Friday, March 06, 2026

Wednesday, March 04, 2026

Ground beef and potatoes

The above video is from a site named Essen Recipes, which would indicate it is coming from Germany. Plus, the bottom captions are in German. Still, when I watched it, I thought it had Slavic touches to the cooking. It turns out I was partially right; in reading the comments the cook is a Ukrainian woman. Still, the dishes she whips up are tasty looking.

Sunday, March 01, 2026

Wilhelm Bendz paintings

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Wilhelm Bendz (1804-1832) was a Danish painter who, along with portraits and landscapes, frequently painted his fellow artists at work and in leisure. His painting style is very crisp and technically accomplished.  

Wilhelm Bendz self portrait

Friday, February 27, 2026

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Spending a night in a Japanese flophouse

Ok, my post title is a bit click-baity, but the video creator calls the Osaka Airin District, the area he stays in, a slum and the hotel he stays in is dirt cheap so, flophouse it is. That said, from reading the comments it is probably more accurate to call it a poor working-class neighborhood than a slum.

The room is small, but clean. There are communal bathrooms, showers, laundry machines, and a cooking station. All of the areas are clean and well kept. The streets are a bit litter strewn, and there is graffiti all about which is never a good sign. 

There are also a lot of vending machines. In an American slum those would have been smashed to bits in a matter of minutes, but they seem to be left alone. I suppose the crime in the area is of a different nature. 


Sunday, February 22, 2026

Maurycy Minkowski

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Maurycy Minkowski (1881-1930) was a Jewish Polish artist. At a young age he had an accident which left him deaf. In the early 20th Century, he was caught in the events of the Polish revolution and the pogroms of the era. He fled to western Europe eventually settling in Paris. He traveled extensively and died in Argentina when he was struck by a taxi he could not hear approaching.

Maurycy Minkowski

Friday, February 20, 2026