There is no escaping the fact that 2021 was (still) not a normal year, and I am not sure any year will ever be exactly comparable to the Before Times. There is too much residual self-care going on for that. And yet, and yet … it was a pretty good year, and I say that knowing full well how privileged I am. I share a pleasant space with a person who is the love of my life and my best friend, we eat well, and want for nothing. We got our vaccinations and boosters, we were able to travel a bit, within Italy, and we stayed healthy throughout. So, much to be thankful for and to appreciate.

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Rusty bits of pipework lying on the ground

Not that any of them will read it but what, I wonder, would young people make of my post from exactly ten years ago? Yahoo Pipes? RSS? Curating content in order to share it from my own site? Clearly the hallucinations of an old fart’s brain.

And yet, it brought back memories of real achievemen...

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Launched in 2004, regrettheerror.com was a wonderful source of entertainment. Craig Silverman, who started it, moved on to bigger and better things, and Poynter took over the annual round-up that celebrated the art and craft of the correction. Since 2004, of course, the whole enterprise has gradua...

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I listened to three scary podcasts last week. And you know what they say about “coincidences” that come in threes.1

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Logo of World Food Program red cup campagin, in Japanese

You have presumably seen the storm in a little red cup over Elon Musk's offer to send about $6 billion to the World Food Program if “WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger”. Of course the Director of the WFP pointed out that the headline misrepresented him, natch, and that $6 billion “will not solve world hunger, but it WILL prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people on the brink of starvation.”

And he has now come up with an itemised budget.

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