The first recording today starts with the end of Copycats. There’s a trail for M.I. High. Then it’s Deadly 60 – United Kingdom. On the way to look at some gannets, they spot some dolphins. To find out what it’s like for a gannet to dive into the water at speed, Steve jumps off an oil rig. Here’s a Gannet. He’s looking for snakes, and finds a Sand Lizard. A smooth snake. A Grass Snake. What he’s really there for is an Adder, Britain’s only venomous snake. He visits the local wildlife trust, who…

Did you know that it was Cristóbal Colón (a/k/a Christopher Columbus) who initiated the longest running lawsuit in history? According to attorney Daniel Voelker (see here or here), who has conducted extensive research on this epic case, the so-called Pleitos Colombinos (“Colombian Lawsuits”) began with a contract drawn between Colón and his royal patrons, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon: “The royals agreed, in writing, known as the…

When talking with a fellow American-in-Britain and lexicographer recently (hello, Katherine!), the topic of meal deals came up. I thought: great topic for a blog post. Then I discovered this is something that this US-UK lunch-consumption difference has been discussed a lot on the web already. But that's never stopped me from (BrE) having a more linguistic go at a topic...To quote Wikipedia (but with links to my relevant blog posts): In the United Kingdom, a meal deal is a sales promotion which…

Belfast’s Deeply Armed’s “Black Ice” is an obsessive, obsidian love song. Delivered by Micheal McKeown with menaces that mirror The Stone Rose’s Ian Brown. Accompanied by Kenny Whaley’s bad ass bass riffing, Saul Rayson’s slow, rolling, funky drumming, Aaron O’Neill’s tumbling bleep breakdowns and soulful backing from Marion Jordan, whose contributions, by turns, call to mind Denise Johnston, Merry Clayton and Clare Torry. For the first of 2 remixes Andrew Fearn, of Sleaford Mods, adopts his…

We drove to Norwich to see a Mongolian folk metal band, as you do. Geri’s been a big fan since their televised Glastonbury set a few years back. NORRRIICH THAK YU VERRR MAARCHH!! The gig was loud as fuck and my ears still hurt, but I really enjoyed it. On arrival, the place was rammed with 7ft-tall grebs, but after a little reconnaissance and a lot of persistence, we wheedled our way to a great view by the left-hand speaker stack (hence us being a bit deaf ever since). The Hu (Mongolian for…

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Golden handcuffs are real. I’ve had them once or twice in my career. The first time, it was with a challenging problem, casual Fridays, and monthly birthday celebrations. The next time, it was with flexible hours, decent salary, and the promise of building any role I wanted. Each one had more “freedom” than the previous one. Just more loosen handcuffs. Paul Glushak writes Corporate Burnout: Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his…

07-10-26 Keeping it local. Another trip along to the Botanics then Warriston and back to the Botanics. Although maybe I should have stopped after the first 15mins when I'd bumped into today's highlight, a bullfinch pair feeding on rowan berries on Powderhall Road.I saw them fly across the road but it took a while wandering quietly round the tree to actually see where they were eating. And even then I didn't catch the female, just the male. The combination of his warm colours, the bright berries…

I needed a break from another project I have been working on last night. I keep noticing some of my previous eraser stamps fitting the daily prompts for #PinkEraserArtober2026. Yesterday’s prompt, “spell,” matched one on my to-do list. So, I thought it would be fun to give it a go.The ink jar is a variant of the ink jar I did styled after the Witch Hat Atelier anime recently. The circle in the upper left is for the “forbidden glow” spell Coco tries when she is first discovering magic.I did most…

John Gruber, writing on his Daring Fireball blog that still isn’t a responsive design despite my pleading with him for years inside of my own head: The culture on X today is remarkably friendly and inclusive. It is a cheerful place. That cheerfulness is another differentiator. If you believe the world is falling apart and doomed only to get worse, that our obvious and real problems cannot be surmounted, X is not the platform for you. If you think the world is full of fun and amazing people and…

Declan Ward, a private investigator based out of Dublin, receives a letter in the mail. A young woman named Evelyn Deane has gone missing from Blake Manor, and no one seems to care - in fact, it seems like no one has noticed at all. Thus does Declan find himself off to the far reaches of Ireland, in hopes of resolving a missing persons case before things get any worse. Upon arriving at the hotel, he quickly finds himself tied up in the local happenings: a so-called "Grand Seance" is set to…

Thankfully, my daughters and I are all feeling better today, recovering from our colds. I actually seem to be recovering faster and never got as sick as they did. Today has been a pretty much zero pain day. My messed up left shoulder bothered me more than anything else, and only if I tried to … Continue reading Stocking up: This is what $312 looks like – plus a Grog!

Today’s Music Monday is another of my happy songs. If you need a pick me up, here it is. I loved the Far Side, but I disagreed with Gary Larson’s tongue-in-cheek assertion that accordions are what you’re given in Hell. All good music has accordions. They’re the brass of the keyboard world. Wait, what? By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-12.

