history reading

“Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic”

I checked my first book out of our new-to-us public library a couple of months ago. It was “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, a very good book, whose title accurately describes its contents (what would happen to nature and the human-built environment if humans were suddenly gone), but it took me foooooorever to read. I’ve been too busy moving stuff into the household and painting and such. Truth be told, I’ve also gotten into…

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music observations technology

Twitter Requiem – Join Me at Mastodon

When I pinned a portion of the lyrics to Duran Duran’s song “Future Past” on my Twitter feed on December 31, 2021, little did I know they would serve as a requiem for the site. If you’ve not been following the Twitter saga, gazillionaire Elon Musk, who seems to have more money than sense, purchased Twitter and has been burning it all to the ground in the course of a few weeks. I have been…

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challenge technology

Emailing Yourself Stuff

My friend and fellow historian David Grabitske threw down a writing  challenge on Twitter recently. The following tweet passed through my timeline recently from Stephanie @SimplyDreamin95: “Does anyone else email themselves stuff they need to save on another device and read or do you have your life together? #PhDLife” I retweeted Stephanie’s tweet and said: “I email myself stuff aaaalllll the time to read and save it on another device.” David replied that he did…

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art health music writing

Prince – “Sometimes I Stand in Awe of What I Do Myself”

Got a Covid booster yesterday and feeling achy with a mild fever and sore arm today, so a short blog post. I saw this great quote from Minnesota musician Prince’s Twitter account a couple days ago and had to save it. I would never in a billion-and-a-half years ever compare my creative output to the stratosphere of Prince’s creative brilliance, but I actually know what he means by this quote. As a writer and artist,…

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action design tips

403 Forbidden & Alt Text

I have a habit of breaking WordPress websites and putting them back together again. I’ve done so at work a few times and with this particular site. When I say “break,” it’s not that I’m trying to make them completely inoperable. What I’m attempting to do is make them more efficiently operable, usually by combining two separate sites. A little over a year ago, when the pandemic first hit, I didn’t have the energy to…

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