I think this is what our grandparents call "a senior moment." The best part?THEY WROTE IT IN ALL CAPS. [sad face here] "Sprinkles All Over Momther" is the name of my Cake cover band. Ahhh, NOW you're speaking my language.(The language... OF WRECKS. [eyebrow waggle]) In a word?NO. Thanks to Lani T., Donna C., Patrick L., Anony M., & Rebecca P. for keeping those lines of communication nice and squiggly-like.

In the world of fountain pen inks, is there any better collaboration than Kobe and Vanness Pen Shop? These two recently worked together to produce Vanness Hummingbird, a wonderful Emerald Green ink, exclusively for Vanness. I have one bottle to give away this week, so read the rules below and enter away! Kobe Ink Vanness Hummingbird Green Ink Giveaway

This was the month the world took notice that AI might kill everyone. Jacob Coxon’s resignation set off a preference cascade. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote that we must pace the frontier. Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis agreed. We were filled with hope. Perhaps we could agree to some basic safety measures, starting with embedded evaluators, pass some basic regulations and guardrails and otherwise start to act sensibly. Politicians on both sides took notice and were saying sensible…

Is a story a nothingburger if mystery meat is involved?Based on a story about the corporate sponsorships behind the MAHA Summit in Washington next week, we're about to find out.Politico reports (HT: Jasmine Nisar):Walmart, America's biggest retailer and a leading purveyor of the ultraprocessed [sic] foods MAHA decries, is among the sponsors. So are two artificial intelligence giants, OpenAI and Anthropic, whose chief executives recently asked Washington to regulate them in order to prevent…

Uniqlo, you know my email conversion rate, and I’m literally inside your linen shirt right now. And The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., I will always be grateful for that AWP award that one time. So know that I am coming from a place of love when I say, “‘ANDY WARHOL TRANSFORMATION Discover the collection that traces the sources of Warhol’s inspiration by exploring the everyday images that inspired his iconic works.’ WTF?” And the image is a workup of the screen from Modern…

The best-selling Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto on degrowth from Kohoei Saito was published in 2020 (in Japan… 2024 in English)– – as was Jason Hickel’s best-seller on Degrowth. What? Two best-sellers on degrowth? Yes, it’s almost, but not quite, safe to talk about degrowth now … and we will definitely be talking more about […] The post Review: Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto first appeared on Hinesight....for Foresight.

I understand what it means to feel lost or elsewhere and what t means to be or believe as if to be out of this hemisphere and more, I get how it is to seem like a stranger while alive and well and living here in familiar territory. My best memory of times when I was supposedly well or fine enough to be welcomed is when I was alone or by myself. I chose to break free like a lion or a tiger who escaped and broke free from his cage. I chose the separation between myself and the crowd and so, I…

Oh, neat. The Vitalant blood donation people ask a lot of questions about your health history. E.g., they ask about some medications; I guess depending on what's swirling around in your veins, they may or may not want to give your blood to someone else. New to me: They translated their questions into Spanish. That makes sense; there are probably plenty of people who'd like to donate but whose knowledge of English doesn't include words like "lungs" or "transfusion".

So, over the weekend, you may’ve seen something like this: Disney+ has altered its user agreement to clarify that ads will be allowed on all subscription tiers. https://bit.ly/4hhOjBo— IGN (@ign.com) 2026-09-21T00:01:01.999089314Z On Bluesky alone, nearly 2,000 people have quoted this, cursing the skies at Disney+ and the streaming movement for once again fucking over us, the loyal customer. So… …guess what? It’s not that at all. IGN has since updated their headline, now reading “Disney+…

A few months after her mother’s death, the author Naomi Alderman tries to keep her grieving father occupied by setting up a camera to take photos of the foxes that visit his garden at night. Examining the photos the next morning, they discover that they’ve captured not only an image of the fox, but also another animal they’re unable to identify. Soon it emerges that other people all over the UK have also seen this new creature – a furry mammal, similar in appearance to a badger but with a flat…

I liked Rubin’s book “The Creative Act,” and generally agreed with it’s thrust, so this series of quotes from him about AI & creativity comes as not much of a surprise to me. But it still seems like this viewpoint is shocking and avant garde for most people, so including it here! From Business Insider (archived): However, the finished work, or even the process of making something, is only a small part of what creativity is, Rubin said. “The things that we make are the reminders that we’re…

Thanks to contributor Andy for sending us this: * Strike back by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously mocking your useless workplace to our Workplace Woes desk.

The New Enemy (Liam Scott #3)Author: Andy McNabGenre: Military FictionReleased: 2015Rating: ★★☆☆☆It's a deadly game of hide and seek. Liam Scott has joined Recce Platoon. And it looks like he will be heading for Somalia. His mission is to gather intelligence from behind enemy lines, carrying out top-secret surveillance and dead letter drops. But he's new to the game and there's a lot to learn. Soon Liam is monitoring a den of Al-Shabaab militants and hunting a key terrorist target. Can Recce…

I wanted to post this yesterday but didn’t get to it. This is a good list, I think I should make myself one like this: good things I’m looking forward to this week — feel-good rituals included. Highlights of my week francescrossley.comLittle things I love every week What the Fran https://francescrossley.com/highlights-of-my-week/

