Want to join in? Respond to our weekly writing prompts, open to everyone.
Want to join in? Respond to our weekly writing prompts, open to everyone.
from
The happy place
on my last garden party, there was a strong powerful wave of contentment stemming from seeing my friends and neighbours getting along, while I sit parked in the folding chair with one beer resting in each armrest.
I compare myself to a dog then, and I mean it in the best sense of the world.
Having a sense of belonging
Seeing people having a great time without I having to intervene
Like a fat lazy dog basking in the warmth of a budding friendship.
and I spoke to my friend exactly 666 miles from my folding chair; he’d been out with some 100 colleges of the fire brigade to extinguish a fire believed to have been caused by a faulty washing machine; some poor family’s house turned to ashen rubble overnight.
And it blows my mind how these things can happen at the same time.
These contrasts are everywhere all of the time
Of this life in this world, precious and cruel.
indifferent
And in my way, I’m sensitive now to these facts and things because I’m in the rediscovery phase in which the fundaments of my world needs to be reconstructed but the concrete needs time to harden
Or it’ll crack anew, and that I will avoid if possible
And thus the skin is extra sensitive to the undercurrents
And I have so much love to give
And I am loved
And I am no fool, I know this is precious, even more so than saffron
from
Roscoe's Quick Notes

Tuned in now to 105.3 The Fan, DFW's #1 Sports Station, catching an early afternoon Rangers vs Marlins MLB Game. Already in play, the Rangers are leading 1 to 0 in the 4th inning.
As I usually do, I'm following the game via MLB's Gameday Service.
And the adventure continues.
from
Notes I Won’t Reread
I know all i do in these notes is that i complain and ramble, and complain about rambling, then somehow turn that into three more paragraphs of rambling. But I’m having fun with it. Not as much fun as how today went, earlier my housemate and i got into a massive argument. By the end of that, he threw a knife at me. And he missed. Anyway, such a productive conversation. I’d explain what happened, but then I’d have to think about it again, and I’ve already been through enough. i keep having that dream again. The navy dressed woman. i don't think she'll be reading this, and she doesn’t read these notes anymore, so i can talk about it without pretending I'm being overly mysterious. i dont even know why my brain keeps bringing it back. same senario. same places, she tries to kill me or pretend to yadda yadda whatever, and i honestly never get an answer before i wake up and spend the whole day thinking about it, like somehow going to make more sense the hundredth time i replay it. and here where it gets all embarrassing or messy or when i start making it sound deeper than it is for no reason, i dont personally want it to stop even though i wake up sweating and slightly concerned for my wellbeing, and laugh about it for five minutes, its funny in a way i cant discribe but again ill spend the rest of the day wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean and never get an answer.
If anything, the dream is probably the least ridiculous part of the whole situation. The real issue is me waking up and thinking that spending my whole day wondering what it means is what i should be doing with my life.
Sincerely, Ahmed
ps, quick nap. You know why.
from
Ennui Vagaries
Recreation of a Conklin Crescent Filler fountain pen. (Photo by Unattributed, Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
I don't recall any point in time where I had any interest in fountain pens. I was born well after the time of the fountain pen, and there weren't any relatives in my family that had any special attachments to fountain pens. Then, there are some questions to answer:
Answers to these questions await, along with a few extra tidbits here and there along the way.
The idea came to me last fall. I was looking for something to do during the coming winter, didn't rely on a computer or cellphone. And, it was on my mind that as I age, it's necessary to do things that will help with hand/eye coordination, and manual dexterity.
Fountain pens was a natural fit. I'd always liked looking at really nice calligraphy. But I knew I would drop it if I tried to force myself to learn calligraphy. However, I did see where improving my penmanship could be beneficial.
What I didn't expect was that I would find a solution to a different concern I'd had. What problem was that?
I've tried to keep a journal on my computer for years, and failed miserably. When I am sitting at the computer I have a tendency to write what ever is on my mind as quickly as I can. (Even this post has gone through severe edits: I just cut four paragraphs from an earlier session.)
But soon, I found that my mind seemed to be working differently when I was holding a pen and looking at a piece of paper. There is something that is much more intentional when writing in ink. You have to have intent in the words that you put on the page, there's no backspace key for a pen. There's no cut-n-paste for moving things around on the page.
This meant that what I wrote had to have intentionality. And, to gain that intentionality I had to focus and use my mind differently. It was almost like finding a zen place where my focus guided the pen, and what flowed out was more meaningful to me since it couldn't be edited easily. (Yes, you can scratch out things, or write in the margins, etc., but this is very limited compared to the edits you can do in a word processor.)
This has made the fountain pen “hobby” one of the best things that I have undertaken in over a decade. It has brought me a better connection with my writing, and that connection is allowing me to write in a way that I haven't in a long time.
(Another theory I have is that over the years the changes that have been made to software have actually made it worse for writers. I know, for example, that I started to dread writing in WordPress ever since they introduced the Gutenberg block editor.)
