Ruk

From These days by rebecca toh: I like to lie on my bed and let my life, all that I’ve done and said, all that I’ve taken and given, fall upon me like a giant blanket, and feel the joy and weight of being alive. This is it, I tell myself. This, right now, this impeccable, perfect moment of nowness, is packed with atom upon atom upon atom of unfiltered joy. But this joy is rich, like a really good cup of coffee.

Fred Hyndman died a few days ago, news I was sad to receive, as I had great admiration for as a businessman, philanthropist, and raconteur. Back in the summer of 2019 I was invited to join John Robinson, Fred Hyndman, Alan Holman and Keith Piggott one week for coffee at Casa Mia, a special guest star, of sorts, at a group of esteemed men that I had no business among. It was thrilling: the collective wisdom and connections of those four was a rare thin to be invited to sit among.

Green Meadows Bake House, just south of Morell, is open on Saturday mornings and sells a selection of breads, desserts, jams, and eggs. Watch their Facebook page for highlights of the week and for the signal that they’re open for business (here’s an RSS feed if you’d like to avoid Facebook). Payment is cash in an honour box or Interac e-transfer. Delicious. Saturday, August 1, 2026 at 12:10 pm

I mentioned here that, over the years, I’ve linked to 133 places on OpenStreetMap from the space. I set out to find a way to see those all on a map together.

Véronique wrote: I love the aesthetic of Dandelion’s coffee shop website/blog. Dandelion is a “speciality coffee bar in buxton, derbyshire,” Buxton being a town of about 20,000 people, southeast of Manchester, in England. And the Dandelion website is just peachy; enough so that I emailed its , Elliott Cost, a fan letter: I just wanted to echo her compliments for the site: it’s dreamy in a way that’s thoroughly modern and useful, yet artful and evocative of the minimalism of the early web.

From Protopia by Kevin Kelly: Dystopia leans into problems; utopia leans into progress; protopia leans into problems and progress in unison. It acknowledges there is no progress without problems, and problems propel progress. Dystopia runs on fear, and utopia runs on faith. Protopia runs on facts: the fact of real problems, and the facts of real progress. Most people have no issue with facing up to the problems we are creating today, but they take issue with the idea of real progress.

I was walking to the public library this morning, past Province House. Newly-elected Green Party member Tayte Willows walked by me, and for a moment, everything felt right in the world. Monday, July 27, 2026 at 7:15 pm

According to Canada’s Historic Places, the Zoé Vallé Library, in Chester, Nova Scotia, has a live-in librarian: Since 1978 the continuing support of the community has ensured the Zoé Vallé Library continues to operate as Chester’s sole library and it remains under the stewardship of a live-in librarian, making it a unique setting for a public library, while preserving its historical form.

From Seventy Flavours, Vanilla by Clark MacLeod: The actual highlight of the day was a visit to Pictou, a town I’ve driven past many times and always wondered about. There isn’t much to see — an expensive leather goods shop, the usual tourist draws around old architecture, not unlike Charlottetown. What made the day was a stop at Thompson’s Dairy Bar, which boasts around seventy soft serve flavours. Despite the selection, I had vanilla. Perhaps worth taking the ferry back home for!

From Locking Type by Carl Middleton: Anyone who is lucky enough to own type and a printing press by default is a custodian of the heritage of letterpress printing, and in turn holds artefacts which have helped inform the evolution of communication.