(Caroline Foty's first fountain pen was a 1970s Sheaffer No Nonsense that still writes perfectly. Since she discovered pens by independent makers, she wants "one of each, please" and wants to meet all the makers. Maybe you do, too. She lives in Baltimore with pens, cats, and all kinds of fiber arts supplies.)You can’t talk to many pen makers who do anything with metal, before you hear mention of David Broadwell, and how he has been an influence or inspiration for their work.So it’s particularly…

2026-09-23Hello!While doing menial office work, I found myself bouncing between twenty different projects and tasks. They're not challenging tasks, but the sheer number of incomplete things overflowed my capacity of clarity.I hate to talk about productivity or self-help, but given that this is a mere anecdote to my larger story, I'll give the disclaimer that this is just how I view workflows: each task is a mental loop, and I can only handle so many open ends before I'm inundated. I'm the…

Summer is on its way out, and in its place are mostly misty, cold mornings. People are quick to explain to us that not every year has such a nice summer. We say that we certainly hope not! We didn’t exactly leave the western US in search of dry, hot weather. Despite the cooler and wetter weather, we have a patch of dahlias that are (finally) giving it a go. I think they’re a month or two late, and hopefully the weather stays mild enough to let them fully bloom. We knew they should bloom in this…

An illuminated Persian manuscript about customs, culture, and caste, written by an enigmatic figure of the early British Raj.

[It’s an idea whose time has come.] I’m quite down on the addictive design social media companies use, including both algorithmic newsfeeds and endless scroll. As such, I was pleased to see the recent multi-billion dollar settlement between Facebook and nearly all of America. The settlement will effectively force Meta to make major product changes for all U.S. teen users. The company agreed to interrupt endless scrolling and to impose two-hour daily time limits on Instagram and Facebook. This…

There was a video of a young woman who was asked why she wrote so many love poems. The young girl responded honestly and with an answer that made sense to me.She writes love poems instead of suicide notes.Well done, I say.Her answer is excellent, I tell you. I am the same. I write about love or youand I write about my love because the adverse or the opposite is unthinkable to me. What else is there in this world if there is no fate or destiny?What else is there is there is no hope?And if there…

Consider a client who wants multi-factor authentication turned off because the extra prompts are getting in the way of work. The complaint deserves attention. The requested fix deserves scrutiny.Something may be wrong with the setup. A session policy may be too aggressive, a device may not be registered correctly, or the chosen authentication method may be a poor fit for the people using it. Those are problems an IT provider should investigate. Disabling the protection across the business…

Intro Making plans in Turkey, especially when you’re working with civil society is never a good idea. Because the plan I mentioned last week changed in a major way and turned into a mini Turkey tour for me. After İstanbul, I arrived to İzmir on Monday afternoon and will be flying to Ankara tonight. And that’s why I’m posting this week’s Weekstarter on Wednesday. Greetings from İzmir. Hope you’re all doing well. Mission Control Inbox: 362RSS Reader: 1954Open Tabs: 154Upcoming Events/Travel in…

Shadow people by Giles Turnbull. Cool.

I have never used ChatGPT, Claude or Grok. That seems like a weirdly radical statement to make in 2026. I’ve felt a great unease about hyper-scale LLMs for all the usual reasons: data training, multitude of harms, non-determinism, surveillance, hype and overstated capabilities, environmental and e-waste concerns, economic bubble, data centres and disregard of consent. Oh, and don’t forget about the TESCREAL bit. I’ve been quietly not using AI and know a couple of people in the same boat. But…

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G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), "The Poet and the Cheese," A Shilling for My Thoughts, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1917), pp. 161-164 (at 162-164): After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern. 'I suppose,' I said 'that…

Two weeks into the new school year and everyone is coughing, sneezing and feeling like crap.

