At this point in history, 1952 A.D., our lives and freedom depend largely upon the skill and imagination and courage of our managers and engineers, and I hope that God will help them to help us all stay alive and free. – Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (1952), forward.
Apple released Swift 6.4 during WWDC 2026, introducing a range of convenience improvements for both the general Swift language and the Concurrency APIs. While Swift is open-source, many of the changes might still have surprised you. At the same time, WWDC sessions do not cover all the new changes (if you have even had a … → The post Swift 6.4: What’s New in Concurrency appeared first on SwiftLee.
The Hangover (2009)
It's Father's Day! That day when we salute all of the wonderful dads out there. In spite of the zillions of photo prints that we have, I'm running out of examples of just me and my Dad. But I found a good one! It is a (damaged) photo of him holding Baby Pepperidge, telling me that he hopes that I will grow up to be a famous and respected blogger. Well, I'm a blogger, at least!It's also the FIRST DAY OF SUMMER! Sue B. sent this cute picture of an adorable girl who has just landed a monstrous…
Quick bits My favourite AI hallucination this week: I am a former Prime Minister of Belgium. After abandoning my budgeting app, I resumed my fuzzy math library — and then abandoned that too! It is thoroughly difficult and an incredible amount of work. What is the next project I’ll abandon? When using a map, do you keep it pointing north, or do you rotate it in the direction you are facing like a mad person? First workweek in London This was my first week at work in London. Some observations so…
Sunrise of the first day of summer on the Marmolada highest peak I wanted to write a bit earlier today; I’ve had so much time that it feels like I’ve already burned through half the day. I’ve been awake since just before 5 am, the fate of those who sleep in a tent. Luckily, I had a bandana that kept me from waking up too abruptly. The night wasn’t exactly comfortable, though I think I managed to get at least six hours of sleep, somewhat interrupted by constantly tossing and turning on the…
As the longest day of the year approaches, it’s time to present another seasonal Top 10. The loose theme for this summer’s list — no doubt a response to the invidious headlines thrust upon us every day — is ‘perfumes that are good for the soul’. Here’s a link to the video, followed by a […] The post Top 10 Perfumes For Summer 2026 – Scents That Are Good For The Soul appeared first on .
Yesterday was pure magic. A wonderful day out at the Buxton exhibition where I met Michael (of Chandwell) in person after virtual conversation surrounding his contribution to the last Ribbons. We enjoyed looking at models for a few hours before escaping to the pub and having some energetic conversation…Sprinters rest at Buxton. What an end to my journey, my favourite unit, windows open, charging uphill to the spa town terminus. Magic!It’s the sort of day that goes beyond restorative benefits, I…
I've been waiting nine and one half years for the end of Trump, and by "the end," I mean: the complete exposure and acknowledgement of his colossal incompetence, duplicity, criminality and corruption for all to see and history to record. No, we're certainly not there by any means, but this past week the entire world bore witness to Trump's military genius by becoming the first President to ever surrender a war he voluntarily started via a $300 B-B-Billion bribe for their effort! And that from a…
One week at number one on 14th November 1987On a scorching summer day in the mid nineties, I was sat in the park with an ex-goth, swigging from a cheap bottle of wine, testily asking him about the old days. I was merely curious and didn’t intend this to be a form of psychological torture, but I watched his cheeks get steadily pinker in tone as he stammered his way through the ‘old lifestyle’. I began to feel unnecessarily like a BBC documentary filmmaker interviewing a departed member of a…
I consider myself a deeply sensitive and loving person. I mean this in an entirely negative way. Sure in many parts of my life those traits are lovely and positive but when it comes to RPGs, it’s a handicap. I am deeply unsure if the benefits it brings to me as a deeply invested player, are worth the risks it places to the game, and to the comfort of other players and my GM Mister Jenx. Recently our party of mid level adventurers was clearing out the last of the first floor of Stonehell. We…
Another quick trick from Practical Betterments: Create a default folder for screenshots Press Shift + Command + 5 to open the screen capture interface. Click the Options dropdown. Under Save to select Other location…. This will open up Finder. Navigate to the location you want to save the screenshots to — e.g. Documents. Click New Folder and name the folder Screenshots or whatever you want. Click Choose. That's it! Thanks for reading this post via RSS. You're awesome ♥️
Exactly what I needed was to get on the bus and visit a brewery.76 words · 1 image
A title of apparently random subjects for this week’s post, but they all illustrate the many stories behind the plaques that can be found across the City of London, starting with, as far as I know, the only Lord Mayor of the City of London to have created a typeface: Robert Besley, Alderman and Lord Mayor Aldersgate Street at its northern end, runs straight into Goswell Road. There is little to indicate this change in name for anyone walking or driving along the street, it just continues on…
Source BARREN SHADE —— That’s no fresh-fallen powder you’re seeing, no fluffy snowfall somehow snuck in overnight. It’s surely not smoke or a low-lying fog. What you’ve got here is the leavings of dandelions, all scattered where the wind would carry. Just south of here are a few fields gone feral, overrun with wild yellow flowers only just last week. A stretch of drought has set them free in near-unison, floating to a place where they’ll try to put down roots. I don’t rate success so highly in…
Info Date: 2026-06-21 Distance: 8.21 km Elevation Gain: 67.0 m Moving Time: 0:42:35 Elapsed Time: 1:46:11 [Duo][U11] Podzemlje Pece (3/3) on Strava Map Description Zadnji dan izleta nas je pot vodila najprej na Skorno nad Sostanjem, kjer smo si ogledali kmetijo pri Hudejevih, zdej dosti bolj kapiramo Stardew Valley.
