It was 75 years ago on this date, October 14, 1951, that the anthology series Goodyear Television Playhouse debuted on NBC. The series was critically acclaimed. It was also nominated for its share of Emmy Awards. Goodyear Television Playhouse was also relatively popular with audiences. It ranked at no. 16 in the 1951-1952 season, no 15 in the 1952-1953 season, and no 22 in th 1953-1954.Of course, in some ways The Goodyear Television Playhouse could simply be considered the same show as The…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Lance Olsen’s reimagining of the life of artist Henry Darger, An Inventory of Benevolent Butterflies, is at once both tragic and transcendent. Publishers Weekly wrote of the book: “Olsen…

The latest craven betrayals of Dumpty Trumpy and his brain trust will not make Ukraine submit to Russia’s terms. They will only kill more people. May these grifting war mongers choke on the billions they plan to earn from Russia, an ally of Iran, the country they are fighting an illegal war against.

As with the previous post, the images here are not arranged chronologically. That’s how the fall colors develop … in no particular order. There might be some green mixed in here, and then trees that are past their prime there. I’ve included a few intimate landscapes of aspen arrangements that caught my eye. And, with … Continue reading More Autumn!

17. Top deck dazzler, Clerkenwell 18. Tolkien’s Yews, Stow-On-The-World 19. The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest 20. The Bee Tree, Sherwood Forest 21. Stumpy, Sherwood Forest 22. Parliament Oak, Sherwood Forest 23. Newton’s Apple, Woolsthorpe

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2026 has been awarded to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford “”for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.” To gain some intuition for what that actually means, it’s useful to flash back a few decades and remember the origins of “macroeconomics” and how macroeconomic analysis was done a half-century ago. There’s an old phrase about “painting with a broad brush,” when you skip past smaller details. In…

I know I’ve posted about polyglots a lot, but Matthew Erickson’s NY Times piece (Oct. 6, 2026; archived) takes an unusual (and unusually thoughtful) approach, and won my heart right off the bat by referencing one of my favorite novels: A few months ago, I finally read Helen DeWitt’s 2000 novel, “The Last Samurai,” in which the autodidact child protagonist, Ludo, teaches himself a vast spread of languages before turning 11: ancient Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, French, Arabic, Old Norse and Inuit,…

Part of the lure of duplicate is everyone has the same cards. But that doesn’t make it fair. Today E-W average over 22.7 HCP (to NS’s 17.3). Thankfully I normally sit East or West. And not just the HCP but (for the most part) things were on. My partner was complaining “How can I beat the field by finding a squeeze when every finesse is on?” A typical hand. West: Axx Axxx Axx Kxx East: KQ JT KJxxx AT8x With north having QT9 of diamonds in the pocket (and clubs 3-3), slam is cold in NT and/or…

Another evening walk, forcing myself to find something to photograph. I have noticed that I keep looking up a lot. Not sure why. Probably the light in the late afternoon hitting the buildings and trees. Anyway, I am quite happy with today's images. I really enjoy being on Mastodon these days. I might have curated my feed (aka the people I follow) to consist mostly of delightful people, which helps tremendously. 👉 View one more image

“The Fairbuds 2 have been redesigned from the ground up, moving to a stemmed design, available in black or green, and a case that’s 37 percent smaller than the first generation. Despite that shrinking hardware, Fairphone has almost doubled the buds’ battery life, which now totals 40 hours without active noise cancellation, with eight hours on the buds alone, dropping to six with ANC on. Charging is over USB-C, and takes a couple hours for a full top-up. Sadly Qi wireless charging isn’t…

Rosalind Eleazar, an actress familiar to Slow Horses fans, provides the best reason to see Misty Green, Chris Rock’s fourth film as a director. Eleazar plays the title character, an actress and singer whose career has declined. Back in the day, Misty won an Emmy for her work in a hit series, but a younger generation knows her as someone their parents used to love. On top of that, Misty’s drug use and alienating personality have put a damper on a career that should be deep into its sweet spot.…

Imagine. It’s approximately the size and shape of a large cell phone. Heck, it basically is a large cell phone, they’ve got powerful enough processors. On the back is a big lense. Prop it up 5 feet or so from a wall and project your desktop. All you need a wireless keyboard. Imagine. You could compute from the woods, from a hammock, using a sheet stretched taut between two trees as a monitor. You could compute from a cave. From the beach. From an alleyway. Obviously it needs a heck of a…

I walk and walk and walk avoid our usual routes but can't stop my eyes seeking a familiar shape the bitter smoke wafting from that one house too thick in the air walk faster, eyes watering I see a neighbour recognise the dog first slow down, look away to avoid saying out loud the words they must already know

For the last three years, I've run a Planescape1 campaign through almost all of its modules. Now, after successfully finishing it, I want to look back and review these adventures, highlighting the pros and cons of each one. Each module will be rated in three categories, up to 3 points in each: Presentation: how easy it is to understand and run the adventure. Openness: how open the adventure's scope is, regarding the freedom of choice. Quality: Overall quality of the adventure, including the…

