Recent
516 posts in the past 24h
Hi there ULGers, Today I thought we could talk about an interesting niche brand that I fell madly in love with. Their Memory Motel was amazing, until it turned on me and started giving me headaches. SHAME! I was so bummed. Somehow its lush plastic amber and sweaty humanity stopped being fragrance and started being […]
[NOTE: due to medical stuff and other commitments, I’m on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule this week. I should be back to the regular routine next week.] So funny that I was talking about digests last Friday, when on Saturday some came in and sold me the following collection: And in that collection, a whole lotta digests: Now, this collection wasn’t in the best condition. It was hauled in by the seller within a couple of pieces of wheeled luggage, piled kinda every which way,...
I think today's selection of STUFF FROM THE BOX is pretty nice! Hopefully you will agree.First up is this fun "encased cent" from the Stork Club in New York City - as you can see, this one also commemorates the 1939 New York World's Fair. Back in the old days, encased cents were common souvenirs and were used as "good luck" giveaways by hundreds of businesses and tourist destinations. There's a nice 1939 Lincoln "wheat back" penny in this one! The Stork Club was one of the...
Who did that?Many people see graffiti as a modern phenomenon. It’s the young, you’ll hear, who do it – they have too much time on their hands, they have no respect, they should do something useful, and so on. Against that, others will put forward the graffiti of artists such as Banksy, who make social and political points by painting on buildings – this is graffiti that means something, that makes important points. ‘It’s art,’ people will say. ‘It’s fine…I agree with...
Got up at 9a.m. Cloudy at first but sunshine in the afternoon. Nell got a new carpet cleaner off Mrs Harris. Took Jane to see the animals at work. Dot took us and brought us back in the car.
I may have just spent my afternoon sucked into the impulse-buy vortex that is IKEA. I came for a packet of draw liners. I left with a bookcase, two mismatching bedside lamps, a bamboo foot rest, a set of kitchen cupboards, a plastic pot plant, and seventeen tiny pencils. I will need to go back tomorrow. I forgot the draw liners.
IH Loadstar (c. 1970), Pilot Point TX. I’m starting to think that the answer to the question “why am I here?” is “because my parents wanted to fuck 61 years ago.” I know there’s more to it than that, and at least in my parents’ case it was planned, but fundamentally that’s the energy of it. Two young people wanted to fuck. Or perhaps it’s better to say “wanted to fuck… with a purpose.” That’s the catch, isn’t it? They made me for their lives to have meaning, and here I am...
Investors underwrite scaling laws because the alternative (having an Einstein discover better algorithms) is high variance What would it take to make progress towards general intelligence, where general stands for any problem that might arise in our world? Since our world is big and open-ended, the quest for general intelligence becomes a quest for solving more and more problems, including even the long tail and arcane ones. In fact, many people see AGI as the point when...
I'm by no means a designer. I just love experimenting with this sort of thing. There are plenty of courses and articles about animations and micro-interactions online, but I've never really followed any of them. This is simply me playing around and building a collection I plan to use in my own projects. Most of these are small patterns I reach for again and again: save states, toggles, validation, loading, confirmations, undo, and the quiet moments in between. Putting them...
We are in a culture of optimization, which means we are in a culture of slop.The core paradox: as soon as something is identified as “good,” it becomes optimizable. As soon as something is optimizable, it is scaled and mass-produced. Eventually, unavoidably, the concept is devalued and we get slop.“Taste” was never the solution, because “taste” is identifiable. Shortly after the internet latched onto Pierre Bourdieu, every influencer immediately began replicating the same...
YouTube now adds a query parameter that discloses who shared a video. This is annoying, but thankfully there's a userscript that sanitizes and strips the tracking info from the URL.
Book review for Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. I rated it 4.5 stars Empire of Silence is a sci-fi / space opera set in the distant future, where humans have colonised the galaxy and are now fighting a war with an alien race known as the Cielcin. At the book’s opening we get a pretty strong hook - the protagonist Hadrian Marlowe is set to do terrible things in the future, killing a star and gaining the infamous moniker “The Sun Eater”. Quite amazingly this book...
It has been nearly 8 years since I last read a book by this author. Between 2016 and 2018 I read Offord’s The Nine Dark Hours (1941), Skeleton Key (1943), and My True Love Lies (1947), all of which I enjoyed. Of the three I would say The Nine Dark Hours is the best. Today’s read is a sequel to Offord’s 1943 novel, and The Saturday Review of Literature described it as an ‘admirable blend of mystery and family-history novel.’ They further added that it had ‘enough action,...
