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Amazon has the Blink Mini for a mere $17.50 in an early Prime Day deal — half off the security camera’s $35 sticker price. The small plug-in device can give you extra peace of mind while you’re away from home, letting you check in remotely to ensure your space is free from intruders (or talk to your pets using its two-way audio). The lower price for Prime Day could make it easier to set up a fleet of them in your home without breaking the bank.
Unlike the more expensive Blink Indoor, the Blink Mini is a plug-in device, so make sure you have a nearby power outlet or can run an extension cord to the area where you’ll set it up. The Blink Mini offers 1080p capture, infrared night vision and optional phone alerts if it senses motion while armed. Setup is straightforward, only requiring a few minutes of following instructions in the Blink app to connect it to WiFi. However, the camera only works with Amazon Alexa, so you may want to look at competing products in Engadget’s Smart Home Guide if you rely on Siri or Google Assistant for voice control.
If you’re more interested in monitoring your yard or entrance, Amazon also has the Blink Outdoor for half off as part of the same early Prime Day deal. Usually $100, you can snag it today for $50. The “weather-resistant” wireless camera records in 1080p and can last up to an estimated two years on a pair of AA batteries. Remember that you’ll need a Blink Sync Module 2 and a Blink Subscription to save your recorded photos and videos to the cloud with this model.
Finally, this Blink Video Doorbell bundle — which includes the Sync Module 2 — is on sale for $47.49 (usually $95.) Like the other devices, it supports 1080p live video with nighttime infrared support and can run for up to two years on a couple of AA batteries. Amazon also describes it as weather-resistant, with a seal protecting it against water. Setup can vary, depending on whether you connect it wired or wirelessly, but either way, the Blink app will guide you through the steps. And if you opt for the simpler wireless setup, you can configure it to use a Blink Mini to play a chime indoors when someone visits.
Amazon has deals on several other Blink bundles as well. You can check out the entire sale for the full details.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-discounts-the-blink-mini-by-50-percent-in-an-early-prime-day-deal-070938182.html?src=rss
Blink Mini
Marketing photo for the Blink Mini indoor security camera. The camera has a black front face and a white body. It’s facing the right with a power cord fading off to the left.
When premium e-bike maker Cowboy introduced its Adaptive Power update earlier this year, Engadget’s Mat Smith wondered when a new model would arrive. We have the answer today as the company announced the Cowboy Cruiser. The new variant encourages a more upright design for a relaxed Dutch riding position. It also includes a wider saddle — a feature that was at the top of our wish list for the Belgian company’s latest iteration.
The Cowboy Cruiser weighs 19.3 kg (42.5 lbs) and includes comfort grips and a “distinctive raised and curved handlebar to facilitate a natural hand position.” Its saddle is wider and has an increased gear ratio compared to previous models. The e-bike has a wireless charging phone mount, and, like with all of its models, its companion app integrates with Google Maps. In addition, it has a removable battery, carbon belt, mudguards and “puncture-resistant” 47mm tires. Of course, all of the company’s models have crash detection.
With its lineup getting more crowded, Cowboy renamed its existing e-bikes, “making it easier for customers to find the e-bike which best suits their personal needs.” The original C4 model is now called the Cowboy Classic, and the C4ST becomes the Cruiser ST.
The Cowboy Cruiser is available starting today for an “introductory price” of £2,690 ($3,393.43). You can buy it in black and sand colorways from the company website. And if you're looking to browse in person, the company plans to roll out the e-bikes, eventually, to 300 bike retailers across Europe.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cowboy-cruiser-e-bike-offers-a-more-upright-ride-000010102.html?src=rss
Cowboy Cruiser e-bike
Marketing photo of the Cowboy Cruiser e-bike split into a main panel (left, showing the full bike), top-right box showing the handlebar view with mounted phone and lower-right box revealing its wide saddle.
