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Yamagami Tetsuya’s Revenge: A grim portrait of modern Japan
I just read an intriguing article from February of this year. Dylan Levi King writes in Palladium: One July morning, after years of careful planning, drawing up lists of possible targets, and tinkering...
View ArticleTwo ways to film the same scene: Comparing a 1940 scene to the 1998 version
The Shop Around the Corner is one of my favorite movies of all time. In the video below, Nerdwriter compares a scene from this classic to Nora Ehpron’s 1998 remake, You’ve Got Mail (whose title...
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Omega 599 Super Badger, Meißner Tremonia Woody Almond, Yaqi DOC, and Anthony...
After a quick pre-shave prep with a dab of Grooming Dept Moisturizing Pre-Shave,I loaded my Omega 599 Super Badger brush with Meißner Tremonia’s Woody Almond shaving paste. I do like the bitter-almond...
View ArticleLaw Enforcement Officers Crash SUV Into Local Bar, Arrest Bar Owner For Being...
Something is seriously wrong with US police culture. Tim Cushing writes at Techdirt: When law enforcement officers screw up, it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s the lack of trust or support for...
View ArticleVince Guaraldi, the Jazz Composer Who Created the Best Christmas Album Ever,...
I have long loved the Vince Guaraldi Trio and have a good collection of their work. Colin Marshall has a good piece in Open Culture about Guaraldi’s sound tracks for the various Peanuts specials. It...
View ArticleTrump and the conservative worldview
George Lakoff just republished his interesting and insightful essay on how Trump succeeds by exploiting the conservative worldview, and the source of the basic differences between conservative and...
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House of Mammoth Shire 2, with RazoRock Amici and Old Type
I’ve been eyeing House of Mammoth shaving soaps and aftershaves — and not just because I’m on Mastodon. I finally got a set of Shire and tried it this morning — TL;DR: I’m impressed, but I could do...
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Omega 11047 Mixed Midget, Meißner Tremonia Pink Grapefruit, RazoRock Game...
An extremely nice shave today. My Omega 11047 Mixed Midget (badger and boar) made a fine lather from Meißner Tremonia’s Pink Grapefruit shaving paste, which is no longer made. (I have to say that I...
View ArticleThe most important proposition revealed by history
I’m reading 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin, and noted this comment early on, as the author describes a pleasant summer in 1926 Czechoslovakia: The most important proposition revealed...
View ArticleWhy did the South attack the North to launch the Civil War?
We know exactly why, because the Southern states explained the reason in detail: the South wanted to protect the institution of slavery. Nikki Haley is totally wrong: the reason was not “freedom.” The...
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A memory catcher to keep track of events in daily life – Revised
Photo by Hannah Wei on Unsplash, altered by author When I look back at the past year, trying to recall the significant happenings of my daily life, I’m stymied. I had a bout of Covid, but was that...
View ArticleThe Death Knell of the Republican Party
Heather Cox Richardson has a particularly good column today, which begins: When asked at a town hall on Wednesday to identify the cause of the United States Civil War, presidential candidate and former...
View ArticleYou really have two noses
I was looking through “81 Things That Blew Our Mind in 2023” in the Atlantic (gift link, no paywall). One that particularly struck me was Sarah Zhang’s article explaining how our two noses work (no...
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Lovely shave for Christmas Day (celebrated)
My Zenith 80B XSE unbleached boar brush got a terrific lather from Meißner Tremonia’s Exotic Elemi. The clay in this soap is French green clay, and the fragrance (from the elemi, I imagine) is...
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Why oligarchs do what they do
Teri Kanefield has an interesting and informative post. From the post: Timothy Snyder, in his book The Road to Unfreedom, explains that creating crisis and spectacle is the way modern oligarchs gain...
View ArticleT-Pain – On Top Of The Covers (Live From The Sun Rose)
It’s a full album. From the description: In March, T-Pain gave three exclusive and intimate performances of never before heard covers. All three nights sold out instantly. Since it’s the gift-giving...
View ArticleA peanut from the 1690s
I would love to try these. The (US) National Peanut Board writes: The Carolina African Runner peanut re-emerges, giving farmers and chefs a new culinary adventure. At Clemson University’s Coastal...
View ArticleTom Friedman: What Is Happening to Our World?
Tom Friedman writes in the NY Times (gift link, no paywall); I’ve been The Times’s foreign affairs columnist since 1995, and one of the most enduring lessons I’ve learned is that there are good seasons...
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