Mark’s Recommendations For London
Reecently, I’ve been averaging one request per week of things to do in London. I mostly blame Meta allowing business travel again. I figured I should write t...
Recent Posts
Bacon Strip - The Seven Deadly Sins
As Cunard used to say, “Getting There is Half the Fun.” I ended up walking to Jules Mae again. At one point, I walked by a restaurant, and there was someone ...
An Old Mystery Solved
In my wayward youth, I helped to digitize a journal from the Harriman Alaska Expedition1. As I was looking through the journal, the other notes that were in ...
Quick Hit: ChatGPT as Personal Tour Guide
The Quick Pitch:
Quick Hit: Carkeek Salmon Run
It was a perfect late fall day in Seattle: the air was cold, but clear, and the sun was shining brightly, taking a bit of the edge off the chill. I had a laz...
Every Restaurant on Broadway
In February 2020, I had the idea that I would do everything1 and try everything that was advertised in Highbury and Islington tube station2. I very carefully...
Genius or Savant
I’ve been thinking about Boris Johnson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump a lot recently. This is mostly because it’s nearly impossible to follow the news and not ...
Bacon Strip: Sylvia’s Casserole
This was my first drag show in Seattle since I moved here, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. NADC has an astoundingly high bar; just off the top of ...
Three And a Half Thoughts on Twitter
There has been a lot of ink spilled about Elon’s takeover of Twitter, and his “Friday Morning Massacre,” and I’m unlikely to make any insights that haven’t b...
Quick Hit: My Hotel is Evil
At first, I thought my hotel was weird. I mean. I have pictures to prove it.
Quick Hit: Isle of Wight Railway
For the first quick hit1, some ironwork at Shanklin Station, on the Island Line. I normally try to write at least 500-1000 words in a post. Q...
Morally Bankrukpt Business Plans: British Cultural Heritage
(Yes, this is the long-awaited art history morally bankrupt business plan.)
I wont’t see NCII
One of the things that the social media / tech industry has not gotten enough credit for is the efforts around stopping things like child sexual abuse materi...
Miss Ellaneous
N.B. This was written about two months after the actual event, so I am working from notes and (dim) memories. It was all so much better than I could ever hop...
A (Partial) History of chi.queers
Tonight’s chi.queers party was another big success. I think it was one of the larger parties at CHI this year, and I was proud to be a co-host, along with JC...
Duck Brook Bridge and Quarry
I’m back in Bar Harbor this week, and as could be expected for Bar Harbor in late April, the weather is variable. The past two days have been beautiful, but ...
Wales, Part 1: Cheap Hotels
Zuck gave all of us five extra holidays in 2022, and the first one was 18 March. Even though I had just gotten back from the US, I decided to get out of Lond...
Changing at Euston and Sweating The Details
I was heading home from dinner1 with M., and Apple Maps told me that the overground to Stratford was cancelled. That was very useful, and meant that I headed...
The National Trust and Titles
The National Trust really likes titles.
Artwashing: Wallace Collection’s “The Male Portrait”
I’ve always1 read the sponsor walls (or pages) to see who has supported museums. At first, it was mostly to see if I recognized names, but over the past deca...
Radio Silence, Redux
I am in the process of moving my (very) occasional blog from a relatively obscure CMS (Anchor1) to Jekyll, which involves pulling out all the old content fro...
The Northernest Line
Contra Jago Hazzard’s well-researched and historically grounded exploration about the origins of the Northern Line, I’d like to suggest that the reason why i...
Organizational Taxes
There are some papers/books that are transformative for me; after I read them, I simply don’t see the world in the same way any longer. Off the top of my hea...
Behind the Record: Blockchain for Eventual Declassification
I think there is a lot of potential in the Blockchain, but, it most certainly isn’t in the form of crypto-currencies. I think it’s instead putting together n...
Tim Versus Zuck
I feel like this is painfully obvious to say, but I don’t remember actually reading it anywhere:
Strong Typing For Statistics
Background
A journal, Again.
I never really got in the habit of keeping a blog or regularly posting to the socials. But, I keep journals pretty consistently, and have maybe thousands of ...
Walking the Piccadilly Line: The Mystery of Arsenal Station
Today was a short walk, not far from home, from Caledonian Road station to Finsbury Park station. For most of the way, the Piccadilly either runs directly be...
Morally Bankrupt Business Plans, #38
In the spirit of “The Player,” here’s my pitch, “Well, we’re building on the proven success of GPT-3, adding in deepfakes, to disrupt the business of sextort...
Paul Tol’s Colors: Cut and Paste
I’m a fan of Paul Tol’s color schemes. They are attractive, colorful yet not too garish, distinguishable, and color-blind safe. He documents them well, but n...
Range of 1970s Soviet Commercial Airplanes
Airline maps asks “did Aeroflot not have an aircraft that could fly nonstop from Moscow to Vladivostok in the 1970s?.” Because I’m that kind of nerd, I looke...
Airbus and Brexit
Minor Prediction: Airbus will make a major announcement about Brexit in the next six to eight weeks: they have purchased property outside of the United Kingd...
Gender and Shuttle Stops
tl;dr Castro is a lot more male than the Mission.
Radio Silence
Good News: I have a new job, one that very successfully integrates a wide range of my talents and interests.
PrEP Demographics
Following up on the previous post, some people on the Facebook PrEP group were asking about general demographics of PrEP users. This data is again from the s...
PrEP and Drug Use
A few weeks ago, someone asked about drug use and PrEP, asking if it was more common for people on PrEP to be using drugs. At the time, Website A had just st...
“Kieth Haring: The Political Line:” What of AIDS?
This afternoon, I went to see Kieth Haring: The Political Line. I think I got off on the wrong foot with this exhibit at the very start; one of the introduct...
Japan And The Toyota Production System
One of the fundamental paradoxes I’ve found in Japan is the contrast between the justly-famous efficiency of their manufacturing operations (in particular, t...
Limbs and Language Ability: Neuroscience meets Art History and Religious Studies
A fundamental problem in the history of Western art is the so-called “Putti Problem.” Simply put, how wings are represented in images of angels, putti, cupid...
City Literacy
For a while, I’ve believed that there is a set of skills about how to live and navigate in larger cities. I call it roughly “city literacy,” and have noticed...
The Lies of the Six-Billion Dollar Man
Marky Mark has announced he will star in a re-make of the “Six Million Dollar Man.” Of course, these days, six million dollars doesn’t seem all that much, so...
An alternate Approach to Facebook
Every six weeks or so, a Facebook friend announces (s)he is cleaning up their friend list, and the “weaker” friends are going to get the axe. (I’m using “wea...
Uber versus Taxi
A few days ago, a friend needed to get home on a rainy morning. He decided to call a cab. “Great. We’ll be there in 15 minutes,” the dispatcher said. Fifteen...
PrEP Disclosure Online: Still not happening
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at data on degree of PrEP disclosure in web-based real-time dating sites. The past few months were pretty busy for me, an...
Initial Thoughts on Ello
[Update 1: Added #4, Updated #2] [Update 2: Added #5, Updated all]
Scottish Independence and Peak Oil
It seemed to me, as a casual but occasionally interested observer, that Salmond’s major economic case for Scottish independence was something along the lines...
Facebook as Global Maxima
With recent news that Twitter is moving towards a Facebook-style filtered feed, we start to see the convergence of the various social networks towards an unh...
Slightly Bad Infographics, #1
I probably shouldn’t pick on Vox for my very first rant, but this entry bothered me a bit. It shows the number of deaths per outbreak (roughy categorized by ...
Johnie Walker Blue: Great Scotch? Or Great Marketing?
1. The Set-up