: underperforming relative to potential, long way to go to fulfill the creed. _ Reply via email
"Did you buy this rug because the neighbours are coming?" A nervy couple (Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen) invite their cool but intense neighbours (Edward Norton, Penelope Cruz) over to dinner. What fun it is to watch a film where the entire room is roaring with laughter. A chamber piece set around a dinner party is nothing new, and yet… something just clicked here that takes it to another level. The casting is excellent. All the actors understood the brief and ran with it in a way you don’t often…
8617/21536When I had chemo in 2021 it came with some fun side effects. It made me slightly hallucinate (or see the world as it really is, who knows?). I was reading a mind-bending book about quantum physics at the time and I fancied that I could start to see the blocks that made up reality. Also I saw a hare standing in a field at dusk who was standing stock still, but then turned into a crow (or something like that - I must have blogged about it, but can't find it).
I have been to Europe a handful of times in my life, but I've actually never been anywhere in Europe during the summer. So I was genuinely surprised to learn that many countries in Europe have extremely little air conditioning. I'd never considered running air conditioning any time I was in Europe - including the time I lived in Dublin for three or four months - so I'd never realized it wasn't available. I was silently reading a lot of the social media fighting about AC during the heat dome…
When OpenAI announced they were sunsetting Pulse, I used their recommended prompt to schedule a daily update. Two days in, I think it’s actually better than Pulse was. No pretty pictures, but both yesterday and today were more relevant, more actionable, and more attached to recent conversations.
Sail off anchor 6:20 on a clear, beautiful morning. Can hear the surf breaking on the beach on the other side of the banks. A flood tide running west to east, light southwest wind. Making 0.5 against the tide, then 0.9 with better wind. Shackleford Banks to port, Back Sound to starboard, and I could not be happier.7:15 making 1.5 to the west-northwest, Beaufort Inlet markets barely visible in the distance. 7:30 tack out off the beach to get around some shallows.7:30 gps crawls up to 2.4, the…
For our first July 4th together outside of Texas, we are doing the most Texas thing available: smoking a brisket. This is how it looked last night before it went on the smoker. (Don’t worry, the foil did not go with it.)
I’m not washing them that way for the fun of it; that is literally what the washing instructions demand.
Can a novel written in 1880 perfectly capture the messy, conflicting depths of modern human psychology? Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov does exactly that, pitting fierce faith against razor-sharp atheism. The Brothers Karamazov, a novel written in the 19th century (published in 1880), explores human psychology, faith, religion, the human condition, fatherhood, suffering and several themes. Dostoevsky creates a stage for these characters and the characters run around and make the story…
I’ll leave this here.
Happy birthday, USA! Millennium-wise, I guess this would be the Q1 reporting deadline. My old July 4 post about the Museum of the American Revolution. Flag is out in front of the house. Went to the farmer’s market and forgot I should have put on my flag tie. When did I buy an American flag tie, for what occasion? It seems to me I’ve always had it. On the way back from the market, saw kids decorating their bikes with flag streamers for the annual bike parade. My kids, when they were small, used…
When I was in college and got a dorm room through a scholarship, I had a friend who dealt more closely with the grunge of life. We were both part of the staff of the college’s newspaper, often working long nights that stretched into tired mornings of drip coffee and cheap Chinese food. When it was time to head back to my room, KU would go to the parking garage, where he’d sleep in his car, or if it wasn’t too late (and by that I mean to early in the morning), in the office under one of the…
I had a fun conversation last night with my Friday RPG group about campaign length. I’ve been chasing what I think of as the platonic ideal for campaigns for almost 40 years: the ongoing game that doesn’t end, or at least runs for a good long time. I’ve never even come close. If memory serves, my record is 3 years. And yet to this day, when I start a campaign, 90% of the time it’s structured in such a way that I could run it forever. …So why am I still trying achieve this thus-far-unachievable…
This update covers Sunday 06-28-26 through Saturday 07-04-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 I barely escaped melting! Oh yeah, America turns 250 this week. 📕 The extreme heat warning for STL this week was no joke! I realize parts of the US east of me have it worse, and I do not envy anyone living in that part of the country. 📜 I am about a week away from finally having my mother’s ashes buried, and it’s finally feeling “real” to me. ❤️🩹 A side-effect of GLP-1 medication is increased…
Kim made this for me in 2002.
