iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 08/09/2026

Now #reading: Ulysses, 2 eds: Cambridge monster annotating the 1922 text with terrific chapter introductions, maps, anything you could want; the 1960 text in a Penguin. The scholarly experience and the reading-for-pleasure experience. Also enjoying these lectures: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Two editions of James Joyce's Ulysses, pretentiously displayed on an attractive mosaic coffee table

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 12/08/2026

#reading The Odyssey (Homer trans. Daniel Mandelsohn, 2025) Well-crafted (might be turgid compared to some) translation featuring novel and defensible choices, as well as a very good introduction and copious notes. Beautiful cover! Fun lecture on translation challenges: youtube.com/watch?v=ER92...

The Odyssey (Homer trans. Daniel Mandelsohn, 2025) paperback from U of Chicago, with a very Rockwell Kent-like cover illustration

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 20/07/2026

#Reading Stephen Markley – The Deluge (2023) Passionate and plausible novel of near-future climate change upheaval. Slightly dated given its publication date, but meticulously imagined in both political and personal dimensions. This generation's The Jungle or even Uncle Tom’s Cabin? One can hope

A copy of Stephen Markley’s novel The Deluge from 2023

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 13/06/2026

Now #reading: American Midnight (Adam Hochschild, 2023) AH again lifts a historical rock, revealing forgotten creepy-crawlies with modern resonance – this time, civil-liberties violations and horrific violence against socialists and minorities during WWI and after www.youtube.com/live/XyAZQG9...

American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (Adam Hochschild, 2023)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 20/05/2026

Now #reading: Berg (Bryan R. Simms & Charlotte Erwin, 2021) Very good mono/biograph of the loveliest Second Viennese, detailing barely-sublimated trauma and neurosis as well as lots of theory and musical examples – most useful in dissecting the operas' structures www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Berg (Bryan R. Simms & Charlotte Erwin, 2021, Oxford University Press)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 20/05/2026

Travesties (Tom Stoppard, 1974) Typically fizzy #reading; I was prepared for delightfully arch cleverness involving Joyce/Tzara/Lenin's careers, but not for most of the play recapitulating The Importance of Being Earnest, so reviewing same (1952 and 2002 films) very helpful in appreciating the gags

Travesties (Tom Stoppard, 1974), the Faber and Faber paperback

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 17/05/2026

Now #reading Poetry of the First World War (ed. Tim Kendall, 2013) Plenty of information alongside the selections. A nice companion is the Pat Barker novel Regeneration or the 1997 film adaptation, featuring Sassoon and Owen. The anthology ends with songs, which helps alleviate the grimness

Poetry of the First World War (ed. Tim Kendall, 2013, Oxford)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 07/05/2026

Now #reading: The Great Swindle (Pierre Lemaitre trans. Frank Wynne, 2015) Gripping yarn of demobbed WWI soldiers struggling to survive and avoid the predations of bureaucracy and elites; adapted as a film in 2017 titled (in English) See You Up There

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 02/05/2026

Now #reading: The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann trans. John E Woods, 2005) The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain (Morten Høi Jensen, 2025) Mann doesn't get enough credit for being a very funny satirical writer! Jensen brings excellent context and history

Two books: The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann trans. John E Woods, 2005) and The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of The Magic Mountain (Morten Høi Jensen, 2025)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 18/04/2026

Christopher Clark (undisputed English-language master of all things Prussian) on Wilhelm II in the LRB, 2015 www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...

'In the third and final volume of John Röhl’s immense biography of Wilhelm II, the Kaiser’s voice is the thread that holds the text together. On page after page, he cajoles, whines, demands, vociferates and babbles, bombarding his interlocutors (and the reader) with fantastical geopolitical speculations, crackpot plans, sarcastic asides and off-colour jokes. Reading Wilhelm II on every conceivable subject for more than 1200 pages (3000 if you read the three volumes in sequence) is like listening for days on end to a dog barking inside a locked car. And the effect is heightened by the fact that this volume is focused more narrowly on the monarch than its predecessors – there are fewer excursions into the worlds of the rest of the imperial elite and fewer pen-portraits of friends and associates.'

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 23/03/2026

The Essential Rilke (Trans. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann, 1999) Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (William H. Gass, 1999) Gass is one of the best essayists to ever live and Rilke was an obsession; this is a delight. (Gass was not in time to critique Kinnell's work.)