After I had finished categorising all the posts on Mappery (see this post) it occurred to me that a similar strategy might be used for geocoding ungeocoded posts. If you have been following my vibe coding posts you will know that Arnaud and I built a geocoding and mapping plugin for our WordPress site that we are about to publish. When we built the plugin, I salvaged the geocodes from the old plugin that we had disabled but that left nearly 1,000 posts ungeocoded (either posts from before the…

One of my favourite bird groups are the hornbills (or bucerotiforms), a spectacular, tropical group related to hoopoes, sadly in trouble due to the loss and deterioration of their habitats. Caption: two different branches of the hornbill family tree. The skeleton at left represents Bucorvus, a great aboreal frugivore (specifically, this is a Great hornbill B. bicornis). At right is a ground hornbill, specifically the rarely seen Northern ground hornbill Bucorvus abyssinicus. Images: Darren…

I have a small project where I needed to label commits as either “maintenance” or “new development”. The obvious way to do it is with a cheap but relatively capable LLM, like GPT 5.6 Luna. I tested it on a small set of commits and manually verified its labelling, and it emitted the same label as I would have for the entire test set. That was good enough for me to roll out on a wider scale. If we have Simon Willison’s llm CLI tool installed (and you should – it’s great!), we can call it in a…

Started reading: The Art of Gathering How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker 📚

Well, I know a bit about folk art ,but I know absolutely nothing about Hex signs. In fact, the first article I found about them said “yes, Hex signs are still used and professional Hex sign artists still paint them. Well,there is no such thing as a “professional” folk artist. By definition, folk artists are amateurs so I smell a barn rat. I think we have to label them craft. Or “tourist art” might be more appropriate. As for their significance and function (other than decoration) I have no…

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In May 544, General Belisarius and a mere 4000 men were camped along the Adriatic coast, sent by Emperor Justinian I to counter the Gothic army of Totila that was reclaiming territory that the Byzantines had taken from the Ostrogoths during the first part of the Gothic Wars. Totila himself was marching on Rome, ready to besiege the one major city that had resisted him before now.There is evidence that Totila had reached out to Constantinople to suggest a healthy relationship between the two.…

Currently listening to: End Times Fascism. By Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Here is my progress on storygraph. NOTE: The irony of listening to a book like this on Audiable (an app owned by Amazon) is not lost on me. If anyone has recommendations for alternate audiobook platforms I would be most grateful.

What is Dave wearing today? Dave is wearing a #974C4D Adidas polo shirt, #C8CCCE shorts, a #919095 belt, #FFFFFF socks, and Stan Smiths (#FFFFFF with #009C1A on the heel). How does Dave feel today? Dave feels daunted by everything he needs to do today, and he hasn't even turned on his work computer. What are the factors affecting Dave's mood? Dave keeps adding things to his working memory—which, according to science boffins, is only good for remembering seven things at a time—and his brain will…

I had a wonderful time at a conference this past weekend hosted by the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. The conference was titled “The Digital, The Archaeological, and the Ethical” and it touched broadly on all three things. I came away with quite a few impressions and thoughts. 1. Narrative and Storytelling. One of the most important things that came out of the conference was an extended conversation about the role of narrative and storytelling in archaeological practices. On the…

“Listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear.” - Hal Saunders.Hello friends! The cold front finally arrived, and it feels like such a blessing after one of the hottest Septembers on record. North winds are expected to continue, and I think I might have to break out a light jacket later this week. Fall feels good!Here are my photo choices for today:September 14, 2026 - starting to see the pinks of fall.Bluebirds in the mist.Baby cardinal!Preening out that baby fluff.Oooh, osprey, come…

I imported a new supply of beard oil from my current favourite source, Fires Of Freyja in North Carolina USA. HEKS, I didn’t order – they threw it in for free! Such lovely people. OPERATIONS: notebooks, all day. Development and script layouts.STATUS: Eyestrain! Hence notebooks – I need a day of less screens.READING: TENTACLES LONGER THAN NIGHT, Eugene Thacker (UK) (US+) MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free…

Maddy Prior & June Tabor - Peel Session, September 23, 1975Head over to Aquarium Drunkard to read Emily Hilliard’s appreciation of one of the best albums ever — Silly Sisters by Maddy Prior and June Tabor, which hits its 50th anniversary this year. Just a perfect record, with Maddy and June hitting those laser-beam harmonies on beautiful traditional numbers, backed by a murderer’s row of britfolk geniuses, from Martin Carthy to Danny Thompson to Nic Jones. “[T]their close harmonies produce some…

Everyone has a story to tell about a new layer of complicated procedure, often involving paperwork, to accomplish something that ought to be simple. It might be another layer of approval for a purchase, or for travel, using grant money; it might be a new login protection or a new university-required piece of malware software […]

Today is a very busy teaching day, so I just have time to post a quick note to say that the Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) takes place in the early hours of tomorrow morning, Wednesday 23rd September 2026, at 01:05 Irish Time (00:05 UTC). I don’t intend to be awake then, so I’m posting this now. Of course the Equinox will be later today rather than tomorrow for some of you, depending on your time zone. Of course for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere it will be the Spring…

I’ve dug what Pennsylvania-based Auto-Ordnance has done in the past with their WWII-themed M1911A1s, for instance, with their Black Sheep Squadron salute back in 2024. A functional work of art, underneath the custom Cerakote finish, the Black Sheep 1911 is still an Auto-Ordnance Stainless 1911 in .45 ACP. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com) Also, note the “belly” of the gun is left in “the white” to emulate the aluminum body of an F4U Corsair. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com) Well, the company is back…