Last week was the Calgary Stampede, known as The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. I am no stranger to carnival performance, the joyful screams of the midway coasters, the bright-coloured stripes of a circus tent. There is always a certain feeling at the end of the day when you go out to a place like this, hands sticky from cotton candy that looks like wall insulation and caramel-covered apples. The air is raspberry-blue electric even at the dusking golden hour, when you're...
There’s something wonderfully comforting about a good breakfast sandwich, especially one that feels hearty enough to enjoy at dinner as well. These Breakfast Ciabatta Sandwiches are exactly that kind of recipe — simple, satisfying, and built on flavours we all know and love. Crisp fresh ciabatta rolls, rich pan fried eggs seasoned with smoked paprika, melty cheddar cheese, and sweet fresh tomatoes come together in a way that feels both indulgent and completely doable on...
🇫🇷 C'est le 14 juillet, la fête nationale 🇫🇷 So I've been to a central London street named France. Petty France is a short street just south of St James's Park. Its name comes from a small settlement of French traders that grew up on the edge of in Westminster in the 16th century. One end was for woolstaplers (i.e. traders in wool) and called "Petty Calais", and the other end for French merchants who sailed over to buy which became known as "Petty France". Its strategic...
At the center of a once-vibrant valley stood a garden unlike any other. It had been known for its colors. Bright lilies that bent with the wind. Wild roses that grew in every direction. Tall sunflowers that turned freely toward the sky. Every plant was different. Every corner alive. At its heart wor…
Friday is my last working day before a four week vacation. Since this is my first year as a full-time employee, rather than on a hourly basis, I don't have any vacation days saved, so I'll take a shorter vacation this year. I'd like to keep a rainy day fund of vacation-days. Being an adult however, it feels like vacation is more about working at home instead. I placed an order for a new fence yesterday, to even dream of getting it done I bought premade fence elements,...
I've learned recently that there is a type of wasp called an ensign wasp. they can get pretty large and weird-looking. I'll just say that someone in my life recently found one indoors and told me about it after a day of feeling a little terrorized by it. I obtained a picture, immediately looked these wasps up, and learned that many of these wasps lay their eggs inside cockroach egg cases! We don't know what species this is specifically, but the genus is believed to focus...
she still has some items that belong to me—at least, I think she does. they could be in a landfill or a secondhand shop by now. more likely they are in a box at the back of her closet. a swimsuit, a shirt, a favorite bra, a leather jacket. last wednesday I finally worked up the guts to make it known via email that I would like them back soon. I mean, I want to swim in something that isn't biker shorts! it's summer! it felt good to be honest about my needs, regardless of...
It’s surprising to me how I haven’t spent a great deal of time exploring Italian coffee culture, especially given my proclivity for consuming said beverage. I’ve been reliably informed that Australia’s coffee snobbery was derived in large part by waves of Italian and Greek immigration (and German, which included my dad). It’s regularly cited as the reason why chains like Starbucks have struggled to get as much of a foothold in the country, though I’ve argued that’s but one...
I am finding the newly revealed capability to code old applet ideas into reality to be very tempting to sink more time into, though I am certainly encountering the common “vibe coding” experience that the process can produce something that superficially resembles a finished product well before a satisfactory level of testing and review has been completed; indeed, it is the review process which is now the most time-consuming, to the point where I think any further advances...
Nico turned two in June. What the hell! Where’s my baby boy, and who’s this sassy little dude running around my house. We threw him a farm-themed birthday (my man loves cows), then took the kids up to see their cousins in Richmond. The next weekend, we went camping with Claire’s family at Carolina Hemlocks Recreation Area. This was awesome – bit of a haul for sure, and the boy couldn’t handle the switchbacks on the way up the mountain, but we were rewarded with a beautiful...
howdy yall!!!! this week is another week that was bad because Life Continues to Happen. like one more person in my family ending up in the ER, and then one more friend deeply going through shit. i am also having extremely bad allergic reactions to bug bites!!!!!!!! its quite painful :) kind of hate talking about all the bad because i hate being a victim and i hate being pitied. also for work i was tasked with working on/repairing something broken, told my boss how bad it...