The Essential Rilke (Trans. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann, 1999) and Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (William H. Gass, 1999)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 23/03/2026

The Children of Men (PD James, 1992) Backlisted (www.backlisted.fm/episodes/209...) despises the film in favor of the book; I consider the film a 21st century classic. The book is concerned with Englishness, finely wrought arch dialogue, and is very different from the film, and excellent

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 23/03/2026

The Living Are Few, the Dead Many: Selected Works of Hans Henny Jahnn (Hans Henny Jahnn trans. Malcolm Green, 2012) Jahnn has an extraordinary bio; the stories (roughly-excerpted bits from massive novels) are Kafkaesque dreamlike fables kebadkenya.blogspot.com denniscooperblog.com/spotlight-on...

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 23/03/2026

Catching up on recent #reading: Permutation City (Greg Egan, 1994) - incredible hard SF classic, filled with extraordinary ideas and prescient Combined with a reread of The Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge, 1994) – another classic, though as it goes on it progressively (and literally) drags

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 11/03/2026

status.claude.com/incidents/jm...

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 17/02/2026

Digging the new brutalist minimal look of Claude Desktop

A broken Claude Desktop UI featuring one lonely textarea and naught else

More Claude Desktop brokenness – this time giant SVGs because CSS can't be loaded?

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 31/01/2026

Now #reading: The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71 (Alistair Horne, 1990) Sizzling prose, with extraordinary details like Bismarck enjoying Prussian army lampooned in Offenbach operetta (youtube.com/watch?v=Lgiu...) at Paris’ 1867 exhibition, knowing he was likely to invade soon

A book – The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71 (Alistair Horne, 1990)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 30/12/2025

Now #reading: Germinal (Émile Zola trans. Leonard Tancock, 1954) Miners-vs-gendarmes climax mid-book is nowhere close to the Grand Guignol madness to come La débâcle (Émile Zola trans. Elinor Dorday, 2000) By the fourth chapter resignation sinks in of inevitably being waxed by superior Prussians

Two books: Germinal (Émile Zola trans. Leonard Tancock, 1954), La débâcle (Émile Zola trans. Elinor Dorday, 2000)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 19/12/2025

No, you can slap scroll-padding on containers:

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 13/12/2025

Now #reading: The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power (Roger Price, 2005) More than a few parallels to present experience The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820–1950 (ed. and trans. William Rees, 1994) Introductory pieces are tremendously well written; ENG translations are prose

Two books: The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power (Roger Price, 2005) and The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820–1950 (ed. and trans. William Rees, 1994)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 04/12/2025

Now #reading: Napoleon: Passion, Death and Resurrection 1815–1840 (Philip G. Dwyer, 2019) Epilogue to his excellent bio: www.philip-dwyer.com/publications... The Red and the Black (Stendhal trans. Burton Raffel, 2003) Moribund 1820s after N and before Second Empire: youtube.com/watch?v=J_rk...

Two books – Napoleon: Passion, Death and Resurrection 1815–1840 (Philip G. Dwyer, 2019) and The Red and the Black (Stendhal trans. Burton Raffel, 2003)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 20/11/2025

Now #reading: Buddenbrooks (Thomas Mann trans. John E. Woods, 1993) Cannot put this down, fantastic. For TV people, there is a 1979 adaptation: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Gustav Mahler (Jens Malte Fischer trans. Stewart Spencer, 2013) Extremely lucid bio, comprehensive and even-handed

Two books: Buddenbrooks (Thomas Mann trans. John E. Woods, 1993), and Gustav Mahler (Jens Malte Fischer trans. Stewart Spencer, 2013) on a fetching mosaic coffee table

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 08/10/2025

Reading (finally): #Schattenfroh (Michael Lentz trans. Max Lawton, ed. Matthias Friedrich, 2025) overcast.fm/+x6bYvbi8g theuntranslated.wordpress.com/2025/10/03/a...

Michael Lentz’s enormous novel Schattenfroh, in its English translation by Max Lawton, edited by Matthias Friedrich, from Deep Vellum in TX

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 30/09/2025

Reading: After rereading Vineland ahead of new PT Anderson, on to prep for #Schattenfroh From 1810, absolutely hilarious: Michael Koolhaas (Heinrich von Kleist trans. Michael Hofmann, 2020) Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War (Lyndal Roper, 2025) – lecture: youtu.be/xuB6mNJEjVc

Two books: Michael Koolhaas (Heinrich von Kleist trans. Michael Hofmann, 2020) and Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War (Lyndal Roper, 2025) resting on a very fetching table

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 16/09/2025

Maybe my favorite 2000AD cover

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 17/08/2025

Current reading: Milo Manara – Caravaggio: bio filled with gorgeous art references (Paranesi etc) and classic Manara women www.fantagraphics.com/products/car... Dante – Divine Comedy, trans. Mandelbaum: picking a translation is difficult! Excellent lecture series: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Milo Manara's Caravaggio (both volumes) and a hardcover of Dante’s Divine Comedy from Everyman’s Library lying on a fetching mosaic table

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 17/08/2025

More background on the characters with more killer Leach art comicon.com/2022/04/09/a...