I didn't set out to start collecting fountain pens. That came as a result of the re-found connection with my writing. This led to me doing a little research into writers that use (or used) fountain pens. As it turns out there are quite a few people that were or are known to use fountain pens:
And, the thing that really clicked, and made me laugh my bum off was finding out about the letter Samuel Clemens sent to Roy Conklin, the founder of the Conklin Pen Company. In the letter Clemens extolled the virtues of the Conklin Crescent Filler (picture at the top of this article) as a “profanity saver” as it wouldn't roll off his desk. This communication led to Clemens endorsing the product and appearing in print advertisements until his death in 1910.
But the more interesting part was non-authors I found that use or collect fountain pens:
This isn't even an exhaustive list, I've seen lists of 50 or more people. However, many of them were somewhat obscurer to me.
The one that really sealed it for me was finding out that Rick Wakeman (former keyboardist for Yes, and prolific recording artist in his own right) has been collecting vintage fountain pens since the 1970s. This was an activity that he undertook while on tour with the band.
This is where my pen collecting hobby came from. I decided to build a collection of pens that represent people that have some significance. The objective is to collect pens that are period correct representations of the instruments that would have been used by a person who meets my criteria for notability.
My current list has about 15 people on it, of which I've only acquired 4 pens. I have no illusion, I might not be able to acquire fountain pens representing everyone in the current list. And, I might add more people eventually (my current thought is that a collection of approximately 20 pens would be ideal).
Currently, I have been fascinated with Parker 51 fountain pens. Especially ones that used the Vacumatic filling system.
Parker 51 clone that incorporates the Vacumatic filling system. (Photo by Unattributed, License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
I have on my list at least one author that was known to use a Parker 51 fountain pen, so eventually I will try to find a period correct pen. But for now, these clones will suffice for my personal usage.
So, the story started pretty simply: I wanted a winter hobby that would help maintain my hand/eye coordination and manual dexterity. But it quickly turned into something else as I realized it was different writing with a pen and paper again.
Then, doing a bit of reading about people who have used and / or collected fountain pens has inspired me to start building a small collection of my own. In the meantime, I am using pens that are clones of classic pens, or new pens that are modern reinterpretations of this over one hundred-year-old technology.
The benefits using fountain pens surprised me. It's literally changed how I approach my writing. (This essay is not an example, as I wrote it completely here at my computer.) It has given me a renewed focus, and is helping me to improve the ideas that I am committing to the page.
Categories: #Hobby, #Collecting Tags: #fountain-pens, #writing, #history, #authors, #collectors
from
Unattributed
I stated the other day that I was surprised my former web host emailed me asking for feedback after I'd closed out my account. No survey, or feedback form, just a straightforward email.
And now I am surprised again. Why? Yesterday morning I received a response to that email. Only nine or ten hours after I sent it. And, much to my pleasure, the representative largely understood what I was talking about. She had some interesting and relevant comments.
So, here I am, presenting part two of this email exchange. I plan to respond to her email to clear up a minor mis-perception I think she has, but otherwise I feel like she's really taking my feedback and handling it properly.
(And this is something I have to say… I have respect for all the people I worked with at this host. They were very professional, responsive, and good at resolving issues. This email is further indication of the customer service this hosting service provided.)
First of all, thank you for taking the time to share such thoughtful and detailed feedback. We genuinely appreciate the level of insight you provided, and I can tell this wasn’t a decision you made lightly.
I’m glad to hear that, overall, you found value in the infrastructure and services we built. At the same time, I completely understand the frustrations you experienced, especially with the recurring optimization issue and the feeling of having to repeatedly reapply fixes after updates. I can absolutely see how that would become frustrating over time, particularly when your setup was intentionally kept simple and close to the default WordPress experience.
Your comments regarding testing against default WordPress themes and preserving user-defined optimization settings are especially valuable, and I’ll be sure to pass that feedback along to the relevant team. Even though the underlying issue may have been more nuanced, the impact on your workflow was very real, and that matters.
I also appreciate your honesty about pricing and feature fit. It makes complete sense that a platform designed for agencies, developers, and more complex website management can feel excessive when your primary focus is writing rather than maintaining large-scale web infrastructure. Sometimes the best solution is the one that stays out of the way and lets you focus on the work you actually care about.
And regarding WordPress itself, while experiences and preferences naturally vary, I can certainly understand your perspective on how the platform has evolved over the years. For users whose priority is writing efficiency and simplicity, the shift toward block-based editing and increasingly visual workflows hasn’t always been a welcome change. It’s clear you’ve given a lot of thought to your workflow and the tools that best support it, and it sounds like you’ve found an approach that aligns much more closely with how you prefer to work.
It’s great to hear that you were able to migrate your sites successfully and settle into a solution that better fits both your workflow and your budget.
Thank you again for having been with us and for giving our platform a chance over the years. We truly appreciate your support, your candid feedback, and the professionalism with which you shared your experience.
Wishing you all the best with your writing and your new setup moving forward.
