Iain Gray, News Letter: Tech mogul Elon Musk encouraged “repeated and loud” protests ahead of Northern Ireland’s immigration demonstrations, some of which flared into violence. The owner of X, formerly Twitter, went on to comment that “only Restore Britain can save Britain” over the course of comments on a horrific knife attack carried out by a Sudanese man on the streets of north Belfast. For context, Restore Britain is the political party for people who view Nigel Farage as a soft and cuddly…

What's been happeningI wanted to send this note earlier, but the travels and my work meetings kept me occupied and decided to club Week 24 & 25 notes in one chunky post. More about the travel later on.Last week started okay. Sydney winter has been getting colder but we had some reprieve mid-week. We went to our usual gym PT sessions and have been focusing on improving our bench press workouts. The second workout has been focused on front squats. I was struggling a lot to get my front squat…

Hiked part 7/20 of the Marskramer Path, 18.9 kilometres from Lettele to Deventer. The area between Lettele and the Hanseatic city of Deventer is a small-scale varied landscape with meadows, forest and heath. After this you walk to Deventer aan de IJssel, one of the most beautiful rivers in the Netherlands. Finally, after the medieval streets and alleys, you will enjoy the Deventer Koek. Hike report

Game Jams I've taken part in game jams for many years now. It started out as something I would do to get more experience making games but its now just a genuinely fun past-time I fall into every few months. When I was at University I worked within its Computing Society to run them very regularly and they were always lovely. For a few years I was also in a game-jam team who took part in Ludum-Dare regularly. This is a brief overview of the various games I have made over the years. Rummaging…

While cleaning out my office today, I found this, which I wrote in 1992: In the middle 1970's, the IBM corporation did (and perhaps still does) most of their in-house programming in a computer language called FORTRAN. They had a pretty good FORTRAN compiler, called the FORTRAN G compiler. It was fast at translating FORTRAN into machine instructions, and the machine instructions it produced implemented the desired behavior fairly efficiently. Nevertheless, IBM decided to write a new compiler.…

I often hear conservative Christians condemn gay relationships because of the creation story in Genesis — "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," so the slogan goes. I was never particularly impressed by this argument. When I became woke, it was not a major sticking point. But, I happened to think about it the other day, and I realized it goes ignores the logic of Genesis 2 is an important way. In verse 18, God observes that Adam is lonely and incomplete, so He decides to create a partner…

I just saw a Brit on BlueSky mocking “an actual respected American online news commentator” for pronouncing “Macron” to rhyme with “Ramone.” My first thought: Pronounce the word “Paris” for me. Likewise, one of the Guardian footy commentators was recently annoyed by a (supposed) American mispronunciation of Paraguay — this coming from Britain, where news readers habitually call another Latin American country Nick-a-RAG-u-əh and football announcers refer to the Aston Villa keeper as Emi…

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There is little doubt in my mind that AI coding models have fundamentally changed the nature of software development in 2026. But is the SaaS-pocalypse real? I think it kinda is, for some businesses. A history lesson from an elder developer I think it’s worth reflecting on what the original premise for Software-as-a-Service actually was. Back in the late 90’s/early-2000’s software was extremely difficult and expensive to produce. Businesses were ordering software for their staff from Microsoft…

Alien: Colony War is a classical Alien story in the "Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe": state, corporate and military corruption and greed, individual bravery and struggle, xenomorphs and mothers willing to protect their children, the occasional psychopath. Entertaining. I feel the author understands and respects the Alien universe. Alien has a successful recipe, one that unlike other franchises, no one yet tried to deconstruct, reinvent or turn into something else. Yes, I am also…

My default for making coffee for two is a cafetière. French press if you insist. It requires almost no thought, produces a consistent result, and has no moving parts to break. When I’ve got a bit more time and want a cleaner cup for two or more, I’ll reach for a Bodum pour-over instead. When it’s just me, I’ve been using a Clever Dripper more lately (it suits the days where I want slightly more control without committing to the full V60 ritual). The Hario V60 was my main single-cup pour-over…

Original post: Bloggers, can we make better titles for our posts? | Michael Harley Overall I agree with Michael's premise: blogs need better titles. I agree; I think I browse Bubbles and Bear's discovery page in much the same way. You can't read everything, and titles are a good shorthand way to guess if it's something you'd be into1. Where I disagree: I think this one might be a bit unpopular but I do not like the round-up posts. You know the ones. They're titled Week Notes, Week in Review,…

LONDON A-Z M is for Marks Gate Barking and Dagenham is an oddly-shaped borough with a narrow two-mile protuberance up north, which is where Marks Gate is. All was open countryside until the 1920s when Eastern Avenue carved through, the same A12 that also destroyed the flat calm in Gants Hill, Little Heath and Aldborough Hatch. A large council estate followed in the 1950s, this the undistinguished warren I'm about to spend several paragraphs walking round, though thankfully with occasional…

The younger man looked nervous, and his supervisor was only marginally less so. Their visitor passes read ESA, and bore a small holographic mark which they had both assumed was standard, but it had drawn expressions of quickly-concealed surprise from more than one person they’d passed on their way from the building’s grand entrance to the office on the sixth floor. There was no plaque on the door, but there had been two secretaries and three armed guards in the outer chamber. The office was…

If you’re craving something light, fresh, and full of flavour, this Crispy Chicken Salad is the perfect summer supper. It starts with tender chicken breasts sliced in half to keep them juicy and quick‑cooking then coated in a golden Parmesan‑panko crust that adds the most irresistible crunch.The salad itself is simple and vibrant — crisp greens, shaved carrot ribbons (a vegetable peeler works beautifully), cool cucumber, and de-seeded tomatoes so the dressing stays bright and punchy instead of…

