So Many Hills …

Nov 2024

🔗 The End of Inevitability

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a se...
Nov 2024

🔗 Throwing Muses – “Drugstore Drastic”

Excited!!! Throwing Muses, the long-running indie rock band led by Kristin Hersh, are getting ready for a new release s...
Nov 2024
When the musician Brian Eno spoke to the New Statesman in May, he seemed to be irritated about the art world, its inflated prices and its critical language that so few people understand. When the potter and painter Grayson Perry began giving his Reith Lectures last month he paid tribute to Eno’s 1995 “sabotage” of a Marcel Duchamp urinal in New York (Eno siphoned his own urine into the artwork to explore whether the piece might be more valuable if it had been “worked upon” by two people).

The New Statesman (h/t The Browser)

Nov 2024
This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that — a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice — or if we notice, belittle — equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.

– Dorris Lessing (h/t The Marginalian)

Nov 2024

🔗 We Need To Fight For Free Speech More Than Ever

Either way, the point stands: we need to protect our free speech rights more than ever. Trump and the MAGA crowd are goi...
Nov 2024
"… be an example of what you want this country to be. Lead with courage and compassion, face down injustice and immorality, and speak the truth. But also be willing to listen. People had reasons to vote how they did. Hearing them, and talking to them, and then fighting for solutions that help all of us and uplift all of us, is how we make real fundamental change."
– via Piper Haywood
Nov 2024
Make the time.

I hate that sentence.

It assumes a lot about agency, not to mention the reader’s mental and physical abilities. The core of it is necessary to hear, though. It would be better stated as, “You must fight for enough time to devote to the things that matter.”

No one will give that time to you. It’s too valuable to them.

CJ Chilvers
Nov 2024

Eight years ago today, the day after the 2016 election, I rode a Delta 747 to Tokyo. It was planned well before early voting started, before James Comey’s October surprise. I experienced the first three years of drumpf 45 from the other side of the world.

That won’t work this time.

Nov 2024

Dear @manton, I’m trying to get #org2blog in #Emacs working with MB via metaweblog API. I’m not puzzling out how to set up my custom domain based on Using MarsEdit help document. I have a token but not sure what url to use and the username syntax that would apply. TIA

Nov 2024

What colour is this blowing autumn wind, that it can stain my body with its touch?

— Izumi Shikibu & Edwin A Cranston, The Izumi Shikibu Diary. (Harvard University Press, 1969); h/t Live & Learn

Oct 2024

I kind of wanna marry these two: Not just Douglas Adam’s fans, but Starship Titanic fans; Pink Floyd’s Animals; The Cars and a bunch of my kind of music. 🔗They Were Just What They Needed

Oct 2024

Celebrate #Chattanooga’s historic Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium turning 100 with an unforgettable night featuring Charley Crockett. Enter to win tickets from WUTC 88.1, the Tennessee Valley’s NPR station (where I work!). Learn more here.

Oct 2024

The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free

– Nathan J. Robinson 🔗

Oct 2024

Color Green IG getting ready to go in at Cherry Street Tavern IG #livemusic #Chattanooga

Oct 2024

The Pink Stones IG #livemusic #Chattanooga at Cherry Street Tavern IG

Oct 2024

The Pink Stones IG on stage in #Chattanooga

Oct 2024

I wish the Apple loud sound notification on the Watch had a “I’m wearing ear protection” or “I’m driving with the windows down and my arm out the window” button

Oct 2024

Getting ready to see Color Green IG and The Pink Stones IG play Cherry Street Tavern IG in #Chattanooga #Americana #psychedelic #rock Everyone I’ve talked with about this show is excited for it

Oct 2024

Finished reading: The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle 📚💙

Engaging read. I’m still reflecting on it. The novelette reminded me of Lovecraft Country (could easily have been one of the vignettes in there) and Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shay’s Illuminatus Trilogy.

Oct 2024

TIL TWIT is still around. Good for them. I thought they closed up shop years ago. Happy for the fans that it’s a going concern, but there was too much drama there for me to want to reëngage.

Oct 2024

This new traffic pattern in #Chattanooga’s North Shore delights me. The right lane should always have been right turn only with the green arrow. If CDOT would ditch right turn on red everywhere, that would make pedestrians safer & please me – and my desires are, of course, their top priority

Oct 2024

Foursquare is shutting down their city guide app and website. Sad but I hope this is true: “Foursquare is focused on building even better experiences for you in Swarm.” (I love Swarm and use it every day still.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org

TIL Swarm still exists. Not jazzed about the move but I’ll give it a go.

Oct 2024

#ivoted

Oct 2024

I’m voting. Nothing like some partisan video recording all the cars and people in line. I took his picture. #vote #harris #voteharris

Oct 2024

Your writer-ly "freedom" does not constitute my $50

Dear author/journalist/media professional, I might have enjoyed your writing in big magazine/newspaper/new media site, b...