Each week in Refill, the Pen Addict Members newsletter, I publish Ink Links as part of the additional content you receive for being a member. And each week, after 10 to 15 links, plus my added commentary on each, I'm left with many great items I want to share. Enter Misfill. Here are this weeks links:
— What I’m Enjoying (From the Pen Cup)
— 2200 Inks! (Mountain of Ink)
— At today’s pro democracy protest (Writing at Large)
— 2023 Mid-Year Recap: Reader Favorites from the First Six Months of 2023 (The Gentleman Stationer)
— Pelikan To Be Sold To The Hamelin Group (The Pelikan's Perch0
— Kakimori #06 Toppuri (Inkcredible Colours)
— One more for the community’s exploration of #21PenQuestions (mnmlscholar)
— Maps, Everyday Ephemera, and Watercolor Drawings Record José Naranja's Travels with Fantastic Detail (Colossal)
— Ink of the Week – Troublemaker Petrichor (Fountain Pen Love)
— Maruman Mnemosyne Twin Ring Notebook Review (Blake's Broadcast)
— Mini-Review: Retro51 Rainforest Trust (The Well-Appointed Desk)
— 2023 St. Louis Pen Show (Rachel's Reflections)
— Ensso XS Minimalist Ultem (Figboot on Pens)
— Dominant Industry Standard Ink Swatch Tests (Nick Stewart)
— Exquisite Paintings by Lee Me Kyeoung Are an Ode to the Quaint Corner Stores of South Korea (Colossal)
— The Paris Review - Diary, 2021 (The Paris Review)
— Lit. (Present & Correct)
— Two boring pens that I like anyway (Extra Fine Writing)
— Guide: Pilot FriXion Erasable Pens (Shellshore)
— What’s What 6/25 — 7/1 (Line Variation)
— Nearly Two Dozen Exuberant Works by Ukrainian Folk Artist Maria Prymachenko Go On View in the U.K. For the First Time (Colossal)
— Rob Ball's carpet photos are an ode to the faded glamour of the British seaside (Creative Boom)
Want to catch the rest, plus extra articles, reviews, commentary, discounts, and more? Try out a Pen Addict Membership for only $5 per month!
Over the years, I have reviewed most of the popular TWSBI fountain pen models there are. For an overview:
I know I lack the “GO”-model with the spring in above list – but it is sitting here in the review stack, to be reviewed for you, soon.
Another model I haven’t yet tried was the “Eco-T”, which is basically similar (or the same as) the Eco, but with a triangular grip section similar to the one of the Lamy Safari.
I always wanted to review this pen, and see what it is all about. Finally I got around to it!
Before we hop into the review, I would like to take the opportunity to thank Nomadostore for supporting the review of this pen. You can also buy all kinds of TWSBI products in their webshop (no affiliate – just a friendly pointer).
The video is, as always, preceded by some quick facts. Again, I hope the review is helpful and that you enjoy watching it!
Click on the photos to enlarge.
The post Video-Review: TWSBI Eco-T Saffron appeared first on Scrively - note taking & writing.
As Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) 18th president, Crystal Williams believes that education, art and design, and staying committed to equity and justice are essential to transforming our society. At RISD, the Detroit-born activist is working to drive meaningful change centered on expanding inclusion, equity, and access. To back that up, Crystal has more than two decades of higher education experience as a professor of English as well as serving in roles that oversaw diversity, equity, and inclusion at Boston University, Bates College, and Reed College. The ultimate goal behind Crystal’s role at RISD is to enhance the learning environment by making sure it includes diverse experiences, viewpoints, and talents.
Photo: Jo Sittenfeld
However, Crystal’s talents go beyond the halls and classrooms of colleges and universities – she’s also an award-winning poet and essayist. So far, she’s published four collections of poems and is the recipient of several artistic fellowships, grants, and honors. Most recently Detroit as Barn, was named as a finalist for the National Poetry Series, Cleveland State Open Book Prize, and the Maine Book Award. Crystal’s third collection, Troubled Tongues, was awarded the 2009 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2009 Oregon Book Award, the Idaho Poetry Prize, and the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize. Her first two books were Kin and Lunatic, published in 2000 and 2002. Crystal’s work regularly appears in leading journals and magazines nationwide.
Today, Crystal Williams is joining us for Friday Five!
Martha’s Vineyard \\\ Photo: Crystal Williams
Originally, I was going to write about a place that inspires me. But when I truly started to consider places I find inspiring, I realized that each of them elicits and enables silence and stillness, a refraction of silence (at least for me). So then, silence itself is the thing that inspires me. Silence inspires me to delve and investigate and allows me to situate myself in wonder and awe – in the amplitude and magnitude of who and what and how we are as a species, to sometimes take issue with personal fears or traumas or worse – the behaviors that ultimately impede personal and spiritual growth or insight.
For me, silence is a great gift. Perhaps the greatest. It is a balm. Through it, I connect to the world not as Crystal Williams of this particular body but as a congregation of embodied energy and spirit. In this way, it is the catalyst through which all good art, poetry, ideas, and leadership emerge. So it is among the most inspirational things in my life – and among the most rare, given my life.