The return of Serena Williams to Wimbledon’s courts has raised the question of whether GLP-1s are performance-enhancing drugs. CC-licensed photo by Andrew Luyten on Flickr. You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. A selection of 9 links for you. Let? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links…

Until now, Apple has kept Apple Intelligence — the suite of artificial intelligence tools baked into its operating systems — entirely optional. If you don’t want it, you can simply skip it during a new device setup or when updating the system. That show of respect for its customers may change with iOS/macOS 27. Reports suggest that, at least in the first beta, Apple Intelligence is mandatory: On iOS 26 (left), Apple Intelligence can be turned off. On iOS 27 beta 1, it can’t. “So what’s the…

Apple on its Developer site (via Arseniy Shestakov): Later this summer, Apple will unify the email domains used by Sign in with Apple and iCloud+ Hide My Email under a single, shared domain: private.icloud.com. New addresses generated for both features will be issued on the new domain. […] Previously, Hide My Email addresses were generated on icloud.com, the same domain as any other iCloud email address. This made it basically impossible for web admins to block registration using Hide My Email.…

Caring for yourself and actually doing the work of taking care of yourself are not easy feats. It’s something I’ve always struggled with, and still do to this day. That said, I have found two distinct paths that were very helpful to me, and so I wanted to take the time to write about them today. These tips are specifically aimed at people who either don’t value themselves enough to take care of themselves, or who are too dismissive of the value to do the work. Either way, you are worth the…

Anyone is capable of creating pictures more aesthetically pleasing than any renaissance artist. Cameras made sure of that. This led to the many attempts to redefine what art is, as it could no longer be defined as just a "pretty picture". In 1961, Piero Manzoni takes a dump in a can and calls it art. Merda d’artista is one of the most well-known works of modern art, and it’s only one of countless attempts at defining what art is. AI art is a joke. When AI is used as a substitute for human…

Eight years of daily Apple Watch wear taught me to trust data over my own body. Switching to mechanical watches showed me how much that was costing my mental health.

This morning I found an extension that tests for AI content in any web page and highlighted content. I did a few tests on the free version and quickly realized we've reached the breaking point. I tried a few posts at the top of the Bear Blog Discover page and they came up as showing high likelihood of being AI Written. I tested on sites I knew to be human written and it was able to identify those as human so I believe it's working and that makes it all the worse. Now looking through the…

I am increasingly convinced that the first question pastors should ask about AI is not, “Can it write this sermon?” A better question is: “Can it help me work with the notes I already have?” That difference matters. A blank AI prompt invites the tool to lead. It asks the machine to decide the angle, structure, emphasis, and application before the pastor has done the slower work of observation, prayer, and judgment. Sometimes the output sounds impressive. That is part of the danger. A polished…

Bubbles on the Fediverse 🦣 You might already know that every new article on Bubbles is also posted on the Fediverse by the **[@bubbles](https://social.bubbles.town/@bubbles)** account. If you reply to any of these posts your comment shows up under the article on the Bubbles website. Articles with recent comments show up on the **[hot](https://bubbles.town/hot)** page. Naturally following the @bubbles account is not the intended way of keeping up with the small web. It posts over 500 entries…

I used to love the Cluetrain Manifesto. What was not to love? I was young and rather clueless, and with a rebellious streak. Here come The Beatles, and they tell you that the ways of the world are wrong, which was true, and that everything will change. Which was false. Quite naturally, I hopped on the Cluetrain. It served me well for some time, so no hard feelings. And yet, it’s incredible how different things turned out to be! We went from… #62 Markets do not want to talk to flacks and…

I love vertical tabs. Given the -- frankly concerning -- amount of tabs I tend to open, they're a must for me. Thing is, none of the native, non-Chromium options quite fit me. Between Zen & Firefox lacking tree-style tabs, and Waterfox lacking container-synced workspaces, all of the options are a little too lackluster for my needs... So I did the only thing a linux user could -- I kitbashed together a solution. :) I started with Firefox (because Chromium is for traitors), onto which I installed…

I was listening to Late Night Linux 390 during my evening walking with the pooches tonight, and they were talking about (among other things) Kagi search. I've tried Kagi myself, but ultimately cancelled my subscription as I didn't really see the point in paying for it when I could get similar results with DuckDuckGo. This isn't because DDG or Kagi are inherently bad, it's because no matter which service you use, the web has been SEO'd to within an inch of its life, so we're fucked either way.…

When I’m travelling in another country and meet a fellow Canadian, there is a feeling like we can relax and relate. With anyone else, there is a bit of barrier, even if we’re trying hard to be friendly. Now that I’ve had a chance to spend a few days on Gander, a Canadian social media app just out of private testing, I have that same feeling of being with my peeps. We can all just sort of chill with each other. Gander isn’t restricted to Canadians, but it would be tricky for a non-Canadian to…

“God of War,” is a long-running game series. The earlier ones were extremely over the top and followed a protagonist named Kratos as he killed a bunch of Gods who had wronged him. The series restarted its numbering for a new thematic era but kept the continuity, focusing on Kratos and a young son, Arterus, whom he had later in life. Those games also involved Kratos mourning the death of his wife (and Mother of their child), Faye. All the GOW games are extremely popular (especially the more…

I joined Crucial Tracks, a site where you can post about one song per day. (And browse people’s public posts to discover music.)