Two articles I think are worth reading on this, the 250th birthday of the United States because they describe how far we have come, yet still the same, while fighting against what we tell ourselves is the norm of civilization. America, 1926: What a Forgotten 100-Year-Old Report Says About Who We Are Derek Thompson https://www.derekthompson.org/p/america-1926-an-absurdly-deep-dive “In other ways, the America of 1926 was another world—practically another planet. Roughly half of the U.S. still…
Listening to the latest Anish Kumar EP (AK Cuts) and then another episode of Dialectic podcast (with Tyler Cowen and Nabeel Quereshi) and enjoying the sun streaming in the windows. The gym staff were wearing red white and blue top hats in the lobby. Unknown location (probably inside)
Valve announced the Steam Machine and its price(s), causing much unrest online. Some saw it coming, some are disappointed, some have a more realistic view that this is the price of non-subsidized hardware in 2026. I think the price is fine for what you get, but you should not be paying it if you are comfortable building a computer yourself. Let’s put the Steam Machine into perspective. When you buy one you get a console-like experience with the ever growing catalog of Steam. But you also get a…
A lizard without a tail is not considered the catch of the year by his peers and so poor Sam, tailless but hungry for a little love, is in something of a pickle. He is forced to watch as boy lizard with full tails get the girl, leaving him without a hope in the world. However, h’s a plucky little guy and with the help of his best friend, he goes about finding a replacement - from the things we leave behind. Will his new-found prosthetic enable him to discover love? Or has he really been looking…
This quick and easy guide is mostly for my fellow writers and anyone else who occasionally needs special paragraphs in their document. Imagine this. You’ve just finished the final draft of your 125-page work of genius. In this epic, you showed what your central character was thinking by putting their thoughts in a separate paragraph and formatting them as italics. An agent is interested, but only if you change the way you format those thought paragraphs. If only there were a way to change them…
🎾 Don’t remember the last time I played tennis, must have been 27 years ago - back when I was a teenager. Totally going to feel it tomorrow, but damn that was a total workout.
From “This Floating Store on Lake Ontario Challenges How We Think About Convenience” via My Modern Met (via SEMI RAD) “In most cities, convenience stores are never too far away, but have you ever seen one floating on water? Moored in the Harbour Square Park Basin on Toronto’s Lake Ontario, a fully stocked shop called Global Convenience is turning the familiar bodega into something far less accessible, and that’s exactly the point. It invites visitors to think about daily rituals, accessibility,…
We're all guilty of our main character syndrome moments but really leaning into it by talking to your friend(s) about me in front of me like I'm not there or just a background character in your life will piss me off fast. I think this happens even more because I'm a foreigner and French people will often act like I 1) can't speak and understand French perfectly fine and 2) haven't been living here for over ten years. This is far from the first time. #France
Sidewalk chalk art at 22nd and Irving St in #SanFrancisco in front of Uncle Benny's donuts, where, miraculously,* there was no line this morning. Maybe(?) it's supposed to suggest a bagua? I'd expect more, uh, mid-octant U-turns where there are straightaways to really get something bagua-like. Maybe I'm just jumping to a culturally-insensitive conclusion based on the presence of Chinese characters at the bottom which I can't even read. Yet I suppose that Pac-Man on top would be handy for…
Just the other day, I saw someone post another one of those "Deliverability Ranked by ESP" charts, and frankly, it drives me nuts. These charts are inaccurate and misleading. There is no useful way to generate a single "snapshot metric" that tells you you'll get better inbox placement on Platform A versus Platform B. Why? Because that's simply not how deliverability works.So, how do you actually evaluate deliverability when trying to decide which email service provider (ESP) or marketing…
Thin tender ribbons of kohlrabi make an elegant salad that's popular with many chefs I know. Surprisingly, it's also very easy to make at home. With a mandoline slicer and a vegetable peeler you can transform these vegetables into a simple dish worthy of any restaurant menu in just a few minutes. Read on and... Read More The post Shaved Kohlrabi Salad with Herbs and Lemon appeared first on Forager | Chef .
by Fiona Moore I can report two exciting developments this month. Number one, I've received my first official decimal currency! Here's my 2p worth Yes, two "new pence", newly minted. While I do think the old coins were prettier, the new ones are reassuringly solid, and Britain does have to, belatedly, come into the twentieth … Continue reading [July 4, 1971] New Worlds, Old Words: New Worlds Quarterly #1 → The post [July 4, 1971] New Worlds, Old Words: New Worlds Quarterly #1 appeared first on…
Kohanaiki Beach Park is known locally as Pine Trees and is a popular surf spot. But even when there’s decent surf, there will almost always be spots where toddlers can dip their toes into the water.
