News that seems Indieweb-adjacent: according to a study reported on by investment strategist Joachim Klement, among commodity imports, only oil, LNG, and iron ore shortages have a higher impact on EU inflation than coffee shortages. https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/which-imports-really-matter-for-inflation
Source: Consonni and Magerman (2026) via Klement On Investing
No word on whether the effect is more pronounced in Scotland.
I've just posted an alpha of a small new WordPress plugin to my Github: KupieTools Usernote Shortcode.
Basically, I wanted to leave myself a note in a post, so I can see it on the front end when I view the post, but nobody else will. Now I can do this with [usernote]Note to myself here[/usernote]. It also allows specifying visibility by username or WordPress account role, like this: [usernote users="alice,bob" roles="administrator"]Note to Alice, Bob, and all administrators here[/usernote]
This is an alpha release, containing just the basic functionality I need this afternoon. In the future it will allow you to set defaults in a panel in the KupieTools admin settings page, like some of my other plugins. Right now you have to change them in the plugin code.
Somewhat derivative but reasonably watcable sci-fi thriller. In a world that is "The Walking Dead" with an ecological apocalypse instead of a zombie one, the remains of the government live in an artificial underground town somewhere between "Wayward Pines" and "The Truman Show", where everybody just loves crappy '80s Top 40 music.
The first season is a straight government/secret agent whodunnit thriller with a slight spritz of sci-fi, the second is a little more expansive, showing more of the world and the lead-up to the ecological disaster (refreshingly, a fairly well-done global tsunami and weather crisis caused by a volcanic eruption in Antarctica, not the result of human foolishness.) I enjoyed the second season a little bit more, although they're both decent at worst...
...except...
...for the '80s music. It's intrusive, and initially, very annoying, particularly that many episodes end with gratuitous, grating "slowcore", alt-folk, or dreary…
Coming from an alternative education background, I'm saddened to hear that Hampshire College is closing. I looked at attending Hampshire, and the friend of mine who I heard the news from went to the same orientation as I did and wound up going.
I didn't end up going there but always felt an affinity for the place. I believed in the model and in the need for small, funky schools, offering more self-directed education than traditional schools, for students like myself who didn't thrive in more conventional educational settings. (AKA "underachievers". I believe I'm the only person I know with a C average in high school, a teenage arrest on my record, and a degree in physics. Cowabunga, man.)
Obviously this is the result of bigger economic and societal currents that I have no wish to comment on. But it's a loss.
Once a month, someone in Indieweb hosts the "Indieweb carnival", a monthly theme which a bunch of bloggers all write about the same theme, and the links to posts are collected in a page together. This month's theme: Museum Memories (see the announcement post, and the roundup and recap of all submissions.)
Like many people, I have many fond memories of museums. Here are some recollections.
Sections:
Well, this is a new one. Today my gmail has started moving my emails out of the way to prioritize giving space to "AI Overviews" telling me what the email says. The summaries are longer than the actual email.
Imagine I started this three-sentence post with a "summary" that spent four sentences telling you what the post says. That's about how this strikes me.
This is a draft. Almost done. Check back in a few days.
I just read the piece "The Colonization of Confidence", a short story by Robert Kingett about the homogenizing effect of relying on technology for "cheap, fast, and easy" artistic expression, and it reminded me of a few things. What's interesting is that there is a strong parallel here to things that have happened before.
The most immediate thing that leapt to mind is the 13-page '80s Alan Moore comic book story "In Pictopia", which you can happily read in full at Forgotten Awesome, a response to that era's commercialization of comics, in which the residents of a seedy comic Metropolis full of superheroes and cartoon animals are one-by-one either removed or replaced by slicker versions of themselves, as an ominous, dark industrial mass closes in on the horizon.
The second is the work…
For those curious about how grisly the stock market has been lately, yesterday I got this news alert popup on a stock charting website I follow.
I hate to complain, but, I dunno, just very lately, I'm feeling something I haven't felt in a solid 4 decades: I'm bored. I'm telling you, that hasn't happened since I was 17, and now I'm 56 or 57 or something. I literally forgot all about boredom for 40 years. And now, I'm like, "Why is life like... what is it? Cardboard? Wait... it's boredom! Holy cow, I forgot about that!"
Seriously. This is weird. Like, I'm suddenly able to understand why people get married and get jobs and things like that. It must be to avoid feeling like this. Like, ok, what do I do, I've already played my lyre, my saxophone, and my guitar twice today, my website is up to date, I'm too hyper to read, what do I do now? Hey, maybe I should find a girlfriend and get married!" The whole picture suddenly makes…
It's a Marvel superhero movie.That generally says it all, in my experience.
Somehow these big Marvel superhero movies remind me of Michael Jackson's adult career: get a bunch of big-name luminaries together with a big budget to expertly craft something that screams "blockbuster", and yet still, somehow, manages to be less than the sum of its parts—the writing just isn't exceptional, it's formula dressed up with big names and glitzy production. . And everybody for some reason thinks it's great, except me.
Basically watchable, for a special-effects superhero action blockbuster. But for as much talent was involved in making this movie, that's a crime.
This post is my very first "blog only" post on this site.
This site was originally intended as a static showcase of my creative art, but for while now I've considered adding more social-media-like features to the site. So now, I've added a Blog Feed page under the Home menu, presenting the site in more of a blog format. This will include all articles from newest to oldest, much like the /Latest slashpage and newest articles readout at the bottom of the home page, but also may include what I've called "blog posts", brief or timely posts not deserving to be permanently included in this sites collection of articles. This Blog Feed page is the only place those blog posts will appear.
This will enable me to begin to include more social features on the site, probably eventually including webmentions, which will allow this site to…
For confused first-time visitors and other people still acclimating, here is a description of these little tabs to the left, as well as some other features of the site.
Open "Expert Mode" CLI Navigation - this give you the option to switch your browser's display to an old-fashioned terminal mode where you may browse this site, view pages and images by typing text commands. Just like how we used to browse the web back in 1978!
Open Visual Settings - This gives you controls to customize the visual display of this website to your liking: turn up or down the brightness, contrast, color temperature, hue, saturation, dark mode, and earthquake. Settings are saved per browser tab, so they will be remembered for your whole visit.
Open My Eyes - Have you ever been engrossed in your work, when you suddenly realize someone is staring at your screen, watching everything you do over your shoulder? If not, this simulates the experience.
Open Help - This help popup, silly! You just clicked it! Do you not remember?
New - Draggable elements! Several elements on this website, including these tabs, this popup message, and the "Hire Mike" badge in the lower right, can be dragged around with your mouse, to avoid them blocking content. Positions are remembered per tab, so as you navigate around the site, they will stay in the same place for your whole visit.
Enjoy!
Are you sure you want to switch to viewing this website in the "expert mode" command-line interface?
This will switch to a terminal emulator, load this page, and allow you to browse this website and view its contents by typing text commands.
Plus there might be, y'know, some fun stuff hidden in there. Just for geeks.
