The photo above is an astonishing reflection of the triple arch of the Milky Way and our solar system.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Hank Green’s gentle awe as he reflects on the photos returned from the Artemis crew. Enjoy this video.
Remembering Norma Bailey’s floating store at Hot Springs Cove in Clayoquot Sound. I visited that place in 1989, the first time I ever came to this coast.
Animals share signals across space.
Just a few beautiful things from this little planet that is doing its best despite us letting it down.
The World Bank now thinks that nations should be setting industrial policy instead of just opening up their markets to whatever predatory investment comes along. Sorry about the last 50 years, I guess.
The description on the video says “Here is an extremely rare shellac master “test pressing” of the unissued (on 78) take 2 of “Cross Road Blues” (a.k.a. “Crossroad Blues”) by delta blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson, recorded in 1936.” The sound has to be heard to be believed.
There is something delightful in witnessing an incredibly well thought through and technical takedown of an incredibly poor set of design choices. This year’s contender for the best has to be tonsky’s savage, evisceration of Apple’s, seemingly random icon choices for menus in its new Mac operating system
I have been paying close attention to my sleep patterns, aided by my Apple Watch and a new CPAP machine which is helping sleep more deeply. As a result I am becoming increasingly familiar with how sleep works, from the phases of REM, to the waves of light and deep sleep I go through. I've been surprised to learn that waking up is a normal and healthy part of sleep (although waking up because you can't breathe is not, hence the sleep therapy).
So things catch my eye, and today's rabbit hole is aided by this article which describes more ancient and natural human sleep patterns during which a period of wakefulness is common and expected.
For most of human history, a continuous eight-hour snooze was not the norm. Instead, people commonly slept in two shifts each night, often called a “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Each of these sleeps lasted several hours, separated by a gap of wakefulness for an hour or more in the middle of the night. Historical records from Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond describe how, after nightfall, families would go to bed early, then wake around midnight for a while before returning to sleep until dawn.
Sleep patterns and managing the kind of light I am exposed to before bed and in the morning is radically changing how I feel during the day in the first couple of weeks of this new regime. Combined with the therapy, I am much better rested, even with less than 8 hours in bed. No midday sleepiness, less grogginess in the morning. On this trip I have handled jet lag better and recovery from a cross-country redeye has been easier on my system than usual.
Toronto Maple Leafs 1 – 3 Ottawa Senators
The Leafs' season has been over for a while now and a six game losing streak coming into this game sealed their fate. The season has sputtered to a disappointing end. It seemed to just fall apart from the very beginning with lots of two goal leads surrendered early in the season. I blame the departure of Mitch Marner, but the late season injury to Auston Matthews did help. And then down the stretch, goalie Stolarz hurt his knee. So tonight Hildby was in net, a bunch of young guys were out there and Knies, Nylander, Tavares, Cowan, Ekman-Larson, Benoit and McCabe played their last games of the season with them.
It didn't look like the Leafs would score at all during the night, but Joe Bowen and Jim Ralph did their best on the radio call in the third period to jinx the shutout. At 11:48 of the third period, the spell worked and William Nylander sneaked a backhander into the net to elicit one final "Holy Mackinaw" After 44 years, Joe Bowen is retiring. and THAT was the reason to tune in tonight.
"Holy Mackinaw" was his trademark. We all knew it. The Rheostatics built it into the chorus of a famous song. Joe made culture, and that phrase was a shibboleth for nearly forty years of Leaf culture.
Bowen called games for 44 years. Seventeen coaches, more than 700 players, thousands of goals; all got name checked by him. From a Walt Podubny goal in Detroit (which started a three goal comeback) to Nylander's poached goal tonight, Bowen called some of the best and worst years of the Leafs. Here's a selection of his best calls. My favourites are from 2002 playoffs, when the Leafs held on to a 4-3 lead against Ottawa Game 6 and in the subsequent series where they scored late against Carolina in Game 6 which tied the game and gave them a chance in the series. That team had some grit, and Joe liked nothing better than watching a group of Toronto Maple Leafs putting in a shift by playing out of their skins.
Since I was thirteen years old Joe Bowen has been the voice of the Leafs. For this century, he has been accompanied by Jim Ralph, and the two of them were as much a comedic duo as they were a commentary team. They love each other and Bowen's tribute to Ralphie and his thanks tonight was the most emotional moment of the night. "Thank you for your encyclopedic knowledge and lack of math skills. I love you," he said through tears. And Ralph returned the tribute in kind.
I have the heart of a traditionalist. I appreciate things that just stay the same. I'm in Niagara-on-the-Lake this week, revelling in an Ontario spring, serenaded by the cardinals and the blue jays and rocked by an April thunderstorm. It seems to be as it always was. And here I'm listening to the Leafs' final game of 2025-26 and the last call ever by the guy whose voice is as closely tied to this team as the birds and weather are tied to this landscape.
Plus ca change… Toronto has never won a Stanley Cup in my lifetime and as we say in Leafs-land, there is always next year. But this time, it will never be the same.
Thanks Joe.
The end of Viktor Orban’s reign had all the hallmarks of similar transitions from the authoritarian governments of Eastern Europe thirty years ago: a largely peaceful transition of power because the people finally decided that they would be ungovernable by this particular tyrant.
Autocracy runs on fear—on the assumption that enough people, confronted with sufficient consequences, will decide that compliance is safer than truth. What dismantled Orbán’s operation was the accumulation of individual decisions to the contrary.
Orban is still in parliament as opposition leader and his state apparatus still exists. But his election loss, although not the same as the fall of the former Eastern European Communist governments in the 1990s, put me in mind of the thesis championed by Havel, of living in truth. It seems that the Hungarian people, despite election rigging and gerrymandering, just got sick of being ruled by an illiberal autocrat with deep ties to the insane administrations of both Russia and the United States. My hope is that the people of Hungary have demonstrated the way, even through rigged electoral politics, to depose of a “democratic dictator.” Others may follow.
Another article about what it’s like to teach in the era of LLMs. I’m interested to read these and see how they change over time as the LLMs change, school policies and pedagogy changes and students change. The part that resonates for me about this one is “friction.”
Helen Palmer has collected a number of different voices describing the Cynefin framework and some if it’s underlying theory and practice. It’s a useful primer to where the thinking is on this particular framework