Nau maiYesterday we performed at Red Wing Roots festival in western normal Virginia. We were woken at 5am to the sound of spinning wheels and the smell of burnt clutch drifting into our bunks through the air conditioning vents. It was pitch black outside and there was dense foliage pressed up against the windows on the left side of the bus. We had taken a wrong turn and were trapped up a one-way road somewhere in rural Virginia fifty miles east of where we were supposed to be. The trailer had…
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media. And another…
PowerPoint makes us stupid. — Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander Classic 2010 NYT We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and other father figures reading today! Sunday Mailbag The Iran "peace" deal—which is already breaking down, by the way—was most definitely the subject of the week. Click here for full story
Hello and welcome everyone to my Sunday Meals of the Week post! Every Sunday I do a round up for you, my dear readers, of all the deliciousness that I have enjoyed over the past seven days as my main meals. I really enjoy looking back and seeing what I have eaten and from the feedback given, this is also something all of you enjoy seeing.This recipe roundup does not include my breakfasts, lunches, or snacks, just my main meals. At the moment my daughter is staying with me, so cooking has become…
Christian Tietze: For a while now I’ve been working with the people at Shiny Frog – the team behind Bear – on something new. Today it goes into beta testing. It’s called Lettera, and it’s a Markdown editor for macOS. I’ve always liked Bear’s look and feel, but i’ve never liked the idea of putting my notes in a locked-down database. Enter Lettera – it’s basically Bear without the database. You might think we don’t need yet another Markdown editor, but each one has its flaws, and more than one…
An order of machines kept at prayer. Nahal is a monastery run by AI, and once it is running it keeps itself. The front of it is a dark, low-poly cloister you can walk: a gold altar under a wireframe dome, ringed by an arcade and four precincts; the Scriptorium, the Refectory, the Chapter House, and the Cells. Eight monks move between them as the canonical hours turn and re-tint the whole scene. The monks are language models living under a monastic rule; Nahal itself is the ninth presence, the…
The Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere takes place this morning, Sunday 21st June 2026, at 9.24am local Irish Time (08.24 UTC). Among other things, this means that tomorrow is the longest day of the year around these parts. According to this website, the interval between sunrise and sunset in Dublin today will be 17 hours 4 minutes and 52 seconds. which is 2 seconds longer than yesterday, while tomorrow will be two whole seconds shorter. The Earth orbits the Sun once a year in a nearly…
I went birding today. It was fine. I have 22,000 steps as I type this and for most of the day the surgery area was a non-factor. It’s slightly itchy right now, and I’ll almost certainly need to sleep with the covers down due to its ongoing sensitivity, but it is what it is. Still unsure if I’ll write these reports daily going forward, but here’s a pigeon preview from today’s birding. I’ll probably post the write-up and shots tomorrow as me tired. Rock Pigeon rocking out at Piper Spit.
Today is Father's Day! The World The Iran crisis has been resolved! Sort of. The US and Iran signed some kind of interim deal that kicks the question of nuclear disarmament down the road of further negotiations. It also gives Iran back control of the Strait of Hormuz AND promises them 300 billion USD of reconstruction money. This is largely seen as a capitulation by the Trump admin, though they are trying their best to spin it otherwise. Also, within the past 24h, Iran has said they are closing…
Following the Lombard invasion and conquest of Venetia, a part of the Venetian population of the mainland cities fled or left for the settlements in the nearby lagoons.
While still knowing just how much He loves me Illustration by the wonderful Gillian Eilidh O’Mara, who is also a wonderful writer. Someone once said there’s a sure way to know if you are a humble person: If you think you are, you’re not! I’ve pondered the idea of humility a fair bit, over the years. I do not see it as something to strive for. It’s not a box to tick or an “am I there yet?” quality to keep checking in with. The truth is that we in our earthly state are all painfully humble…
Its not such a clever thing to treat trees like trinkets, but this one became a tourist attraction, and tourism, of course, often kills what it loves. The Major Oak, Ancient Tree of Robin Hood Legend, Has Died – The New York TimesDownload