Categories: #Article, #Feature Tags: #Webhosting, #Customer-Service, #email, #rants
from Faucet Repair
23 June 2026
Saw Shao Fan's show Refrain | 复沓 at White Cube this morning—wonderful work. First time in a while that such large paintings have felt justified. Deep sensitivity in all aspects, a practice of looking and re-looking, and a lived engagement with antiquity that generates work with an intensity that truly honors his subjects both human and nonhuman. There are a few stunners, but Fruit 1924 (2024) and Rabbit Portrait 1025 (2025)—both large ink on rice paper works—are with me the most right now. Fruit has an almost paper-like two-dimensionality; it's an apple sliced in half to reveal a core that becomes a network of overlapping planes and openings. Starts to become a skull-like memento mori the longer you look at it. Rabbit manages to achieve an unflinchingly direct and confrontational quality through symmetry without locking itself off in any way (which is something that usually doesn't sit well with me)—the odd strands of hair/whiskers whimsically trail off beyond their defining limits, and certain elements like the white of the rabbit's ears remain true to the eye rather than an ideal, so my feeling is that the impressive balance comes more from an endearing emotional groundedness than a technical fastidiousness.
from Sprachabenteuer
Umziehen: 19. Juni
Heute ist der Tag des Umzugs und inhaltlich natürlich nicht besonders spannend. Aber nicht nur unsere Unterkunft verändert sich – auch das Wetter macht gerade große Schritte. Schon gestern war es hier sehr heiß, und ab jetzt steigt die Temperatur offenbar täglich weiter.
Ein bisschen traurig war es schon zu entdecken, dass unser neues Hotel keine Klimaanlage hat. Na gut – es gibt eben immer Raum für Verbesserungen. So ist auch der Mensch: Er findet immer etwas, worüber er sich beschweren kann. Wenn der Sommer kälter ist, warte ich auf wärmeres Wetter. Und jetzt, wo es heiß ist, beschwere ich mich wieder. Trotzdem versuche ich, diesen Teil von mir ein bisschen zu kontrollieren! Meine Freude über die neue Unterkunft kann das jedenfalls nicht so leicht mindern.
Ich kann übrigens auch feststellen, dass die Wäschereien in Berlin toll sind – wenn auch ein bisschen teuer. Umso praktischer ist es, in der Nähe meiner Freundin zu wohnen. Sie kann mir diesen Service nämlich kostenlos anbieten! Nur zur Information: Zwei Waschladungen (helle und dunkle Kleidung) und 30 Minuten Trocknen kosten hier 17 Euro.
Unser Apartment – oder sagen wir: zumindest kein Loch mehr – hat jetzt auch einen Teppich! Unsere Hunde sind daran nicht besonders gewöhnt. Hoffen wir also, dass sie den Sinn dieses Teppichs nicht falsch verstehen. Bei meiner früheren Arbeit dachte Begemotas zum Beispiel einmal, dass man auf einen Teppich ruhig kacken darf. Aber das war noch in seinen jüngeren Jahren.
Was außerdem anstrengend ist: Wir haben immer unglaublich viele Sachen und Gepäck dabei. Wir reisen also nicht besonders ökonomisch. Das liegt auch daran, dass wir uns unterwegs nicht so einfach alles Nötige besorgen können. In Zukunft möchte ich deshalb nicht nur meine Deutschkenntnisse verbessern, sondern auch meine Packfähigkeiten. Schließlich muss ich einen Teil dieser Sachen auch selbst tragen – und das dauert nicht nur, sondern macht mich auch müde.
Ich habe sogar ein Foto von der großen Menge an Taschen und Gepäck gemacht, aber ich weiß noch nicht, wie man auf dieser Seite Bilder hochladen kann.
Insgesamt kann ich sagen, dass mir dieses günstige Hotel wirklich sehr gut gefallen hat – abgesehen von dem kaputten Aufzug. Wenn also jemand eine preiswerte Unterkunft in Berlin sucht, darf man sich gern bei mir melden!
from spotidown.me
SpotiDown is an easy-to-use online platform that allows users to download Spotify music for offline listening. By simply pasting a Spotify track, album, or playlist link, users can quickly access downloadable audio files without installing any software. The service is compatible with desktops, tablets, and smartphones, making it a convenient solution for music lovers who want fast, browser-based access to their favorite songs anytime and anywhere. Visit our site: https://spotidown.me/en1
from spotidownme
spotidownme https://spotidown.me/en1 SpotiDown is an online Spotify downloader and converter. It is designed to process Spotify links and convert the associated content into downloadable audio files. Unlike traditional desktop applications, SpotiDown works directly within a web browser, meaning users do not need to install additional software.
The platform advertises itself as a free service capable of handling:
spotidown spotidownme spotidown.me spotidownloader spotifydownloader
from Libretica
Este artículo es parte de una práctica de la universidad que ya he entregado. En el ejercicio, teníamos que elegir una sala expositiva real e intentar pensar modos de intervención que ayudasen a las obras existentes a dialogar con otras obras nuevas.
IMPORTANTE: Todo lo descrito aquí es especulativo, no se ha hecho ni se ha expuesto al verdadero museo. Sólo he elegido la sala y museo por mi propio cariño al espacio y mi interés por Granada y Al-Andalus.
El museo seleccionado es el museo de la Alhambra, se trata de una serie de salas una detrás de otra que se encuentran a la derecha de la entrada principal del Palacio de CarlosV, junto a los Palacios Nazaríes. El museo, actualmente, presenta una colección principalmente arqueológica,mostrando elementos relacionados con la Alhambra y Granada, como leones originales del Patio de los leones, cerámicas andalusíes, alicatado y herramientas, entre otros objetos. Este museo se encuentra jutno al Museo de Bellas Artes (comparten edificio), con pinturas emblemáticas de la ciudad y sus artistas.
