Folk Implosion, Free to Go. Lou Barlow was the original bassist for Dinosaur Jr. up until he had a falling-out with J. Mascis and spent the next decade and a half writing kiss-off songs to his old bandmate. He also formed Folk Implosion along with his solo work and created some really good music. About twenty years ago they made up and have been making music together ever since. Full disclosure: the first Dino album after Barlow left is one of my all-time desert island discs. This tune is good…

EMPLATE GENERATION X (TOY BIZ) “It’s unknown how long the evil being known only as Emplate has existed. Uninterested in plots of destruction or world domination, the mysterious mutant has one concern only: satisfying the eternal hunger that possesses him. To do this he feeds on the genetic marrow of other mutants – the younger the better! This, coupled with his ability to rechannel energy that he absorbs, makes him a most dangerous threat to Generation X” The ‘90s X-Men spin-off Generation X…

A couple of days ago, on my way home, I had to stop in the vicinity of Waikoloa Resort to photograph this sunset.

This morning I woke up feeling pretty good. I wasn’t ready to wake up when Molly’s alarm woke me up but regardless I felt pretty good. I was anxious to get my bench press in but first I had to drink my coffee. Priorities right? The coffee was excellent and it was a nice and cool this morning so it made the coffee even better. While I was drinking it I messed around a bit on m computer working on getting a self hosted LanguageTool instance going. Well that was after Molly left for work. Most…

There is one. Wait, two. No, three. Ok, four humans who directly inspired my writing. (Ok, five.) The list is not in order of importance, but by time: Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (Fall 1988) Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to…

Nearly nine years ago I felt compelled to call out a righteous streak of songs I happened to hear on the radio on a ride home. Yesterday I was bumming around town with my boys in our Honda Accord when I opted to pop the FM on instead of their go-to musical fare. Here was the lineup we were treated to: “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne “Live and Let Die” by Wings “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson “Bye Bye…

https://www.blurb.com/b/13004976-antique-children-s-drawing-from-the-19th-and-earl?srsltid=AU7gw4V3vPvV6oOdL1wbzI79ow-kmUR6SN2H1_seBZma1HWuZ3h7oIDa

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 80-83: The China War cost Japan the chance to recover the international respectability it had lost with its incursion into Manchuria. In July 1936, exactly one year before the outbreak of the war, Tokyo had won its bid to host the Olympic Games in 1940. The Japanese had lobbied tirelessly for the honor. It was to be one of the most important national projects for modern Japan, the first non-Western country to host the…

Year end for MCQN Ltd is the end of September, so we’ve just entered our 22nd year of operation. October is also Open Hardware Month, which is an annual celebration of (and encouragment to talk about) open hardware. They both feel like suitable nudges for us to get back to talking about what we’ve been up to. So let’s start a new season of weeknotes. It’s Adrian here, given it’s my fault that there’s been such a hiatus (even beyond everything being my fault as the boss). I’m sure the fact that…

Yesterday, Rachel and I walked to our graves. A nice way to delay the day when we’ll be carried there.

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the nineteenth of a series of articles on some of these signposts. “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild, and create a far greater country than it ever was before?” he asked. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to…

When I’m doomscrolling, I think a lot about these people who are making music on planes. Or on trains. Where they’ve bought something like a battery-powered MPC or something else, and they are filming themselves making a sik beat somewhere where you normally wouldn’t make a sik beat. And then they get maybe a 5-second kind of forward by the brand that makes these machines. Time and money spent on doing this just kind of makes me sad for that person. Because, as we all know, rich or poor,…

Linguistic prediction time! For the near future — and perhaps much longer — slang and informal jargon are going to get very strange, and change even faster to the point where the change is so rapid that their utility effectively disappears. I’m talking about not just the words, but specific patterns of speech, construction of argument, and even punctuation. It’s also why I changed the settings for the blog to allow AI agents “use to answer questions” access, though not training access. I…

My trips to London often involve racing past the centre to get to a suburban Wetherspoon's or a Bexleyheath local that serves me Doom Bar and lasts one year in the Good Beer Guide.So it made a nice change recently to stick around the Fleet Street area on a sunny day and visit some classics.The next two posts contain:➤ Pubs you've heard of! ➤ Three three-star Historic Interiors!➤ At least one treacherous staircase.➤ Beer prices to bring me out in a cold sweat.As we'd made our own ways to London…

First, a small personal note on the news this week that Man City have been found guilty of 114/115 breaches of Premier League financial rules. Supporting Arsenal during the period (and beyond), and watching City pip us to titles and cups while cheating, has made me so angry. I missed out on those highs, as did my sons. Nothing short of removing the owners, scrubbing the records and relegation will be enough. In happier news, we had our final secondary school open evening for H before his choice…

Had a rare one this weekend. Bit of a breeze behind me on the way out and then again on the way back. Not exactly but as near enough to notice. It was a great ride. I really enjoyed it. Best route I know from Chatham to Dover. Hilly country lanes through the Kent Downs all the way to Capel-le-Fern. Along the top of Abbots Cliffe then down to Dover. Bit of a climb up past the castle, through Deal, a quick stop at my sisters for tea and chat then onto the Viking Coastal Trail from Sandwich to…