Photo: Crystal Williams
I admire many poems. But Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” (which is how it is commonly known although Clifton did not, in “Book of Light” originally title the poem), is the one that inspires me the most. It is a poem that speaks to resilience, fortitude, bravery, imagination, hope, and it names what being a Black woman in the United States can and often does elicit.
“won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
….
…come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
Nancy Wilson, Carnegie Hall, 1987 \\\ Video still courtesy YouTube
There are moments in art when an artist transforms one thing into another, utterly broadening, deepening, and transmuting the original meaning. In this live version of “How Glad I Am,” her encore performance at the 1987 “Live at Carnegie Hall” performance, Wilson – a vocalist I listened to obsessively as a younger person – transforms a simple song between lovers into a rousing tribute from an artist to her audience. This performance is the most profoundly loving example I have witnessed of an artist speaking directly and forcefully to the mutuality between artists and audiences. And it’s become a kind of personal soundtrack when I’m walking through my life, especially my life as a poet and now as president. Often, when I’m among creatives, I hear Wilson’s gorgeous, gravely voice imploring: “you don’t know how glad I am [for you].”
RISD students \\\ Photo: Jo Sittenfeld
Listen, these young people at RISD and young creatives everywhere are our best-case scenario. They are our visionaries, if only we can amplify them, listen to them, and then get out of their way. They have all the love (and strategy and insight and knowledge) we need if we can help them wield it successfully. They have all the intelligence and ingenuity we need to help solve our challenges and advance what is good, right, and just among our species. Added to those attributes are other facts: they are funny and curious and eager to learn and gloriously unusual.
I watch them here at RISD in their multi-colored outfits, hair-dos, and platform shoes, giggling with each other in front of the snack machine or intensely applying their best thinking to each others’ work during critiques. I listen to them grappling with big ideas, considering, reconsidering, and redesigning our world as if on slant, eschewing the boxes into which we have crammed stale ideas that continue to guide our actions. And I watch them in their magnitude – in the more quotidian actions of their lives trudging up and down the severe hill outside with their humongous portfolios and unwieldy art projects, and think through it all, “Wow” and think “to be so young and so powerful and necessary” and think “thank God” and think “Thank you, young people, for saying yes to the impulse that brought you here.” Not only do they inspire me, they humble me and they – each one of them – feel like a balm, like hope incarnate.
Photo: Crystal Williams
My folks married in 1967 against all odds. They were of different ethnicities – he Black, she white. Different places – he from the Jim Crow South, she from Detroit, Michigan. Different eras – he born in 1907, she in 1936. Different careers – he a jazz musician and automotive foundry worker, she a public school teacher. And different educational backgrounds – he, we think, not a high school graduate, she a college graduate. And yet, they found each other over the keys of a piano and decided, against society’s cruel eye and hard palm, to love each other and to love me. I now understand the courage it took for all of that to be true, for them to make a way, for them to walk through the world in 1967 as a couple and with me as their child. That courage inspires me. Those decisions inspire me. They inspire me. Everyday. All day.
Kin by Crystal Williams, 2000 \\\ Williams utilizes memory and music as she lyrically weaves her way through American culture, pointing to the ways in which alienation, loss, and sensed “otherness” are corollaries of recent phenomena.
Lunatic: Poems by Crystal Williams, 2002 \\\ Williams confronts large-scale social and cultural events such as September 11, the death of Amadou Diallo, and the Chicago Race Riots in addition to exploring the often paralyzing terrain of loss, desire, and displacement. Among its most common themes is personal responsibility.
Troubled Tongues by Crystal Williams, 2009 \\\ In each of the three sections of this book is a prose poem meant to be read aloud in which a character, interacting with other characters, is named for a quality. They are Beauty, Happiness, and Patience.
Detroit as Barn: Poems by Crystal Williams, 2014
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This extraordinary profile of Clarence and Ginni Thomas—he a Supreme Court justice, she among other things an avid supporter of the January 6 insurrection—is a masterclass in everything from mustering archival material to writing the hell out of a story:
There is a certain rapport that cannot be manufactured. “They go on morning runs,” reports a 1991 piece in the Washington Post. “They take after-dinner walks. Neighbors say you can see them in the evening talking, walking up the hill. Hand in hand.” Thirty years later, Virginia Thomas, pining for the overthrow of the federal government in texts to the president’s chief of staff, refers, heartwarmingly, to Clarence Thomas as “my best friend.” (“That’s what I call him, and he is my best friend,” she later told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.) In the cramped corridors of a roving RV, they summer together. They take, together, lavish trips funded by an activist billionaire and fail, together, to report the gift. Bonnie and Clyde were performing intimacy; every line crossed was its own profession of love. Refusing to recuse oneself and then objecting, alone among nine justices, to the revelation of potentially incriminating documents regarding a coup in which a spouse is implicated is many things, and one of those things is romantic.