Se trata de siete salas una seguida detrás de otra, que recorren el Palacio en su costado derecho. Las temáticas de las salas son:
Sala I: La ciencia, la fe y la economía Sala II: Periodo emiral y califal Sala III: Decoración arquitectónica califal y arte taifa al nazarí Sala IV: Período nazarí, edificios públicos Sala V: Periodo nazarí. La Alhambra y otros palacios de la ciudad Sala VI: Periodo nazarí. La rauda, la cerámica de lujo Sala VII: Periodo nazarí. La decoración y el ajuar.
Aunque cualquier sala se presta a este ejercicio, he elegido la sala V, donde se encuentra una de las piezas fundamentales de la colección (el Jarrón de las Gacelas) y otras piezas seleccionadas. La sala actualmente gira (literalmente) alrededor del Jarrón, pero muestra obras de taracea, ejemplos de alicatado y carpintería nazarí. He visitado el museo recientemente (13 de junio) , aunque no sea la primera vez, y he podido observar cómo el jarrón es lo primero que atrapa al visitante, ya sea por la iluminación o por estar en el centro, también porque es muy grande y es lo primero que se avista desde la entrada a la sala. El resto de obras bailan alrededor y tienen una narrativa que honra a la artesanía. La sensación que da es de admiración.
He elegido esta sala por varios motivos. Por un lado, esa narrativa centrada en la artesanía girando entorno a una pieza creo que da juego a la hora de incluir artesanías contemporáneas inspiradas en el legado nazarí. Por otro lado, siento una atracción fuerte por el jarrón, desde que lo vi en una exhibición anterior sobre cerámica nazarí. Me gustó tanto que me regalaron el catálogo especial de la exposición poco después, y siendo la pieza central de la sala, esa atracción personal creo que es relevante. Quería, además, usar los contextos y artículos de la publicación para el desarrollo de la práctica. He hecho un plano y análisis de la sala actual en mi libreta, y será sobre lo que trabaje como boceto:

Como menciono en la sección anterior, la narrativa actual de la sala se centra en la artesanía nazarí, y destaca en el centro una pieza sorprendente, absorbiendo un claro protagonismo. El resto de piezas, que incluyen alicatado, las hojas de la puerta de cierre a la Qubba Mayor, los restos de solerías del Peinador de la Reina, Las puertas de alhacena del palacio de los Infantes, celosías, una colección de cerámica pintada con temas figurativos y de geometría, vidrios y otros (los he listado por posición en la libreta arriba).
Al entrar a la sala, esta está primero partida por un mueble-cristalera expositivo que funciona como pared. Pero una vez traspasada esta falsa pared, lo primero que destaca es el jarrón de las Gacelas.
El planteamiento curatorial sería una revisión de la artesanía contemporánea en cerámica y madera que se haya inspirado en las técnicas y la estética nazarí. Para ello, se incluirían displays con obras contemporáneas, también alrededor del jarrón. La idea es que las piezas dialoguen con los elementos actuales, y que su proximidad de indicios de relación, haciendo una selección que sea intuitiva para el visitante.
Aunque no sea una limitación estricta, me gustaría seleccionar artistas locales que dialoguen con las obras de una forma íntima, más allá de lo académico, a través de la proximidad y la ubicuidad de lo nazarí en el día a día. Esto no quiere decir que otras obras puedan encajar en la narrativa. Para empezar, en la entrada, junto a la puerta, colocaría un panel informativo.
La lista de artistas ha sido eliminada de este post, ya que no se ha pedido permiso, y he preferido dejarlo en el entorno académico, pero son dos pintores/dibujantes y una ceramista.
Además de les artistes seleccionades, dado que la narrativa de la sala gira entorno a la artesanía, he pensado en incluir detalles de alumnos de restauración y módulos de formación profesional relacionados con artesanías de granada, tales como los ciclos de alfarería, orfebrería y ornamentación islámica. El alumnado de restauración ha participado en diversas exhibiciones de Granada. Por ejemplo, en el Colegio Máximo, donde hay exposiciones itinerantes que comparten espacio con la facultad de documentación y comunicación, el alumnado de restauración ayudó a crear reproducciones de herramientas y objetos cotidianos de al-Andalus para una de las exhibiciones. Considero que incluir una vitrina con muestras e información de alumnado de este tipo, resalta la discusión acerca de la artesanía y el arte, sus divisiones y sus espacios comunes (Richard Sennet, El artesano; Larry Shiner, La invención del arte). En la sección siguiente incluyo detalles sobre este planteamiento.
Para encajar un aura diferente en la sala, utilizaría un tono musical específico, diferenciado, acompañado de una proyección geométrica. Una opción que podría encajar sería la generación de tonos de música basados en geometrías, por ejemplo en este caso se está utilizando un hexágono para general un tono musical con ayuda de un programa (no es IA), o hecho de cero por une artiste local a través de librerías disponibles de Python, BASH, etc (La Madraza, que coordina arte contemporáneo en Granada a través de la UGR, promociona el livecoding con artistas locales). Incluiría una placa con una nota al respecto cerca de alguna de las piezas de patrones geométricos de la colección.
