If you are reading this blog, you likely already know that “America’s Tall Ship,” the 269-foot steel-hulled three-masted barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327), started life in 1936 as one of the quartet of John Stanley-designed Gorch Fock-class school ships (segelschulschiff) for the German Kriegsmarine (Gorch Fock, Horst Wessel, Albert Leo Schlageter, and Herbert Norkus), followed by Mircea for the Romanian Navy. Horst Wessel (the future USCGC Eagle) at the Mürwik Naval Academy in Flensburg, Germany,…

A short documentary about music formats, streaming, and the quiet thing that disappeared when your library became endless. Oh, and a musician (me!) trying to work out whether the music changed, or I did.

ome very interesting things on the schedule for today. For instance, Merv Griffin's lineup is a classic of the time: Phil Silvers, Shecky Greene, Red Buttons and Charo. That had to be out of control before it even started. And then there's poet James Dickey appearing on Bob Cromie's Book Beat, discussing his first novel. You m

Sadly earlier this year I was made redundant from my Software Developer job. Looking for a new job has not been fun, but a few common themes have emerged that I wanted to share. My hope is that these will help others to put things in place that may help them in the future. Go to events and meet people Something I have said often is that I enjoy going to events or conferences, like NDC London . These are great places to hear interesting talks, however that is not all they are good for. When you…

Food flowed into western Craftlin over the Delving Plateau. Deliveries were made daily across the region. In the days since Apocalypse nary a morsel was received. Torn intended to follow the paths of delivery to their sources. These roads would lead to food with no need to explore the other regions at random. They were required to feed Craftlin. They failed and so Craftlin must find their rightfully earned sustenance and seize it.

This post is a very well written explanation on whar mathematical conditions a loss function should obey so that gradient descent is effective on it.

Tower Dungeon by Tsutomu NiheiI was trying to get together some other new posts, but those are slow going so here is something that has been rattling around in my brain- how much recent media there is that is based in a dungeon. I listed a chunk of it in the Why Megadungeons post, but at the risk of repeating myself, I did want to separate it out into its own thing. I also tried to limit the media to roughly the last ~10 years. I think benchmarking the last decade also helps illustrate how much…

Ten years. That’s how long the glazing putty held on my first set of windows before it started cracking, pulling away, and letting water in around the glass. I had done everything right on installation day. Primed the rabbets. Used quality putty. Let it skin over before painting. But ten years later, those windows were […] The post Why Glazing Putty Fails Early (And How to Make It Last 30 Years) appeared first on The Craftsman Blog.

By Peter D GraySelf Published5e/OSRLevel ... 4? Farmer Jebsom has a problem – half his farmhouse, along with all of his family fell into a sinkhole that appeared beneath his farm’s foundations. Now he is desperate to get his wife and children back from the mysterious depths and is willing to give 20% of his farm to anyone succeeding in returning them to safety. This seven page backstory uses one page to describe nine rooms in a tunnel complex full of bugs. A general overview with a lengthy…

Entropy Arbitrage Next Today marks the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Cap-Français, where (oversimplifying) the French occupiers, trying to stop the Haitian Revolution, made the mistake of fighting each other and recruiting slaves for the front lines with the predictable results of giving everybody the opportunity to rise up against the government. Over in Europe, Croatia celebrates Anti-Fascist Day, celebrating their World War II uprising against the Axis occupiers. And with that, on…

McGonagall, thou shouldst be living at this hour...'Twas in the year twenty twenty-six, on the twenty-second day of June – Which many political commentators and others said was not a day too soon –That the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, stood outside 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation To the reporters and cameramen assembled there, and also to the nation.His successor is expected to be the popular King of the North, Andy Burnham,But, when it comes to the fortunes of the Labour…

In Saint-Omer in France there was a Benedictine abbey called the Abbey of St. Bertin, founded in 638 and existing right up to the late 18th century. It was closed during the French Revolution, ordered demolished in 1830 (except for the tower), and then damaged due to World War II.A record of several decades was found in the abbey. It is not assumed that it was written in the abbey. The current hypothesis is that the record was made in the court of Louis the Pious and continued during the reign…

(All references in this blog post can be found in the main article the post is about which is here.)Recall that \(R(a,b)\) is the least \(n\) so that, for all 2-colorings of the edges of \(K_n\), there is either a RED \(a\)-clique or a BLUE \(b\)-clique.\(R(k,k)\) has been well studied and is often called \(R(k)\).However, today we are concerned with \(R(a,k)\) \(a\) is fixed and \(k\) goes to infinity.1) In 1995 Jeong Han Kim showed \(R(3,k)\) is asy \(\Theta(\frac{k^2}{\log k})\). At the…

× On May 21, Paul Krugman wrapped up a long argument that the European continent isn’t really in economic decline. With one exception: Europe, he writes, “can’t be sure that it will always have access to new technologies developed and produced in the other superpowers,” and “the risk of being cut off from strategically important technologies, once minimal, is now very real.” Twenty-two days later a US directive switched off a frontier AI model for every non-American (well technically -…