In which orchestral conductor Simon Rattle explores a century of music in much the same way that Robert Hughes explored a century of art in The Shock of the New. Or almost… It’s unfair to compare this more modest TV series to a landmark which was shot on film and with a budget large enough to allow Hughes to present his art history from locations all around the world. If you’ve ever felt in need of an intelligent introduction to the challenges of orchestral music then Leaving Home is the ideal…

We got out on Saturday and did some errands as it was sunny blue skies. And despite the chill in the air, enjoyed a walk taking some photos of the trees. Chateau Frontenac I mean, come on, when you have such beautiful buildings like this, set to a backdrop of history and nature, it’s impossible not to take a photo. And are the trees on fire where you live?

To turn off the Firefox rounded Tabs: In the browser address bar type: about:config Then search for: nova Then change the boolean value of: browser.nova.enabled to false If you can’t find the setting you can add it.

You can substitute in that quote, instead of Christ, "negative space", and it still works well. By negative space, I mean all of Everything that's not you. Everything actually is you, but to feel that you need to integrate what you've needlessly separated yourself from. And we can conceive of that as Christ. I think everyone could potentially get behind that. Even atheists.

Link to embedded video 🎵 One day a wise young man threw down his apron and he said, I quit I've been considering the meaning of existing And I'm pretty sure this ain't it So he climbed up the tallest mountain He sat beneath the tallest tree Seeking a peace within himself He waited patiently It would seem that all was folly As he focused more and more Exploring the nature of being Until he came to its very core And it was there he became enlightened And it was then he begun to sob He said, "oh…

September is. . . back-to-school season? Well, not actual school, perhaps—but I felt like I learned a few things over the past few weeks anyway. Reading: I just finished Cat Marnell’s How to Murder Your Life, which came out in 2017; I didn’t think I was interested in this book (although I remember Cat’s writing in Lucky magazine) until my Instagram buddy Summer recently posted a bunch of screen caps of specific perfume mentions that appear throughout its pages. That lured me in, and I really…

StarringEmily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman DomingoDirectorSteven SpielbergOverviewWe deserve to know.A cybersecurity expert becomes a whistleblower after uncovering secrets about aliens, putting him on the run from a corporation. Meanwhile, a meteorologist experiencing strange phenomena joins forces with him to prove there's life beyond our understanding.Review Disclosure Day Oof. This felt like it was trying to be something made by Christopher Nolan, but without…

I haven’t soldered anything since school. When we decluttered the flat some years ago, I gave away all the soldering gear of my dad. But this year, I finally soldered again. I upgraded my electric toothbrush with a much bigger battery, going from an aging 700 mAh to 2300 mAh. As we have three of those Braun / Oral-B Vitality (Pro) toothbrushes, I was thinking it might be worth it to try to repair one and see if I can replace or maybe even upgrade the battery. I had to recharge it every second…

I saw something on June 30 in Sarnia that reminded me of better days. I almost hesitated in writing that in the headline, because I find it frustrating when older railfans (I suppose I'm edging into that demographic) insist that everything was better before. For younger railfans, this is their golden age. They will grow up, become adults, and become nostalgic for these days. In other words, I think we need to be mindful of dealing in absolutes. If you asked me whether trains were more…

I like word and trivia games, and the world has no shortage of it. Ever since Wordle took off, I felt like something new cropped up every week with the same daily structure. That's nice, something to play for everyone! I have said in previous post why I dislike daily logins, but most of these games would have archive of the puzzles available (with or without paid option) so that's fine. No, I'm inclined to stop whenever people around me flock to play one and I start seeing results shared…

Dear Constant Reader, I was surpised and delighted to get a call from Ember Sky looking for a couple of performers to round out a show in Fitchburg (notable as the home of both a college and the kitten who would become Bartholomew A. Cat). She and her producing partner, Mistress Neon, were debuting a burlesque show at a bar-arcade. Betty, Scratch, and I headed west. The venue is pretty fun. There was a small stage in the middle of the space, surrounded by video game machines. Our dressing room…

Good goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. The acronym for this is SMART. Keeping a goal “time bound,” estimating a fair amount of time it takes to achieve a goal, needs some flexibility. A good time estimate needs to be realistic, and adapt to new information along the way. A few months ago, my wife and I adopted a dog. We kept them separate at first, intending to introduce them within three weeks. That felt like a long time. But, the first time our dog came…

Went on a ghost tour of Fox Theater last night. Was fun to learn the history of the building and see it empty and dark.

I recently opened up B&W commissions!! And my wonderful spouse immediately asked me for a physical piece xey can hang in xer office at work. We recently saw The Barber of Seville together and we were both smitten by (apparently) the Canadian Opera Company’s extra silly version of it. Our actor for Figaro was an absolute delight, and Max wanted this energy for office work!