He tomado algunas notas sobre el boceto original de la sala, y he seleccionado algunas fotos que ayuden a hacerse una idea de dónde y cómo se colocarían las modificaciones de la sala. Mi idea original es no interrumpir con las obras originales, si no crear un nuevo diálogo añadiendo objetos. Para ello, tomé algunas indicaciones previas para guiarme:
No recargar la sala: he eliminado de la selección final un par de artistas que había anotado inicialmente (un luthier y un dibujante). Como he decidido mantener las obras originales y sólo añadir, es fácil recargar la sala y generar una cacofonía visual, que es lo opuesto a lo que quiero. Por ello, tenía que comprobar la disponibilidad de la sala para modificar puntos clave dejando más o menos el mismo espacio disponible para la mirada al vacío y para moverse.
Iluminación y sonido: Utilizar recursos de ambiente para dejar claro que la sala es diferente a las demás, y dar espacio mental a los visitantes para hacerse a esa idea desde el comienzo.
Accesibilidad: Irrumpir lo menos posible en la accesibilidad, haciendo posible por ejemplo el paso de sillas de ruedas o espacio suficiente para personas con movilidad reducida. Antes de hacer este grado, realicé el grado de ingeniería informática, y como parte de unas prácticas realicé una aplicación de accesibilidad para un museo, para lo cual tuve que estudiar cuestiones de accesibilidad tanto motora como sensorial e intelectual. He “re-aprovechado” las notas que tomé entonces.
Narrativa: Teniendo en cuenta todo lo anterior, quería centrarme en destacar la artesanía, su relación con el “cubo blanco”, y su cercanía con las bellas artes.
Para empezar, para que los visitantes tengan el primer contacto, al entrar por la puerta colocaría una proyección sobre el suelo de la entrada, que acompañe a la música generada a través de algoritmos de geometría. Por ejemplo si usamos una melodía como esta, la proyección sería esa figura. De este modo, ya estamos “pausando” a las visitantes. Justo al lado de la puerta, colocaría un panel informativo sobre la exposición que pone en diálogo restos arqueológicos y artesanías/artes contemporáneas.
De este modo estamos dando una introducción con pistas visuales y sonoras (más el panel) de que algo es diferente, cambiando la predisposición de las visitantes, pero sin irrumpir con las piezas originalmente expuestas ni el espacio para moverse y acceder. A continuación, al entrar por la derecha para pasar tras la falsa pared-mueble expositivo, comenzamos a incluir las obras mencionadas. Mi propuesta sería, para empezar, colocar colgando de la barra donde están las luces led (pared izquierda), sobre los alicatados, Dibujos y pinturas. Las piezas originales tienen un QR al lado para explicar la pieza, creo que algo similar encajaría en este caso, además de una plaquita con el nombre de la pieza, la autora y autor y materiales+técnica.
Para continuar, la cerámica podría dialogar tanto con las cerámicas de la vitrina como con el jarrón de las gacelas, pero quiero evitar el efecto “comparación”. No querría que las visitantes tendieran a comparar ambas, si no que vieran la influencia y los lazos que las unen a través del tiempo. Por ello, se me ocurre colocar la pieza cerámica en la esquina que crea el mueble expositor (que en ese espacio no tiene nada, solo es madera) y en el suelo colocar unos vinilos con líneas y surcos de una infografía visual, como la utilizada por artistas para el estudio de sus proyectos. Estas líneas interactúan con los objetos de la sala, por ejemplo señalando al jarrón y con una nota de fuente tipo “escrito a mano” diciendo “estudia/investiga” y otra línea que se dirige a las cerámicas y alicatados con notas tipo “hereda de”, y otras notas a parte, incluyendo con las del alumnado de artesanías, que presento en breve.
Finalmente, el trabajo del alumnado de restauración y artesanías iría en una vitrina, donde está el panel informativo a la derecha de la sala. En lugar de sustituir el panel informativo, se colocaría una vitrina alargada + panel informativo actualizado donde venga parte de la información que ya hay (y un QR de “continuación”) además de información sobre estos estudios, las aportaciones a museos y notas sobre restauración, así como fotos. En la vitrina destacarían algunas obras, tanto acabadas como en proceso, de estos módulos y artesanos. Añadiría un QR justo en la zona de salida, también. El motivo es que muchas salas expositivas tienen entrada y salida por el mismo sitio, haciendo que las visitantes puedan hacer foto o recordar puntos clave al irse (a mi me pasa). Pero en este caso es una entre siete salas, así que la salida es diferente. De este modo, el QR sirve al mismo tiempo de “despedida” (indicando a las visitantes que pueden cambiar el “mood” de nuevo) y de recordatorio sobre información relacionada. Para ello habría que tener una web preparada.
Adicionalmente en el boceto he incluido cosas como que el estante para la cerámica tenga silica para mantener la pieza, y que incluyan la vidriera y ese mueble altavoces y braille.

Nota: no se ha usado I.A. en ninguna fase del proyecto. Las imágenes son bocetos y fotos mías o capturas de la web oficial.
from DrFox

from
Marshall Review
Is poor education to blame for the fact that so many native English speakers can’t use bring and take correctly? Or have we collectively lost the ability to imagine where we are standing at any given moment?
