Happy Saturday, everyone! Here on Global Nerdy, Saturday means that it’s time for another “picdump” — the weekly assortment of amusing or interesting pictures, comics, and memes I found over the past week. Share and enjoy! Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot The post Saturday picdump for Saturday, October 17 appeared first on Global Nerdy.

I’ve been reading some books about improvisation over the past couple of years. My interest was originally sparked by experiments with taking a more improvisational approach to tabletop roleplaying games, but the idea of applying improvisational techniques more broadly appeals to me too. The book Life Unscripted has the idea of taking an improvisational approach to daily life as its overall theme. I particularly liked how the authors of that book noted that there is a lot of value in routine –…

Katie Zacharia, or whatever her name is, is out as press secretary in less than five days. It turns out she had no idea what she was doing. Apparently she didn’t know public speaking was a requirement for the Press Secretary. She’s also claims to be a lawyer and attorney though she’s never passed the bar. One Zacharia equals one Millimucci, which is 4/10th of a Scaramucci. It’s the new math; no kid is left behind unless it was born of this sanctimonious witch. A diehard conservative, this piece…

More video store love. As Racket reports, Vinegar Syndrome, an obscure film preservation label out of Connecticut, opens a shop in Minneapolis this week. Seems like the focus is on discovery here (leaning towards their deep catalog of films) vs offering a broader, general inventory.

9:06 – Mon 12 October 2026 12:01 – Mon 12 October 2026 9:02 – Tue 13 October 2026 12:03 – Tue 13 October 2026 9:04 – Wed 14 October 2026 12:04 – Wed 14 October 2026 9:05 – Thu 15 October 2026 12:07 – Thu 15 October 2026 9:03 – Fri 16 October 2026 12:06 – Fri 16 October 2026 Bonus Told You So Follow Me As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless…

Saturday, October 17, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 354 - Why is Intersexuality Relevant to the History of Lesbianism? - transcript (Originally aired 2026/10/17) Content Note Let’s start with a content note. Historic discussions of intersexuality have a hard time avoiding the word “hermaphrodite,” which today is considered offensive when applied to intersex persons. However, in historic use, “hermaphrodite” was used in a variety of contexts to indicate…

L, formerly known here as Earthgirl (that's new Shakey), asked me to again go to No Kings with her tomorrow and of course I said yes. Unlike the previous two, the nearest one won't be on the Strathmore Music Hall campus - they refused to allow it - No Kings is from 11am to 1pm - since the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is performing a treacly motherfucking Tchaikovsky (today in redundancy) symphony at 8pm, the fuck? Tchaikovsky? Kill me. Will be at the White Flint metro station - locals know the…

This is the second half of the third part (I, II IIIa) of our long-delayed series looking at the theory of history advanced by Paradox Interactive’s Hearts of Iron IV, one of the most popular strategy games today. This part (both halves together) is fundamentally about politics and policy and the implications that HoI4‘s choices – and its chosen omissions – have on the vision it presents of the history of the 1930s and 1940s. Last time, we looked at HoI4‘s political simulation and concludes…

One of Mason's thoughts on engagement is how Bonnie, the main child of Toy Story 5, used her imagination to create a story through hands-on play with her physical toys. With how being offline is currently an online trend, you could surely look down on every other child no-lifing the same game, chat, and social media feed on their fictional iPad equivalents. However, I believe those children could tap into the same creative skills that Bonnie practiced, but through their own tools of choice.…

I first heard of Australian children’s publisher Starfish Bay Publishing (SBP) in 2024, thanks to a question from an author about the advisability of investing in SBP’s Author Supported Traditional Publishing Programme. Implemented, SBP’s website explained, because of “the severe effect the pandemic had on our publishing business”, this program–despite using the word traditional–required authors to come up with a “temporary loan” of AU$6,000. Here’s how SBP’s website described the Author…

Global population is expected to keep rising for the next 50-60 years, because it will take awhile for the demographic force of declining birthrates to overcome the life expectancies. In addition, the world still has lots of very poor people: for example, about 800 million people around the world live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $3/day, and of course hundreds of millions more are not far above that line. With a rising world population, and one where we hope the standard of…

I have a vague memory from a long time ago. Someone told me that after wars, nature wants to replenish the killed men, and the proportion of boys among babies increases. I recently remembered this claim and looked it up. Yes, the statistical part is real: during and right after both of the World Wars, the proportion of boys increased. This effect even has its own name: the Returning Soldier Effect. Its explanation, however, is still missing in action. By the way, old observations of the sex…

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 394-397: BY THE MIDDLE OF 1944, the anticipation of worse things to come on the home front led to a new policy. The government, still under Tojo’s leadership, announced an evacuation program for primary schoolers from thirteen metropolitan cities. The children, ranging in age from eight to twelve, were moved to the countryside, where they lived in large groups; for many, it was the first time away from their parents. They…

The distance between two points is ordinarily a problem for geometry. On Points of Inaccessibility, it becomes a pathology of attention. A chance encounter at MUTEK in Mexico City in 2024 brought Ibero-American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri into conversation with Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp, whose invitation to the Uncloud residency in Utrecht the following spring led their inquiry into the abandoned carcass of the Pieter Baan Centre. Once a forensic psychiatric prison, the building had…

ConBody is an exercise program that Coss developed while he was in prison for selling drugs. Coss lost 70 pounds in six months by working out in his 9’x6′ cell. Con body is located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and also offers classes online for those who want prison-style workouts from the solitary confinement of their own home. Coss speaks with Jessica Harris about how he launched ConBody, from scratch. Listen to the interview

Dead kids. I carried a rifle through a desert. Dismissed the other as inhuman for their barbarism, their pederasty. Bacha bazi and beaten wives. Not in my AO. Not while I still had control. And then I come home. Pedos in charge. Kids shot in classrooms. Now I sit in a generic suburban home. Armed, suspicious, and powerless. A cog in a machine generating wealth for technocrats and chomos. The news cycle continues. More dead kids. This is freedom. This is God’s plan.

"Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good," said Socrates, according to his student Plato, "I am better off than he is -- for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know."This is one of his most famous assertions. Whether it's true or not, can be debated. Self-evidently, he knew more than nothing. My mother used to say, whenever I thought I'd caught her in an inconsistency, "All wise people change their…

There is no way we can quit social media now. We are too entrenched in it. Just as we cannot live without smartphones, we cannot live without social media apps. There is no point in debating it anymore. That discussion was relevant a decade ago; now, it’s pointless. There are generations that have grown up on social media and have no clue what it’s like to live without it. We can improve the way we consume content, though. Instead of consuming everything through video, we can train our brains…

The Plough and Stars, a pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has begun hosting “philosophy nights”, and they’re a hit. Last month, people piled into the place for food, drink, and a talk by Agustín Rayo (MIT) on math and certainty. photo via The Plough and Stars Later this month, Helena de Bres (Wellesley) will be giving a talk there on “What is meaning in life?” and reportedly there are around 120 people on the waitlist to attend. While there is a high concentration of academic and…

ChatGPT: Electrician, Registered nurse, HVAC technician, Plumber, Physical therapist, Mental health counselor, Industrial maintenance technician, Firefighter and Special education teacher. Gemini: Plumbers, Electricians, & Skilled Trades, Surgeons & Emergency Physicians, Psychotherapists & Mental Health Counselors, Elementary & Special Education Teachers, Firefighters & Emergency First Responders, Trial Lawyers & Litigation Advocates and Construction Site Managers & Heavy Equipment Operators.…

The Holy Trinity of Male Hotness pic.twitter.com/P5oihkWlSf— 𝘿𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙙𝙚 (@desirecode_) October 14, 2026 What the list cannot see A clip went around this month: the holy trinity of male hotness is emotional intelligence, physical attractiveness, and money. Hotness is a word for what you can tell from across a room, and two of the three items on this list cannot be seen from across a room. You can see a body. You can see a watch, and infer. You cannot see a bank balance, and you cannot see…

The trend is definitely going towards a smaller Engineering and a bigger AI section. I don’t like that. This week, have a look at John Cutler’s Feature Factory Retrospective and the No Man Is an Island post. If you want a podcast and like engineering, check out “Building resilient systems”. Quote of the Week And that’s the deciding factor. We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman Leadership TBM 445: The…

One of the foundational texts of my early studies in ancient history – one of these days it might be interesting to think about which of the things I read as an undergraduate had the biggest influence, or that I can actually remember – was Paul Cartledge’s ‘Rebels and Sambos’ piece*, which was on the reading list for an essay on Greek slavery. I remember it being a right pain to get hold of, published as it was in a Festschrift of which there seemed to be only three copies in Cambridge when at…

(This is a guest post, written by Jeremy Avigad, Kevin Buzzard, Johan Commelin, Rémy Degenne, Kim Morrison, Oliver Nash and, Adam Topaz.) Mathematicians’ reactions to last week’s big OpenAI release range from excitement to frustration, but one thing is clear: AI has become remarkably good at proving theorems, both formally and informally. The successes in the formal realm have led AI enthusiasts to declare that now is the time to formalize all of mathematics as a legacy for future generations.…

I have a full Norse mythology tattoo sleeve. Within it are a valknut and three runes: O, D, and M. They’re part of how I connect to my ancestors, and having them on my skin makes that connection feel personal in a way that reading about the mythology never could. But some of those marks also carry associations with people whose beliefs I completely reject. Racism, white supremacy, and Nazi ideology have attached themselves to parts of the same visual language I’ve chosen to carry. I find that…

We do have lack of open spaces in the capital for reading .. may be the center just wants a designated site for inculcating the reading habits for its pulp-fiction series. And occasional deep-listening to educational podcasts like “He-Man ki baat”

I’ve talked about how Olaplex and other bond builders probably don’t act at broken disulfide bonds before – they do work to make hair feel and behave like it has more bonds, but they likely do this via other mechanisms, such as adding more hydrogen and ionic bonds. But there’s an independent study titled “Bleached Hair as Standard Template to ... Read more Source

The Social Reckoning (2026) • View trailerFour stars (out of five); rated R, for profanityAvailable via: Movie theatersBy Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.26Although director David Fincher’s The Social Network was a blistering indictment of the greed and betrayal involved with Facebook’s founding and subsequent rise in popularity — fueled by scripter Aaron Sorkin’s marvelously barbed, Oscar-winning adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires — that film now…

Ever wondered what North America would look like if the oceans rose by a staggering 690 meters?The Sliding Shores map gives us a fascinating peek at a radically transformed United States. Granted, even if every global ice sheet melted tomorrow, sea levels would max out around 80 meters - meaning this apocalyptic drowning is strictly theoretical. But as an exercise in extreme topographic visualization, it makes for a captivating spatial experiment.If you’re looking to explore actual,…

Reading Time: 37 minutes While I appreciate you are all REELING from the latest revelations suggesting that Reform UK’s membership might in fact comprise SOME ACTUAL RACISTS, I had quite a weird experience this week which I am going to share with you instead of Doing Commentary (you’re welcome!). So as a result of Google’s slightly odd mechanics, I occasionally get emails meant for Other Matt Muirs around the world – this is how I have learned that there are lots of Muirs in New Zealand, for…