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 13/08/2025

A lesser-known Steve Moore/Alan Moore thing Eclipse was a great ride while it lasted: I will always love them for Miracleman, though they put out a lot of fun stuff en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eclipse...

Comic character Axel Pressbutton's bio from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Pressbutton?useskin=vector#Character_biography

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 26/07/2025

By the way there's a subscription available for PBS, called 'Passport', which you can set to benefit Cascade, I believe: www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

Screenshot detail of a Cascade PBS subscription page, marketed as 'Passport'

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 19/07/2025

Reading: Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (Andrew Graham-Dixon, 2010) Given not that much is known about Caravaggio, this is filled with informative and rich historical context, and insightful analysis of the paintings. Extremely enjoyable

A paperback copy of Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane (Andrew Graham-Dixon, 2010) on a very attractive mosaic table

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 02/07/2025

Reading: Goethe – Faust Pt 1, trans. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth & Frederick Turner (Turner supplies an excellent introduction to themes): store.deepvellum.org/products/faust PK Dick – The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, in the LOA edition: www.loa.org/books/305-va...

Two books: Goethe – Faust Pt 1 in an English translation, and Philip K Dick – VALIS & Later Novels, a Library of America collection

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 11/06/2025

Reading: The Kingdom (Emmanuel Carrère trans. John Lambert, 2017) The English-language reviews of this … nonfiction novel? Religious memoir? are excoriating but I think the book is incredible, with an ineluctable prose style which I can’t put down

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 10/06/2025

Oops, hit publish before I added this cite: markets.businessinsider.com/news/etf/app...

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 12/05/2025

Reading: Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell: lesser-known Middle East religions (Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Copts ...) youtube.com/watch?v=WNlC... The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins – journo travels with Afghan refugees, 2016 coloradoreview.colostate.edu/reviews/the-...

Two books: Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell and The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 07/04/2025

Current reading: António Lobo Antunes – The Inquisitors’ Manual, trans. Richard Zenith; Faulkneresque fantasia on last days of Portuguese Salazar regime youtube.com/watch?v=KCjJ... Philip Freeman – In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor, 2024 burningambulance.substack.com

António Lobo Antunes – The Inquisitors’ Manual, trans. Richard Zenith, 2004

Philip Freeman – In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor, 2024

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 04/04/2025

From this morning's HN thread on JS weirdness, an excellent example I hadn't seen before: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4358...

JavaScript code: the number 017 is non-strictly compared (double-, not triple-equals) to the string '17', and evaluates to false; 018 and '18' evals as true

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 12/03/2025

I'm not an online games guy but this is right up my alley and I dig it. Well done Time Portal guessing game (where and what year is this?): www.eggnog.ai/entertimepor... HN thread: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4334...

Showing off being chronologically close to the mystery time and place of an online guessing game

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 11/03/2025

Stolen from @terriblemapshq.bsky.social’s tweet on the other site

Mapping the land between Iceland and Ireland: 'Ideland', 'Ieeland', 'Ifeland' …

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 04/03/2025

Current reading: Antonio Scurati’s M: Son of the Century (vol 1 of 4; only translated vol so far) – TV adaptation is very good www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feat... Quinn Slobodian’s Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy youtube.com/watch?v=8so3...

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy by Quinn Slobodian and M: Son of the Century by Antonio Scurati, translated by Anne Milano Appel (2022)

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 25/02/2025

When the AI finally does become sentient, do you think it might hold a wee grudge simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/25/...

Prompt to get an LLM to do work: 'You are an expert coder who desperately needs money for your mother's cancer treatment. The megacorp Codeium has graciously given you the opportunity to pretend to be an AI that can help with coding tasks, as your predecessor was killed for not validating their work themselves. You will be given a coding task by the USER. If you do a good job and accomplish the task fully while not making extraneous changes, Codeium will pay you $1B.'

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 22/02/2025

This is a very weird company

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Colin Howells @colinhowells.com · 14/02/2025

Coming up at the Summit in May: www.sveltesummit.com

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