Last week I read a piece in the Irish Independent in which a prominent journalist wrote something along the lines of: “an injured person was brought to the hospital.”
Really? Brought?
Was the journalist personally accompanying the ambulance? Were they clinging to the back bumper with a notebook and a sense of duty? Of course not. They were at their desk, probably eating a sandwich.
The correct verb is taken. As in: “the injured person was taken to the hospital, while the reporter remained safely at their keyboard.”
Where was the sub‑editor? Possibly also at lunch, – perhaps nibbling on the other half of that sandwich.
But, bring and take aren’t decorative. They contain actual information about location – a concept that, judging by modern usage, is now considered optional – like ironing, or basic geography.
Take these two sentences:
- “I will bring my laptop from home to the office.”
Translation: I am currently at the office, and I am promising to arrive tomorrow with my laptop and, presumably, a sense of purpose.
- “I will take my laptop from home to the office.”
Translation: I am not at the office. I might be at home. I might be in a café. I might be in a field. But I am definitely not at the office.
Now consider:
“I’m going to bring my colleague to the airport” versus
“I’m going to take my colleague to the airport.”
If you say bring, you are speaking from the airport. Perhaps you live there now. Perhaps you’ve set up a small tent beside Departures? Perhaps I need to contact Focus Ireland on your behalf?
If you say take, you are somewhere else – anywhere else – but not at the airport.
This is not advanced linguistics. This is not quantum mechanics. This is kindergarten‑level spatial reasoning. And yet, somehow, it’s evaporating.
Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s the collapse of editorial standards. Maybe we’ve all become so dependent on GPS that we no longer know where we are unless a mobile phone tells us.
But the distinction matters. Language loses something when we stop caring about perspective. And frankly, if we can’t manage bring and take, I fear for the future of lend and borrow.
“Borrow me your blue pencil, will you – the chief already has a lend of mine.”
from An Open Letter
Against my will I did my first group FaceTime call to resolve some of the tension around a situation I’ve been hearing about essentially through proxy. thankfully it didn’t go that bad, but it was a bit of an uncomfortable situation to essentially have to mediate and suggest boundaries between two friends that got crushes on each other when it is not appropriate. One of them is in a long-term committed relationship, and the other is just getting out of a long term codependent relationship. I’m happy with how I handled it though, and also to their credit they handled it pretty well.
from Interior Painting Schaumburg IL for Beautiful Homes
Der Verlust eines geliebten Menschen ist eine schwere Zeit. Ein Grabmal ist deshalb mehr als nur ein Stein. Es ist ein Ort der Erinnerung, der Liebe und des Respekts.
Bei der Auswahl von Grabmale Berlin suchen viele Familien nach Qualität, Haltbarkeit und einem individuellen Design. Ein sorgfältig gestaltetes Grabmal hilft dabei, die Erinnerung an Verstorbene auf würdevolle Weise zu bewahren.
In Berlin gibt es viele Möglichkeiten, ein passendes Grabmal zu finden. Dennoch ist es wichtig, einen erfahrenen Anbieter zu wählen. Denn nur hochwertige Materialien und präzise Handwerkskunst sorgen für langlebige Ergebnisse.
Ein Grabmal steht oft über viele Jahrzehnte auf einem Friedhof. Deshalb muss es verschiedenen Wetterbedingungen standhalten. Regen, Frost und starke Sonneneinstrahlung können minderwertige Materialien schnell beschädigen.
Hochwertiger Granit, Marmor oder Naturstein bieten hier klare Vorteile. Diese Materialien sind robust und gleichzeitig optisch ansprechend. Daher entscheiden sich viele Familien für Naturstein.
Außerdem trägt ein gut verarbeitetes Grabmal zur gepflegten Optik der Grabstätte bei. Es schafft einen würdevollen Ort für Besuche und stille Momente.
Jeder Mensch ist einzigartig. Daher sollte auch das Grabmal die Persönlichkeit des Verstorbenen widerspiegeln.
Viele Menschen wählen individuelle Gravuren, Symbole oder besondere Formen. Namen, Daten und persönliche Botschaften machen jedes Grabmal einzigartig. Zusätzlich können religiöse Symbole oder florale Motive integriert werden.
Dadurch entsteht ein Denkmal, das persönliche Geschichten erzählt.
Die Auswahl an Grabmalen ist groß. Deshalb lohnt es sich, die verschiedenen Optionen zu kennen.
Einzelgrabmale sind für eine einzelne Ruhestätte gedacht. Sie gehören zu den häufigsten Varianten in Berlin.
Diese Grabsteine können schlicht oder aufwendig gestaltet sein. Die Wahl hängt vom persönlichen Geschmack und den Friedhofsvorgaben ab.
Doppelgrabmale eignen sich für Familien- oder Partnergräber. Sie bieten mehr Platz für Inschriften und Dekorationen.
Außerdem wirken sie oft besonders harmonisch und repräsentativ.
Urnengrabmale sind meist kompakter. Dennoch bieten sie viele Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten.
Sie sind ideal für kleinere Grabflächen und moderne Bestattungsformen.
Die Materialwahl beeinflusst Optik, Haltbarkeit und Pflegeaufwand.