“Every year it gets better,” Ginni told a gathering of Turning Point USA–oriented youths in 2016. “He put me on a pedestal in a way I didn’t know was possible.” Clarence had recently gifted her a Pandora charm bracelet. “It has like everything I love,” she said, “all these love things and knots and ropes and things about our faith and things about our home and things about the country. But my favorite is there’s a little pixie, like I’m kind of a pixie to him, kind of a troublemaker.”
A pixie. A troublemaker. It is impossible, once you fully imagine this bracelet bestowed upon the former Virginia Lamp on the 28th anniversary of her marriage to Clarence Thomas, this pixie-and-presumably-American-flag-bedecked trinket, to see it as anything but crucial to understanding the current chaotic state of the American project. Here is a piece of jewelry in which symbols for love and battle are literally intertwined. Here is a story about the way legitimate racial grievance and determined white ignorance can reinforce one another, tending toward an extremism capable, in this case, of discrediting an entire branch of government. No one can unlock the mysteries of the human heart, but the external record is clear: Clarence and Ginni Thomas have, for decades, sustained the happiest marriage in the American Republic, gleeful in the face of condemnation, thrilling to the revelry of wanton corruption, untroubled by the burdens of biological children or adherence to legal statute. Here is how they do it.
In celebration of Pride, Artsy happily presents the Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride, benefiting the Ali Forney Center. New works by a diverse group of emerging and established artists will be bid on through June 29th at 12 pm EST. TM Davy, Didier William, Jo Messer, Kyle Meyer, Kate Pincus-Whitney, Erin M. Riley, Emma Kohlmann, Caitlin Cherry, Elizabeth Glaessner, Jordan Nassar, Haas Brothers, Vickie Vainionpää, Leilah Babirye, Darryl Westly, and Nedia Were have come together in allyship to support the cause by way of sharing their talents.
Vickie Vainionpåå, Soft Body Dynamics 111, 2023
Ali Forney Center’s mission is to protect LGBTQIA+ youth from homelessness and to empower them with the tools needed to live independently. Through this partnership, the auction will directly support the critical care, direction, education, and career services that Ali Forney Center offers to these at-risk homeless youth.
Nedia Were, The Black Swan, 2022
We had the opportunity to speak with Simon Haas of the Haas Brothers, who have their Fairies Witherspoon piece featured in Artists for Pride (seen in the lead image). “This piece is from a body of work we call Fairy Berries. Each of these pieces is a little like a Faberge Egg, small and ornate,” said Simon. “These pieces are little meditations – they take a really, really long time and a steady hand, and the resulting piece is an opulent little world of its own.”
Kate Pincus Whitney, Gertrude Stein and Slice B Toklas Muss
“A lot of the work we make is playful, but an equal amount of it is intensely process-based. When I am doing beadwork or making process-intensive projects like this I am very much in a meditative state of mind,” Simon shared. “This kind of work is almost necessary for me and my mental health.
Leilah Babirye, Lady Nabuuso, 2016
Measuring 10 1/4 × 4 1/2 × 4 1/2-inches, Fairies Witherspoon is hand thrown and slip trailed porcelain detailed with gold lustre and brass plate. The underside is stamped with “HAAS BROTHERS 2020”, and it’s accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by Nikolai and Simon Haas.
Kyle Meyer, Unidentified 91a, 2023
“Being gay myself, and having experienced first hand the challenges that come with that, it is really meaningful to me to be able to support my community. I can’t imagine the added difficulty of facing homelessness caused by or made more difficult by being LGBTQIA+. This is a truly important cause, particularly in this time of increasing intolerance.” Simon went on to add that he plans to “continue being a vocally out gay man and advocating for others in my community. It is so important that we make ourselves heard and support each other in our fight for equality. The LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith, we are a collection of communities, but by coming together and advocating for each other we can accomplish so much more than we could on our own.”
Jo Messer, Show up whenever, 2023
To learn more about Artsy Impact Auction: Artists for Pride or place a bid, visit artsy.net.
