Came across this review of Shock and Awe online and was reading it, nodding along and thinking 'this is rather perceptive' and then realised it was AI generated!Still more acute than most of the actual reviews by living-breathing consciousnesses.It's from a site called RetroForge about which I will be saying more at the other place in due course.Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First CenturyGlam's artificiality is not an escape from meaning; it is the…

"Art is domination. It's making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours" - Maria Callas

I’m currently doing a trial of a site that lets you access a bunch of different AI tools in one place. Having all those services easily accessible through one subscription instead of multiple different ones has its ups and downs in terms of feature parity, and some other issues. But it does let you work relatively rapidly in a single shared UI to generate multiple different assets pretty quickly in parallel. From that experience, I just wanted to capture a really simple workflow to use for…

Brioche month continues, and this time Dorie’s buttery dough takes a savory spin with Cheese-Swirl Babka Buns. Think cinnamon roll, but with a spiral of cheese! Actually cheeses (plural)- a smoosh up of ricotta, cream cheese, Parmesan and cheddar. Minced shallot and scallion greens break the creaminess a bit. More cheddar appears in the streusel topping, which tastes like Cheez-Its. As usual, this brioche is a two-day affair, the first day dedicated to making and chilling the dough, and the…

My head is a fog from cold pills, and I left the house a minute later than I should have, but the traffic lights aligned and I did not miss my bus. Is there a Patron Saint of Public Transportation? If so, they turn a blind eye on OC Transpo most days, but they smiled on me today, so there’s that. Maybe they feel bad because I’ve been taking the wrong cold pills for the past month and I just figured that out. It turns out the “Plus” in “Cold & Sinus Plus” is very important in cold and sinus…

We've had our parklet for 15 years, and now SFMTA says they're going to fine us $500/day if we don't demolish it in two weeks. We have spent nearly two years trying to negotiate with them to figure out some rational way to satisfy them, and they have been 100% unwilling discuss any alternatives. In their view, they can demand whatever they want and we just have to suck it up. Over the last few months, we have reached out to Mayor Lurie, and to District 6 Supervisor Dorsey (through various…

Perfume PosseCheap and Cheerful: Acqua di Selva I actually got reminded of this one from a FacePlace post that a friend commented upon. I’ve never owned this but I know I had smelled and liked it and this past week (first week of August) has been fairly… Continue Reading → Perfume PosseCheap and Cheerful: Acqua di Selva

by Eurocheese Heading into my screening of Elsinore on the last day of the festival, I had heard a number of mixed things on the ground. Some said the film pulls too readily at heartstrings without much plot. I’d heard rumblings that it was likely to win an audience prize, and it ended up taking the International People’s Choice Award before I saw it (yes, it’s eligible since it’s a UK production and La Bola Negra became automatically disqualified for the honor when it won TIFF’s general…

A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review by Ellen Nehr ADAM HALL – Knight Sinister. Pyramid, US, paperback, 1971. Harper, US, paperback, 1990. First published in the UK in 1951, written by Elleston Trevor under the pseudonym Simon Rattray. Before he became famous as Adam Hall with the publication of The Quiller Memorandum, Elleston Trevor produced five chess-oriented mystery/suspense novels; these were published in England under the pseudonym Simon Rattray, and reprinted here under the Hall name after the…

I write a lot, and I use AI a lot. But AI does not write my blog posts. Mostly. AI is useful for making some of my writing less tedious. Recently, I asked GitHub Copilot CLI to read a few dozen posts from this blog and derive a VOICE.md to assist my writing. The result is now checked into this repo and linked from AGENTS.md, so any AI agent working here gets the same reminder: this blog is authored by me, not by AI and the agent’s job is to help me rather than pretend to be me. The useful and…

In this essay, I argue that an artificial intelligence modeled on a specific human cannot independently preserve the human particular developmental continuity after their histories diverge. Imagine that a person provides an AI system with every available detail of their life: memories, written messa…

I believe I was in seventh grade when I first heard a meaningful conversation that contained the words “austerity budget”. Two bus drivers were talking during a field trip stop; one of the bus drivers was a fiery woman named June Lavezzo. She really was a bit of a spitfire and she also had a heart of gold. She was discussing with another bus driver that a neighboring school district had just voted down the yearly budget for the second time, which meant they were going on “austerity”. No field…

This is a recap-ish of the latest podcast episode. You can listen to the episode below before or after you read. That’s because I tend to expand on topics from the pod as well as straight-up write about things that we did not discuss. The choice is yours in how you want to proceed! Hello my friends! This was a fun pod, all about what the guys and I have been up to in these last days of summer (who am I kidding, it’s still hot as fuck here in LA). Spencer recounted a particularly fun wedding…

Between the quietand the quiet as tin,I heard the flowers fall...padpad.