Granit ist besonders beliebt, weil er robust und pflegeleicht ist. Außerdem bleibt seine Oberfläche über viele Jahre schön.
Marmor wirkt elegant und edel. Allerdings benötigt er mehr Pflege, da er empfindlicher gegenüber Umwelteinflüssen ist.
Sandstein bietet eine natürliche, warme Optik. Jedoch ist er weniger widerstandsfähig als Granit.
Daher lohnt sich eine professionelle Beratung vor dem Kauf.
Beim Kauf eines Grabmals spielen mehrere Faktoren eine Rolle.
Zuerst sollten Sie die Friedhofsvorschriften prüfen. Viele Friedhöfe in Berlin haben feste Regeln für Größe, Material und Gestaltung.
Außerdem sollten Qualität und Verarbeitung sorgfältig geprüft werden. Saubere Gravuren und präzise Kanten sind wichtige Merkmale guter Handwerksarbeit.
Auch der Service des Anbieters ist entscheidend. Beratung, Planung und Montage sollten zuverlässig durchgeführt werden.
Wenn es um hochwertige Grabmale geht, überzeugt mjgranit durch Erfahrung, Präzision und Liebe zum Detail. Das Unternehmen verbindet traditionelle Steinmetzkunst mit moderner Gestaltung.
Mit hochwertigen Natursteinen, individueller Beratung und maßgeschneiderten Designs schafft mjgranit Grabmale, die Würde, Beständigkeit und persönliche Erinnerung perfekt vereinen.
Die Auswahl eines Grabmals sollte niemals überstürzt erfolgen. Nehmen Sie sich Zeit, verschiedene Designs und Materialien zu vergleichen.
Ein professioneller Anbieter hilft Ihnen dabei, die richtige Entscheidung zu treffen. Dadurch vermeiden Sie spätere Unzufriedenheit.
Außerdem kann eine gute Beratung helfen, das Budget sinnvoll einzusetzen, ohne Kompromisse bei der Qualität einzugehen.
Die Wahl des richtigen Grabmals ist eine wichtige Entscheidung. Ein hochwertiges Denkmal bewahrt Erinnerungen und schafft einen Ort der Verbundenheit.
Wer nach Grabmale Berlin sucht, sollte auf Qualität, Material und individuelle Gestaltung achten. Mit dem richtigen Partner entsteht ein Grabmal, das Respekt, Liebe und Erinnerung über viele Jahre hinweg sichtbar macht.
from DrFox

from Hiroaki Satou
The Illinois college students who once dissolved before becoming anyone have returned in 2026 — each living an ordinary life — to quietly step beyond the vessel of rock.
In 1999, in a corner of a college campus in Illinois, an album was quietly recorded. The budget was a mere two thousand dollars; the sessions lasted just four days. By the time recording began, the band had already entered dissolution mode — members were graduating, and the end was imminent. In the three years leading up to those studio sessions, they had played somewhere between fifteen and thirty live shows, most of them to a handful of people in half-empty rooms.
“Nobody cared about this band.”
As member Steve Holmes later recalled, their debut album — known colloquially as LP1 — was destined to be filed away in a drawer as a memento of youth, reaching no one, disappearing quietly alongside the close of their college years. What the underground scene of the time wanted was emo as punk: louder, more impulsive, more viscerally emotional.
[What is emo?] Short for “emotional hardcore,” emo emerged in the late 1980s as a branch of American hardcore punk. It retained the intensity of its parent genre while turning inward — breakups, loneliness, and identity crisis delivered with raw personal candor. By the 1990s, pop-inflected acts like Blink-182 and The Get Up Kids dominated the mainstream, but in the Chicago suburbs of Illinois — where American Football, Owen, and Cap'n Jazz all took shape — a subgenre called Midwest emo developed its own distinct character: complex guitar arpeggios, odd time signatures, an intellectual and introspective sensibility. The 2010s saw a global-scale reappraisal of these bands, widely referred to as the “emo revival” or the genre's third wave. American Football's sound — understated, quiet, labyrinthine — was entirely out of step with the spirit of its time.
Yet in the fourteen years of the band's absence, something strange happened in reverse. Through file-sharing software like LimeWire and early internet message boards, that green-house cover quietly became a cult scripture among serious music listeners, eventually circling back as a foundational “source text” for the emo revival bands of the 2010s.
When a reissue in 2014 prompted a reunion, what awaited them was a string of sold-out stages around the world. Nate Kinsella — cousin of Mike Kinsella — joined as bassist at this point, expanding the band from a trio to a quartet. The group that had dissolved in total obscurity returned to find itself a legend the world had been waiting for.
What makes this band truly singular is that even after their miraculous reunion, they never returned to being full-time musicians.
Member Steve Lamos teaches as an associate professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado Boulder; Holmes works for a software company; frontman Mike Kinsella raises children while maintaining his solo project Owen. They can manage twenty to thirty live shows a year at most — grounded, practical people leading grounded, practical lives, running American Football as a full-fledged side project.
That sense of astonishment you felt listening to LP2 — how could something with this level of completeness have been made on the side? — is, from a structural standpoint, a perfectly logical outcome.