We managed a second microscopically small harvest of veg. Now that it has finally started to rain, things have started growing and ripening a bit more. Still not enough to make a dent in the grocery bill!destined to add a morsel to a stew

“This file manager is written in Rust with GTK4 and released under the MIT license, with its lead developer, Pierre, announcing its first stable release a few hours ago. He claims that in 45 days, the project has picked up over 30 contributors and 700+ commits, with ~300K lines of Rust now in the codebase.” Seems that recently so many alternative apps are coming out in Rust… I wonder why. But the real point is that new apps are also bringing fresh ideas and shaking things up a bit. This file…

One more day. One more day after today, and then I’m in for surgery. It was not a good day today. Oddly, for the past couple of days, I have been feeling not just frequently hungry, but famished. I don’t have much appetite, but I make myself eat adequate portions yet, only a couple of … Continue reading A difficult day, but getting better

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,In process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv'd;So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth…

• 3-star hike • 4 mile loop • Easy | Gain 270 feet • Merrimack, NH | Merrimack Region . Reflections on Lastowka Pond. The Horse Hill Nature Preserve's Loop Trail provides a great representative tour of the park, guiding you past the property's woods, ponds, and wetlands. Despite the park's name we didn't observe any horseback riders on the trails, though it does appear to be particularly popular with local dog walkers. The route winds around several large ponds where you can see lily pads and…

A new zine project just went up today!Check it out in all its sea-witchy glory HERE:https://heyzine.com/flip-book/91d7efb761.html

I used to get horrible jet lag.Not the “a little groggy” jet lag.More like the “find a reason not to go” flu symptoms type jet lag. A few years ago I finally dug into the science, thanks largely to Satchin Panda’s work at the Salk Institute. I’ve now run my protocol on more than 12 international trips. Jet lag has gone from the thing that wrecked my trips to pretty much a non-event. People keep asking how I do it, so here it is. But I’m not going to hand you a list of tips. Tips without a model…

Buy-boatsIn North Carolina, where we have more hogs than people, we also have cities with more space for cars than for people.What if our vehicles were sized to fit our cities and not the other way around?I thought of this recently on a trip to the Middle Peninsula in Virginia, a watery region of creeks and rivers where for nearly a century wooden “buy-boats” sailed from creek to creek carrying freight on their open decks – a kind of waterborne FedEx.Buy-boats were originally built to collect…

This is book #2 of the series. Spoilers incoming, esp for the first book. In the first book, Lauren Oya Olamina is living in Robledo - a walled community in a hellscape version of America, where law and order has broken down, and people have to fend for themselves against violent individuals and gangs. Her community is destroyed in book one and she travels north. She meets Bankole, they get married, and he has some land up north they settle on. She has also collected several other survivors…

Ode, snap. Vol. 7, No. 3 I’m not a very good photographer. I tried to change that a few times in my life (as recently as last year, in fact) — I spent too much on a camera and got really into Flickr and hung out with (i.e., tweeted at) creative types who owned nice lenses and had at least a dilettantish interest in taking good pictures — but it didn’t matter, I don’t have a knack for it and I lack the patience and inclination to learn and improve. (More like F-Oh-Just-Stop-Already, amirite?)…

In AprilMy late wife Judy and I made this garden thirty years ago. Since then, we watched our children grow into adults and saw our sunny garden become part sunny because of the shade trees we planted.Since we planted our first live oak tree, there have been five United States presidents but only one family of bats, who returned recently for their twenty-fifth year to swoop down upon our pool at night.I rake the garden’s paths as a sort of meditation. Back when Judy was sick, the paths were…

Auf Einladung des Vereins Köln im Film war ich heute Abend bei der Preview der neuen Open-Space-Ausstellung im Kölnischen Stadtmuseum. 130 Jahre ist es her, dass am Augustinerplatz 12 mit einem Cinématographe Lumière erstmals in Deutschland ein Filmprogramm vor zahlendem Publikum gezeigt wurde. Die Feierlichkeiten zu diesem Jubiläum begannen schon im Frühjahr mit einer Filmvorführung im Filmforum und erreichen nun mit der kostenlosen (!) Ausstellung im Foyer des Kölnischen Stadtmuseums vom 15.…

The crawlers have started moving. I can feel them, being still makes them uncomfortable.

Last week I spent four days (October 8–11) playing old-school Dungeons & Dragons at Cauldron, “an OSR Euro Con.” Once again, organisers did an absolutely stellar job. I know they call it a con, but that label does not fully do them justice. This is more like a really large club of hundred people, who have gathered to play in a rather intimate atmosphere. The food is home cooked, labour is volunteer-based, we all tend to the venue, we sleep together, and we game together. In this post I share a…

Journal One of the original functions of Notes & Links was to make the most of my sofa-bound internet surfing by making it into a writing exercise, and that is dependent on me doing that, hence some days there’s a lot and some days there’s nothing at all. As I figure out how to do more things within my recently limited capacity I will probably do less blogging here, like over the last few days. I wish I could say I’d been off travelling the country having adventures but I’ve actually been even…