I want to talk about my flair tonight1: I had a bad session. I consider myself a journeyman Game Master, one with a lot left to learn about our craft. I have run two longish campaigns so far, and many one shots in a few different dungeon crawly RPGs. My first effort was a 24 session online 5e campaign that crashed and burned when a couple players got bored--totally fair, I was beyond stressed at work and thought DMing required writing half a novel for backstory. My second long 5e campaign, in…

Okay, main goal of the day: getting the truck to the garage for our afternoon appointment. As usual, we planned on leaving early. My daughter was really struggling this morning, unfortunately. She’d had a bad night. We’ve had more outings than usual that she came along with to help me out, and it’s starting to … Continue reading Almost…

Introducing Claude Opus 5.5 \ Anthropic Because Opus 5.5 is comparable to Claude Mythos 5.1 in biology and cybersecurity, we’re deploying it with safeguards similar to those on Claude Fable 5.1. Vetted organizations can apply today to our Life Sciences Verification Program to use Opus 5.5 for biology research. In the coming weeks we will also be expanding access to our Cyber Verification Program, and verified cybersecurity practitioners will be able to use Opus 5.5 for their work. If it’s so…

I had so much fun in August on HTML Day. (htmlday.joespartydepot.com) I think it’s time to do something similar but maybe not the same, again. December will be the 4th San Diego IndieWebCamp. (indieweb.org/San_Diego) It’s fun to get get together and write HTML. Websites are so great. Where should we hold it? When should we hold it? Get in touch. Leave a comment. Send a webmention. Subscribe to the calendar on events.indieweb.org. Sign my Guestbook | Contact Me | Book office hours | Share

Today’s recording starts with some more Iain and Hacker fun. Then it’s Dinosapien – Saving Eno. Lauren tells Eno that the tremors they felt at the Badlands mean another portal is opening, and he might be able to go home soon. But then Eno gets worried and runs off. It’s a good thing too, as they leave just before two cars arrive, bearing Dr Aikens and the two poachers from an earlier episode. Aikens has Lauren’s journal so he knows everything she knows. And he’s looking for Eno. They find Eno…

Autumn (finally).

The episode of The West Wing that’s always bothered me is “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” which is Episode 20 of Season 4. It takes place on the day of the equinox (in March, not September, but I remembered it because today is an equinox), and one of the continuing subplots is C.J. trying to convince the others that you can stand an egg on its end at the exact moment of the equinox and only at that moment. Oh, and it has to be the vernal equinox, not the autumnal one.1 That someone in the…

A Short History of the World in 50 Liesby Natasha TiddGenres: History, Non-fiction Pages: 288 Rating: Synopsis: Taking readers on a global journey through human history, Natasha Tidd examines how lies can change the world around us, from Julius Caesar’s deceptive PR machine to the cover-ups that caused Chernobyl. From forgeries that created centuries worth of conflict and domination, such as The Donation of Constantine, the Protocols of Zion and the mysterious Testament of Peter the Great, to…

Did Adam Smith’s direct experiences with some of the most celebrated doctors of his age motivate his remark in The Wealth of Nations regarding the absurd prescriptions of doctors? How could they not have! From his Oxford and Glasgow days (see, for example, here, here, and here) to the final weeks of his travelling tutor years (see here and here), Smith saw a wide range of home remedies and medical treatments first hand during his lifetime, including tar water, leeches, ipecacuanha, opiates,…

“Where The Echoes Bloom” is the debut solo work of L.A. based artist, Alia. A 9-track collection of electronic exotica, that showcases her virtuosity on theremin and kacapi, a Javanese zither. With assistance from percussionist Jamal Mohamed, she sets about creating the soundtrack for an alien tropics. “Crescent Sun” moves to a slow, sleek beat. The results in orbit with Water Melon’s Bond theme parody, “Moon Shaker”. “Jogja” incorporates field recordings, croaking frogs, songbirds, slo-mo…

Russell Stone is a Rabbi whose career is on the slide. His run-down synagogue has been deserted by more or less everyone other than his cantor, Josh; the downbeat, miserable, occasionally outright distressing tone of his sermons may have something to do with this, and his hardline views have driven people away in the past – like Jack Lauder, who Stone expelled from his congregation eight years ago for having the temerity to seek an inter-faith marriage. Yeah, about that… three days ago, Lauder…

Credit: Photo by the author Accelerationism (The Good Kind) 2026-09-22T23:44:00+00:00, by Emma Humphries, from Infinite Wishes 🏳️‍⚧️🚀 Last weekend I was back on the Playa to fly rockets. I spent several attempts trying to get an old AeroTech K185W long burn motor to start. So I put it aside for the time being and few an H100W on a rocket I built at the start of the summer, Mass Romantic.1 I had my phone videoing the launch and was able to smash the software button to save a frame as a photo…

Well now we have Trump at the U.N. taking a page from the Hillary Clinton playbook and threatening to “annihilate” Iran. (To be fair, Clinton’s word was “obliterate,” not “annihilate”. ) This is a proposition for mass murder of millions of innocent people, a nuclear detonation, and possible nuclear war. Whether most Americans generally realize it or not, they actually want a socialist president, not more of these deranged Republicans or corporate Democrats. This is no theory. The latest poll…

__ Mercenaries photographed by Don McCullin and Gerd Heidemann The infamous Hitler Diaries are the subject of a BBC Radio and podcast series. It’s not the first time the scandal, which embarrassed both Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times and Germany’s Stern magazine, has been analysed as demonstrated by my blog post of 2016. Today’s episode focused on Stern’s journalist Gerd Heidemann. There’s an interesting link here back to Michael Heseltine’s men’s monthly Town. The January 1968 issue ran an…

It was 50 years ago today that, on September 22, 1976, that Charlie's Angels debuted on ABC. The show would prove to be an immediate hit, ranking no. 5 during its first season and continued to do well for its next few seasons. While ratings for Charlie's Angels would eventually falter and it would be cancelled after five seasons, it would not only prove to be a success in syndication, but would lead to feature films and even reboot series.Charlie's Angels centred on three female private…