Week 03-26 - Curiosities
Greetings from the Mesa
I've noticed a huge upswing in content scraping by bots - particularly from China. From what I've researched it looks like this scraping stealing is done to suck content into LLMs (AI). So i've moved all my creative content behind a membership wall. Membership is FREE on my site - ALWAYS. I encourage new readers to hit the subscribe button - simple, fast, free. The weekly curiosities newsletter will remain publicly available for now. It sucks that it comes to this, but the AI industry is a resource hog (an environmental nightmare) and does not need any more free content from creatives to train it. New creative content I post between weekly newsletters will be linked in the new section below... What I'm Working On.
Curiosities is back to it's regularly scheduled Wednesday broadcast. Winter has returned, or finally arrived, 4+" of snow last Thursday and bone chilling cold temps.The wood stove is working overtime. We are deep in winter cozy mode still. Lots of reading, playing Quiddler, doing drawing exercises, and learning new recipes. KP is deep in researching how to make pottery lamps, and learning how to make homemade pasta. We've also casually started 2026 garden planning. It's a slow time, watching the storm clouds roll through Minnesota. Feeling disconnected and activated. What's next?
What I'm Working On
Curiosities of the Week
- Cynthia Erivo 'Feeling Good' at Thanksgiving Day Parade (CHILLS) (YouTube) Her voice is absolutely incredible.
- I've been trying to wean off of Adobe products to open source projects. I'm giving Friction a try instead of using After Effects. I've been using Kdenlive instead of Premiere and like it for simple video editing.
- An Optical Compass Inspired by Bee Vision (Kottke) A video describing the project (YouTube). Wild!
- I've probably linked this before, but if you want to keep up with the current state of affairs, but want to limit exposure, I highly recommend Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter Letters from an American (Substack) She's great at both synthesizing the day's events and giving them a historical perspective.
- I just finished reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Affiliate link) and could not put it down. This is the kind of fantastical fantasy book I want to read. Here's a profile of her most recent book which talks briefly about Piranesi. (NYT-gift)
Consuming
Currently Reading: The Gunslinger - King, My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book #2 - Ferris, and Queen Demon - Wells
TV/Movies: Haven't really been watching TV.
Music: Already feeling behind in my music journey this year, other things are consuming my time. And that's okay.
Thinking about: English language haiku construction, and F the rulz!
Thanks for reading, see you next time!