Iain K. MacLeod

February 20, 2026

It's not the tech I hate, it's their fans

A lot of current tech discourse brings up a mix of dread, irritation, and euphoric delight, and I’ve been sitting with it for a while. The same forces that hollow out labour and strain ecosystems also lower the cost of building small, practical software for everyday problems. It’s difficult to quote just one part of this essay, but sea...

February 13, 2026

Review: Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (2025) - ★★★★½

Reviewed on 15-SEP-25 Geez, a little true north pride seeing Toronto playing itself as only it could (as seen in such films as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Pixar’s Turning Red). Iconic scenery provided by the “SkyDome,” the CN Tower, the Rivoli (an inexplicable troupe carried over from the previous NTBTS series), and random extras w...

February 11, 2026

Review: Instant Pot 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cooker (6qt/1000W) [IP-DUO60]

Purchased for $86.24 on 25-NOV-16 and still in operation after ten years, I found this old review: After hearing it was “the internet’s choice for pressure cookers” from Jason Kottke and The Wirecutter, plus several friends repeating the same sentiment on Facebook, the Instant Pop became our family's best Black Friday deal of 2016. The...

February 5, 2026

Review: Beetlejuices

Review: Beetlejuice, 1988 - ★★★★½ Reviewed on 1-FEB-26 Oh yeah, what was the name of that movie featuring Robert Goulet and Dick Cavett? They say his name appears in the Epstein files three times. Probably my favourite Zagnut product placement until How To with John Wilson. Lost ½ a ★ because I’ve never liked how Alec Baldwin drew the ...

February 2, 2026

Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - ★★★★★

Reviewed on 31-JAN-26 Marianne: “I haven’t seen her smile.” Sophie: “Have you tried to be funny?” A small moment that best exemplifications a detached and non-self-aware pursuit of making sure the people around us appear happy. The entire film is a remarkably concise portrait of the sometimes impossible-to-imagine and often difficult-t...

January 28, 2026

👑 of 💩

““Politicians usually try to win voters by matching policies to preferences. Trump goes somewhere deeper. For people despairing about the country’s direction, he offers hope; for those who feel disrespected, validation; for those who feel uncertain, clarity.”” Excerpt from: “The Four Types of Trump Supporter” by Daniel Yudkin & Stephen...

January 16, 2026

Standing Up to Survival

While some consider it passive consumption, I'm going to file it under empathy research. I spent an afternoon this week dismantling decorations and watched three comedy specials from my ever-expanding watchlist that happened to prove you don't have to continue suffering (and being insufferable) for your art. You just have to survive an...

January 15, 2026

Stop Reappearing iCloud Tabs on Mac Safari

How to Fix Persistent ‘Ghost’ or ‘Zombie’ iCloud Tabs on Mac (Safari) If you’ve ever closed Safari tabs on your iPhone, only to see them mysteriously reappear on your Mac, you’re not alone. This “ghost tab” problem seems to happen when iCloud sync metadata gets out of sync between devices and has been annoying for many months. Bookmark...

January 2, 2026

Review: Zootopias aka Zootropolises

Zootropia (2016) - ★★★★ Reviewed on 19-NOV-25 Ok, so aka Zootropolis? At least that’s how it’s listed on Disney+ in Canada. And speaking of Canada, quite a wide range of cameos: Tommy Chong, Peter Mansbridge, and Don Lake. I stayed clear of this one on its original release for no particular reason other than having just brought a baby ...

December 28, 2025

Review: Weapons (2025) - ★★★★½

Reviewed on 28-DEC-25 I regret not dragging my and other nearby butts to the theatre for this; it’s definitely a weird one and I would’ve benefited from a communal screening. It had me squirming (and also LOL’ing) like I did in Barbarian, and once again, it’s a reminder that all the evil we’ve ever experienced or even made up is still ...

December 26, 2025

Review: The Knives Out Trilogy

Review: Knives Out (2019) - ★★★★★ Reviewed on Dec 24, 2025 [originally watched on 13-DEC-19] I Might Be Wrong, but I’m pretty sure this was the last movie I saw in a theatre before the pandemic. Borrowing its name from a Radiohead ditty about cannibalism and betrayal from 2001’s Amnesiac, Knives Out ended up being the beginning of Beno...

December 26, 2025

Review: Taylor Swift: The End of an Era (2025) - ★★★½

Reviewed on 24-DEC-25 Had enough of Taylor? Well, this clearly isn’t for you. This six-part docuseries won’t win over a hater but is an exercise in humanizing the phenomenon of the Eras tour by placing it in context, revealing a little about the behind-the-scenes players that made it happen and how much of a family business this all r...

December 23, 2025

Review: Shiva Baby (2020) - ★★★★

Letterboxd review by Iain K. MacLeod on Dec 18, 2025 This tightly wound, slowly unspooling real-time pressure-cooker of a film (stupid nail in the leg spoils an Uncut Gams pun) is an impressive directorial debut that features a realistic capture of the cringe-inducing ramifications of multiple lives colliding when traditional family an...