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On selected fragments from 1797-1801, "Dialogue on Poesy" (1799), and "Concerning the Essence of Critique" (1804).
What makes art "Romantic"? Schlegel sees good art as uniquely, authentically reaching out to a divine source that underlies and connects each of us.
The post Ep. 320: Friedrich Schlegel on Romanticism (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.
Each week in Refill, the Pen Addict Members newsletter, I publish Ink Links as part of the additional content you receive for being a member. And each week, after 10 to 15 links, plus my added commentary on each, I'm left with many great items I want to share. Enter Misfill. Here are this weeks links:
— Ink Rainbow (Rachel's Reflections)
— Lennon Tool Bar Watermelon (Inkcredible Colours)
— Watercolor Review: Boku-Undo Gansai Aurora Palette (The Well-Appointed Desk)
— Cartier Cougar Fountain Pen Review (Blake's Broadcast)
— An ink you like is too wet or dry – do not throw it out (dapprman)
— A Digital Archive of Graphic Design (swissmiss)
— New Takes on Traditional Chinese Ink Painting (Hyperallergic)
— June Rainbows Ink Palettes (Mountain of Ink)
— In Ink and Watercolor Illustrations, Felicia Chiao Immerses Curious Characters in Surreal Scenarios (Colossal)
— Specimens of Fancy Turning(1869) (The Public Domain Review)
— The BENU Tattoo is the perfect pen for when you need people to know you are rock ‘n roll but it’s winter and you work in an office (Extra Fine Writing)
— What’s What 6/18 — 6/24 (Line Variation)
— Nahvalur Nautilus Bronze Corydoras Fountain Pen Review (SBREBrown)
— Frida Kahlo's Illustrated Diary (Noted)
Want to catch the rest, plus extra articles, reviews, commentary, discounts, and more? Try out a Pen Addict Membership for only $5 per month!
Miri Davidson, “Jean Baudrillard Grasped the Symbolic Life of Capital but Lost Track of the Material World“, Jacobin, open access
French thinker Jean Baudrillard developed a pioneering analysis of symbolism and consumption in modern capitalism with some valuable insights. But he lost sight of the material structures on which capital’s power depends and drifted into a political dead end.
stuartelden
The last time math performance was this low for 13-year-olds was in 1990.
Starting with letter 20 in On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), we tell more of the story of how art is supposed to get us from sensation to thinking.
Aesthetic perception ends up being essential to any conceptualization (thinking) whatsoever!
Sponsor: Check out the Skeptoid podcast at skeptoid.com.
The post Ep. 319: Schiller on Experiencing Beauty (Part Two) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.
Each week in Refill, the Pen Addict Members newsletter, I publish Ink Links as part of the additional content you receive for being a member. And each week, after 10 to 15 links, plus my added commentary on each, I'm left with many great items I want to share. Enter Misfill. Here are this weeks links:
— Exploring Tokyo’s Hidden Shrines (Spoon & Tamago)
— Seven Years of Morning Pages (Almost) (From the Pen Cup)
— Das Messerbett (Lexikaliker)
— Tones Within Tones: Blue-Black Inks of Choice (The Gentleman Stationer)
— Sailor Pro Gear Imperial Black (Figboot on Pens)
— New Grinds from Custom Nib Studio (Line Variation)
— June Rainbows Ink Palettes (Mountain of Ink)
— LIFE Schopfer Notebook Review (Blake's Broadcast)
— Mini-Review: Pilot Juice Paint Pen in White (The Well-Appointed Desk)
— Review: Pentel Orenz Nero Mechanical Pencil (Shellshore)
— Moody Colors in My Pens (Dime Novel Raven)
— Out of Reach Pens (Rachel's Reflections)
— The 30 Best Albums of 2023 (So Far) (Our Culture)
— Video-Review: Montblanc 149 Calligraphy Curved Nib (Special Edition) (Scrively)
— Poppy DeltaDawn Unravels Fiber Art’s Queered Histories (Hyperallergic)
— Ensso XS Ultem Fountain Pen Review (SBREBrown)
— The Montegrappa Fortuna Camouflage is the perfect pen for when you need to write an elegant letter from a trench or something (Extra Fine Writing)
— Three kind angles on living for ink maximalism (mnmlscholar)
Want to catch the rest, plus extra articles, reviews, commentary, discounts, and more? Try out a Pen Addict Membership for only $5 per month!
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