Thank you to my local paper, the Lexington News-Gazette, for inviting me to write a monthly guest column this summer. My first commentary appeared last Wednesday and focused on Juneteenth. My small town hosted another wonderful celebration on Friday. I can’t wait for next year’s — and what I hope is a massively better political landscape. More on that below: June 19 is Juneteenth National Independence Day, America’s federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. Though the Emancipation…

"Owensboro Messenger," January 29, 1911, via Newspapers.comEarly in 1910, American newspapers breathlessly carried the story of what appeared to be a particularly shocking double homicide. This account comes from the "Republican News Item" for January 6:The mystery of the death of Miss Grace Elosser, of Cumberland, Md., and Charles E. Twigg, of Keyser, W. Va. her fiance, appears as deep as it did shortly after the bodies of the couple were found on the settee in the parlor of the Elosser…

Over the years, I've worked for organisations with various levels of risk tolerance for business travellers. Some have been (rightly) paranoid and others have been (wrongly) placid about the threats their employees face. The fact is, individuals are often targeted for espionage, blackmail, or other state-sponsored attacks. Here's a list of some of the different advice I've received, roughly sorted into levels of suitability. Start at the top and work your way down until you reach a suitable…

The Apollo 14 Lunar Module, with its 7° tilt apparent in the picture. The onboard astronauts looked out the module’s window often to ensure it was not tipping over. Image: NASA / David HarlandFor NASA to safely land 12 astronauts on the Moon with the Apollo missions, a lot had to go right. But before it could even attempt Apollo, the agency needed to know what our Moon is like up close. Worrying about the basic nature of the lunar surface and soil may sound mundane now but it was a big unknown…

Welcome back to the Gridiron Deep Dive everybody, where today, I’m going to take a detour from the normal football fare, to talk about former MLB Centre Fielder Glenn Burke.If you know why I’ve come to talk about Glenn Burke today, then you know, but please keep that information to yourself for the next little while, not to ruin it for everybody else.Writing this article took a lot out of me. Thank you for being here!There are several disclaimers that I would like to give before we begin, both…

The Kate Rays is Kim Floyd’s current project. You can find the music she makes with Tony Chance on bass and Mark Hubbard on drums on Bandcamp. I recommend it. But I discovered some tracks on Soundcloud that predate The Kate Rays and that got me curious. Kim who usually sings and plays guitar is now based in Jacksonville, Florida. I believe at some point she was in New York City. I wonder where she was in 1997. The tracks from her project Tintern Abby date from that year. There are three songs…

In most big stories, there are one or two pieces of absolutely essential context that get reported in major outlets but which no one seems to pay much attention to.David Goldman reporting for CNN: Today, neighboring Cushing is the hub of America’s energy market. It literally provides the oil plumbing for the United States. It’s where America’s benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil is priced and warehoused. From there, it’s piped to refineries around the country. In normal times, Cushing stores…

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend;’ it may have started as a means to annoy Margaret Thatcher, the tabloid press and conservative society by banding together with a group equally reviled by the British Establishment, but the LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) assistance and fundraising society formed a genuine bond with the Welsh […]

Via my parents. Found in my suit pocket after resting there for nine years.

Rain starts at first light. A soggy dawn chorus soon subsides, leaving only the new Carolina wren with his exotic accent and enthusiasm. As the rain thickens, he too falls silent.

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Intelligent Life, 6/22/26 Everything I’ve learned about all the characters in Intelligent Life has been against my will. I wasn’t thrilled when I realized I instantly recognized this blond guy as “Barry,” the stereotypical jock used as a punching bag by the nerd characters in…

Normally on Fathers Day, dad and I would have met up on the riverbank somewhere before sun rise and then spent the morning fishing and chatting together. Catching a fish was never important, just being there together. Obviously this year that wasn't to be, he definitely wouldn't have wanted me to sit around moping though, he would have wanted me to go and get after those tench again, so that's what I did. I made sure to spend some time reminiscing about the good times we spent together and even…

Note: I am, of course, going to include my books in this. I skipped a few I don't have suggestions for. Character smells like fresh cut grass Song Lyrics: Oh hello, both I Belong to You and Presented with Love would work for this. I Hate Everyone But You: Zomromcom by Olivia Dade National Park: Hello again, I Belong to You fits here as well, with Rock Creek Park. Of Kings and Queens also mentions the Mall. Heatwave: Hot Earl Summer by Erica Ridley Dual Timeline: Cosmic Love at the Multiverse…

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. My training as a scientist taught me to revere the scientific method, and I continue to hold science in the highest regard. Science can teach us much about the world and ourselves, and as I’ve written elsewhere, it can allow us to see beyond our biases — if we can keep open minds. Yet I’ve grown to understand that not all knowledge worth possessing can come from a book, an experiment or a Google search. Science is…

We paid for our very overgrown hedges to be cut back and shaped. It's not cheap, but the garden instantly looks smarter. It also means I can drive onto the street without risking scratches from bush talons. I then found a pigeon chick in the back garden, just out of reach of next door's little dogs that were barking and scrambling furiously through the chain-link fence. I moved it to safety on the other side of the garden. A nest must have been disturbed by the trimming and the chick fell out.…

It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals. In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is … Continue reading →