[This is a guest post by Kate Stange and Edmund Harriss. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] In January a group of mathematicians, historians, artists and educators gathered at the Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) for a very unusual workshop on mathematical meaning. Our focus for that week, as part of a special trimester on the use of illustration in mathematical research, was to ask: what would it mean for an illustration to be rigorous…

Wide open I love north Norfolk for its open skies, beaches and birdlife. This was Brancaster the other day. Quote of the Day “Chopsticks are one of the reasons the Chinese never invented custard.” Spike Milligan Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Randy Newman | Old Kentucky Home Link If you want cynical despair set to music, then this is it! Long Read of the Day What are universities for? AI can help answer the question. My latest Observer column: One of the great pleasures of…

this week was one of those "do the bare minimum" kinds, where i'm feeling super disconnected because of a post-menstrual depressive episode. thanks to the work i've been doing at setting routines and saying "yes" to things, i had lots of things to do to try to reconnect with myself besides rotting on the couch. i started a tech thought dump blog. i didn't think it would be appropriate to bring all of that into this kind of writing, but i always share when i blog elsewhere so it's not like i'm…

# Watch update It's been four months to the day since I started wearing the Sekonda Hybrid watch and, apart from the initial setup period, it's just been put on its fourth charge. That's right, I'm still only having to charge it once a month, irrespective of how much I use it or how many notifications I get. I originally said I'd be happy charging it once a week, but this is beyond my wildest expectations. Consider me extremely happy with it.

Another spontaneous excursion, this time north to Huntsville. I took the back roads through the Sam Houston National Forest. In the shadows of thick pines, windows down to enjoy the sap-scented air. I wondered at the unusual urgency, this need to maximize our time together. Where was it before? Perhaps it was the recent VA decision coupled with the increasingly frequent aches and pains of a fifth decade. No reason to mourn the time wasted, and no reason to anticipate the end, but every reason…

Readers may recall that I visited Brunswick House in Vauxhall to interview Adrian Amos, the founder of London Architectural Salvage & Supply Company (LASSCO), earlier this year. It was my pleasure to return later in the summer to write a feature about his secret garret in the roof of this astonishing eighteenth-century Palladian mansion, marooned today amidst the forest of towers that have sprung up, for The World of Interiors with photographs by Rachel Ferriman. Click here to read my feature…

Stumbled upon this tiny fruit stand called Bora Bora when I visited Gakugeidaigaku What caught my eye were these Fukuoka grown red kiwi...120 yen each (plus tax)Lucky for this blog because I was reminded that we had tried these Fukuoka grown red kiwi back in 2020Still, I hope they are tasty (update: the one on the left was sour & hard.as.rock, the one on the right was softer and a little

How another go at keeping a plain text calendar is helping me clarify what goes where Making and using calendars is viscerally satisfying to me. I love the sense of stability and preparedness I get from seeing dates laid out in neat rows! Along with that comes the irresistible idea of writing notes to my future self. This could mean recording tasks that need to be done on or by on specific dates, but it’s much more that that. In as real a sense as I can muster, my calendar is an attempt to…

I came to realize that attempting to wrap up the “Wordcraft” section (as I call it) in Emacs is a fool’s errand. Emacs is Wordcraft. It’s what it’s all about. By the time I finish a draft, a new config or setting changes what I have. This here is an attempt to stay true to my conclusion in the last section. Abbrevs In my opinion, Abbrevs in Emacs is one of its fundamental features. It’s one of those things I’d show someone coming from other word-processing programs to show them the magic of…

Although I’m a semi-professional musician, most days, I listen to far less music than my friends. I generally work in silence, cook in silence, run in silence. When I do listen to music, usually in the evening, I give it my full attention. Everybody is different, and different kinds of music work well in different contexts, but I can’t help feeling that anyone who doesn’t sometimes listen to music the way I do is missing out. The way I do it is like this: lying on my back, wearing headphones,…

A film can survive its disappearance. Preserved in a collection, it continues to occupy physical space while its place in cultural memory contracts to an illegible point. This peculiar interval, where existence persists without recognition, gives Stefano Miraglia’s Donda Retrieved: Inquiry Into a Disappearance its intellectual urgency. The inquiry began in 2019 with a print of Ellis Donda’s Engel und Puppe held by the Collectif Jeune Cinéma in Paris, a surviving work whose author had become…

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So let me tell you how I came to write this piece: the only profile of ccru - Cybernetic Culture Research Unit - written during the group's lifetime.In the 1990s, there was this cool American magazine called Lingua Franca that coveredacademia – rising figures, trends in theory, institutional politics, intellectual fashions. It wasn’t ascholarly journal, though - it was far more readable and widely read, something you could pickup in trendy bookstores or the gift shop at an art museum.When…

11 Rescue | INDEX | 13 Flimsy 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.

This is the first year I’ve tried to grow parsnips, and it was not planned. They went were something else had failed. They grew incredibly well – at least from what we could see. Huge greenery that got so tall, it grew through the higher raised bed cover we had on this bed, because it’s … Continue reading Our 2026 Garden: we have parsnips!

"[Baudrillard's] vision of contemporary society exhibits a careening of growth and excrescence (croissance et excroissance), expanding and excreting ever more goods, services, information, messages or demands — surpassing all rational ends and boundaries in a spiral of uncontrolled growth and replication. Yet growth, acceleration, and proliferation have reached such extremes, Baudrillard suggests, that the ecstasy of excrescence (i.e., increasing numbers of goods) is accompanied by inertia. The…