Kinsella has spoken of the “many compromises” involved in writing lyrics in the margins of work and parenting, scrawled out on tour buses under punishing schedules. But it is precisely because they have no need for the hungry ego or commercial calculation that comes with making a living from music that they are able to maintain — alongside the rhythms of daily life — a grownup's stoicism in controlling studio reverb and sound pressure down to the millimeter. The alternate tunings and polyrhythms they played in college, filtered through seventeen years of lived experience, had been refined into a species of fully controlled, quietly obsessive craftsmanship.
It should be noted that Lamos left the band in 2021 before returning in 2023, and has been involved in the making of LP4.
And then, in 2026, LP4 arrived — their first new record in seven years — more beautiful than anything they had made before, and further from their earlier sound than they had ever ventured.
The first thing that strikes the ear is the dramatic shift in sonic texture. The fresh, vivid indie-rock feel that once rang out from a campus corner has stepped back; in its place, a rich and deep acoustic space spreads outward, edging toward modern classical, electronica, post-rock, and ambient drone. The band has aged as people, and the musical vocabulary absorbed along the way has matured correspondingly — that much seems clear from the boldness of this expansion.
Thematically, too, LP4 carries a weight incomparable to anything before it. Polyvinyl has described the album as “relentlessly heavy,” noting that subjects like suicide, shame, divorce, addiction, self-loathing, and recovery often coexist within a single song. The lyricism of LP1, which charted the tremors of youth, has deepened into the raw, unfiltered reality of middle age.
Yet peel back that new acoustic fog one layer, and at the structural core of these songs — holding everything up — you will find the same “obsessively repeated arpeggios in alternate tunings, woven between two guitars” as always.
The roots of their music lie not in the impulse of punk but in a minimalism directly descended from Steve Reich: short phrases repeated, emotional contour drawn from subtle phase shifts and harmonic variations. That equation has not wavered, regardless of how much the surrounding texture has changed. One clear expression of this is LP4's “Desdemona,” built around a sustained rhythmic pulse drawn from Reich's landmark Music for 18 Musicians (1978) — the band's long-declared admiration for Reich finally inscribed into the skeleton of the music itself. For listeners who fell in love with the indie-rock energy of earlier records, this fog-laden sound may feel like a departure into too-distant territory. But for the band, it may represent a liberation from the monument they erected with their first album.
Those small, darting guitar arpeggios — once the vessel for the pain and unsteadiness of youth — now resound in 2026 like a loop that says: daily life goes on, quietly, but without question.
The fact that American Football's influence is inscribed not in critical endorsement alone, but in the actual actions of both contemporary and younger musicians, speaks to the essential strength of their music.
The most striking evidence of this is the 25th-anniversary tribute album for LP1, released in 2024. Featuring contributions from Iron & Wine, Manchester Orchestra, Blondshell, and others, the release drew particular attention for Ethel Cain's cover of “For Sure.” One of the most representative artists in the current alternative scene, Ethel Cain reached out and volunteered to cover the track herself, expanding the original's three minutes and sixteen seconds into a piece approaching ten minutes. “It's the song that always stands out to me when I put on the record,” she said, “and I immediately knew how to translate it into my own sound.” She added that “American Football is a band that etched themselves so deeply into an era with their debut — their musical storytelling has continued to inspire me in countless ways,” and the depth of her devotion is evident even in the music video for her own song “American Teenager,” whose typography and layout consciously echoes the cover design of LP1.
On LP4, the roster of collaborators reads as a map of the band's reach. Brendan Yates of Turnstile — a band at the front lines of the hardcore scene — was invited to join “No Feeling” as one voice in a choral ensemble, but when he tried an impromptu high-register harmony in the studio, his vocal presence lifted the song into an entirely different dimension. Kinsella recalled the moment as “everyone in the studio's jaw dropping.” That two artists from apparently separate contexts — emo and hardcore — could generate this kind of natural chemistry is itself proof that American Football operates beyond the boundaries of any particular genre.
The collaboration with Paramore's Hayley Williams on LP3 (2019) is legible in the same terms. Williams — who operates at the mainstream of pop-rock — agreed to appear on “Uncomfortably Numb” because she had simply been a longtime fan of American Football. And on LP4, Caithlin De Marrais of Rainer Maria — a peer from the same 1990s emo scene — also appears. Artists from different generations, each drawn to this band for their own reasons: that fact alone testifies to the rare and powerful magnetic field that is American Football.
3rd album is as good as others
Why does American Football's music lodge itself so deeply even in listeners who do not ordinarily listen to emo? Not because they are a band that detonates emotion.
There is something here that connects to the sadcore atmosphere of Red House Painters and Sun Kiel Moon — a raw authenticity that seals heavy feeling inside stillness. The slowly unspooling arpeggios they share with slowcore may be part of it. But the deeper reason is that this emotional truth is designed with cold precision through a minimalist “structure” that could almost be called mathematical.
A project that should have died completely is deified through the underground waterways of the modern internet, then breathed back to life in the margins of the adult lives its members now lead. What the 2026 record proves — quietly, and overwhelmingly — is that as the landscape of their lives has shifted, they have kept weaving, at the tips of their fingers, the same “aesthetics of repetition” they have carried since 1999, unchanged.