December 6, 2025

Review: Wake Up Dead Man (2025) - ★★★★½

Reviewed on 27-NOV-25 Continuing to be inspired by song, this latest Knives Out instalment takes its name from the closing song of U2’s 1997 rather rushed and maligned Pop album. For a collection of electronic-tinged and attempts at playful tunes, it’s actually a haunting, sober prayer to Jesus about a “fucked-up world” from Bono over ...

November 18, 2025

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November 4, 2025

Introducing The Birchwood Public Notice

This public notice sign appeared near the corner of Birchwood Terrace and Frederick Street in Dartmouth announcing a meeting regarding a pending Rogers communication tower to be built on the Brightwood Golf Course. After the meeting passed on April 27, 2023, it was just a generously sized sign by a community mailbox. After staring at t...

November 1, 2025

C’est l’Halloween 2025

🎃 We had a total of 7⃣ trick-or-treaters. 👻 Breakdown: • 1⃣ infant neighbour (🐝) • 2⃣ toddler neighbours (🦖💀 & 🐕 Bluey) • 4⃣ tweens (of unknown origin) We were represented by: • 🎤 Rumi from K-pop Demon Hunters • 🐻 Paddington Bear • 🧑🏻✈ Fighter Pilot • 👨🏼🎤 Hatsume Miku • 👾 Stitch

October 21, 2025

Sidewalking

Our number one hyper-local issue (even over random golf balls smashing our solar panels, recognizably our first-world problem) is having to walk down (or even up) our own street year-round while cars use it as a secluded speedway. Have a say.

July 16, 2025

See You Later, Aggregator: The Job Posting Ouroboros

Noticed this on CareerBeacon, an Atlantic Canadian job posting site for public and private sector listings: ““Disclaimer: Please note that the job posting you are about to read has been automatically generated by OpenAI based on a brief description sourced from the Job Bank.”” Whether you have issues, enthusiasm, or indifference toward...

January 17, 2025

Soft Eating

I was able to survive Nova Scotia Health's Esophageal Soft Eating Guidelines of dietary recommendations for four weeks post-surgery. I originally thought I would be forced to eat only soup for months but this diet was pretty flexible and focused on soft, moist, easy-to-swallow foods to help reduce strain and prevent irritation or block...

November 28, 2024

Winner, Winner, Bird Dinner

“…we ran a quick contest asking subscribers to show us how they used the bonus bird decals that came with their shipments of “The Birds and Trees of North America.” We chose these five winners, and they’ll each receive a “sold-out edition from The Archives that is tangentially related to birds.” In this case, a “Shenandoah” 3-Pack. Con...

November 17, 2024

For My Health

*Record scratch* *Freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. This is a failure of sorts. Not hereditary, so I can’t blame my family. No known cause or trigger, so no big regrets. I sleep with a wedge and have an eating schedule that rivals a Mogwai—no late-night snacks. No prevention, no c...

October 17, 2024

Mailchimp Crazy

Source: https://mailchi.mp/6ea53a5dc374/district-5-e-news-july-6740886 Source: https://mailchi.mp/8812502370d0/fios-newsletter-mat-10th-17652667

May 5, 2024

A Thruple of Podcasts on A.I., Media, and the Web

“On this special episode of Decoder, science educator and YouTuber Hank Green is guest hosting. And the guest? It’s Nilay Patel, who sat down with Hank to discuss building The Verge, the state of media, and the future of the web. Also: whether the fediverse is worth investing in, and how social platforms’ control of distribution has sh...

November 30, 2023

RIP Shane MacGowan

Earlier this year on Record Store Day, The Pogues' compilation of non-album tracks called “The Stiff Records B-Sides (1984-1987)” was released on vinyl. It’s a track listing of deep but still prime Shane MacGowan songs and/or performances, here's an Apple Music playlist version you can stream for yourself.

November 2, 2023

♪♫ The App for the Bus Can Be Found and Loaded-Down ♫♪

Finally. After many years of realizing how out-of-date our mass transit system is by travelling pretty much everywhere and anywhere else in the world and wondering how much longer our city would continue relying on exact change or increasingly more difficult to find paper tickets and littered transfers, we have entered a new, modern ph...

October 25, 2023

Background Work

“There are things in that film in the background that I think tell a whole other story that nobody has brought to me yet, and in some ways, that’s frustrating because you take the time to put them there and you wonder who’s going to catch them. But I’m excited by the idea of people finding those things.” — Director Ari Aster in Vanity ...

October 19, 2023

I Am Easier to Understand

I have fallen into the Venn Diagram of all these fan bases at one time or another, but this is a post about one sad album from the saddest dads of all, The National. My suggestion is that for the 2029 or 2039 reissue, they update the liner notes to be more reflective of the collaborative nature of using several guest vocalists, similar...

June 9, 2023

Creative Self-help

Thoughts and habits not conducive to the work: • Believing you’re not good enough. • Feeling you don’t have the energy it takes. • Mistaking adopted rules for absolute truths. • Not wanting to do the work (laziness). • Not taking the work to its highest expression (settling). • Having goals so ambitious that you can’t begin. • Thinking...

May 30, 2023

Incorporating Birthdays

I recently had a birthday and thought I would share some of the random junk joy I received in my inbox. To me, Meta's Facebook is probably the best "gift" to birthdays…an easy way to remind you that you and your friends and family are aging. And if you get a birthday reminder and question how you even know this person, it might be time...