Walking back from lunch just now I suddenly remembered the significance of today’s date. Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great John Coltrane, who was born on 23rd September 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina. I won’t attempt to do a full tribute to Trane, whose influence on jazz saxophone playing, and jazz in general, is incalculable. I will, however, take advantage of the fact that today is the day of the Autumnal Equinox (as it was on the date of Coltrane’s birth) to post one…

Well, here we have the beginning of the vast University of Alabama at Birmingham medical center and hospitals that exist today. I found this brief item from December 1944 in my wanderings through old issues of the Gadsden Times saved by my paternal grandmother Rosa Mae Wright. Founded by Josiah Nott and other physicians, the Medical College of Alabama operated in Mobile from 1859 until 1920. In that year the school moved to Tuscaloosa and functioned as a two-year basic sciences program until…

It’s September again! Albeit much later in September than I hoped to launch this. However, I am once again giving away stickers in exchange for your donation to St. Jude as part of the Relay campaign to raise support and awareness of childhood cancer in September.Last year I gave away a bunch of fun stickers (and a magnet for the D&D lovers), and I’ve added a new sticker this year. (I was hoping to have a few more, but like I said it’s been a very busy year.)So here’s the deal. Donate $10 to…

I’m looking forward to the day when the word AI in a headline reads the way electric does now. Electric toothbrush. Electric kettle. The word survives in a few places where it still distinguishes one thing from another, and everywhere else it fell away, because announcing that something runs on electricity stopped telling anyone anything. While out walking our dog this morning, I found myself turning the comparison into a question. Is electricity as interesting as what you can make under a lamp…

In 2026, after 16 years of Viktor Orbán ruling Hungary, we finally changed our government. This is a momentous change, and I think it’s worth explaining it a bit, as someone who’s been around the whole time. The 2006 mess I came to Hungary the first time in 2006. That year, Ferenc Gyurcsány was elected prime minister, but immediately after a confidential speech from him was leaked. In the speech, he reprimanded his own people for not having done anything in their previous tenure at the…

My experience and practical tips from doing a Working Holiday in Australia. Sharing my experience of life in Australia and what to prepare for a Working Holiday.

In 546, Goth King Totila walked into Rome after a year-long siege.The city was nearly empty due to starvation and suicide brought on by the siege. The siege had been so devastating for the inhabitants that Isaurian members of the guard helped the Goths scale the walls and open the gates.Unlike the typical behavior of Germanic tribes when going through enemy territory, Totila had shown great restraint and not ravaged the countryside. It seems he wanted to restore the era of Theodoric, ruling the…

Took a while but today was the first day of wearing a jumper. The temperature is going down slowly, but there is that general lift before it drops and stays low for the next 6 months.

The bombs just don't stop falling. Russians drop usually 5 bombs at the time. And they repeat it 24/7. We are just laying and thinking: "We are waiting till one will hit our house". Or if we are flying on training we just observe how the other set of the bombs land into the city. And we can't do anything about it. The shops are working, next to the one we use 2 burned cars, a fpv hit there just 2 days ago. The cute barista made me a coffee (I started to drink coffee again) we had small chat. I…

It is inexcusable that in the wealthy part of the world — like Canada — there continues to be such poverty, especially because the problem of poverty is simple and solvable. (If you think Canada doesn’t have enough money, here’s what is happening with defense spending.) And that’s too bad, because just in Ontario alone, Nearly … Continue reading A dearth of stories on poverty

Looks Unfamiliar with Mic Wright talking to Tim Worthington about the NatWest Piggies, Eerie. Indiana, Musical Chairs by Kinky Friedman, High On A Rocky Ledge by Moondog, the National Record Of Achievement and more...!

Dancing with the Stars 35's celebrities faced their first week of a speedier, 7-day schedule. How did they do? And whose holes need filling? Marshal Knight recaps for us!

How a makefile turns the SQLcl, Git and dbLinter commands of an APEX project into short make commands, and how a Git-based sync script stops APEXlang imports from overwriting your colleagues' App Builder changes.

Recent Comments balcony — miawiwhbse: “True, fully involved attention is something extremely difficult. At its best it often is an achievement. How hard it is to let an object be…”

8692/21611Threads is now my goto social media spot if I want to leave a sarcastic comment about the stupid crap people say in there. It's not an open sewer like Twitter, it's not full of people taking jokes at face value like Bluesky, but it seems to have a lot of people/bots expressing opinions, probably solely so that people will RT them and they will get more views and maybe more money. Which would be a sad way to make money, but then who am I to talk?

[1966]A Mexican garage classico. We all know because La Flama Blanca: Kenny Fucking Powers!Mesmerising bass, mucho twangery and a groovy beat baby.