As if to echo political scientists warning Democrats not to read too much into Trump's election-day wipeout, the Washington Post considers a couple of nasty themes that always come up when Democrats win nationally: taxing "the rich" and preventing "the rich" from spending their own money in elections.(See also: "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" by Ayn Rand, which, alas, continues to age like fine wine.)The editorial's point of departure is California, where dueling ballot measures…

Joe Rossignol for MacRumors: The problem is that some employees allegedly activated these trials without adequately explaining to the customers that they would be automatically charged at a later date, according to tipsters who contacted Rossmann. For example, some employees would allegedly rush through the process or were even told to position the trials as “gifts.” Until early last week, Apple was tracking a metric known as the “services attach rate,” with a target of 40% for each retail…

As is tradition, I forgot that November is Epilepsy Awareness Month. I tend to get confused because "Purple Day" is in March, and I think March is also recognized as epilepsy awareness month. Who cares, we can have two months! Most people don't know about it either way (and those of us with epilepsy often forget — fittingly). Naturally as I go back to an old routine for the week, I forgot to grab my medication. I'll have to take it an hour or so late, but I'll be OK. As long as I don't get to…

It’s not very often that I talk to anyone on flights anymore. Today was a super welcome conversation with a soon to be retired architect. Fascinating story trying to piece this man’s life, but we talked about everything for an hour and a half straight. Don’s good people.

You must not expect much friendliness from a John Bull who does not see his way to get something out of you. On the other hand, for learning commerce, London is without exception the best school. Georgina Meinertzhagen (1850-1914)

David Lyons, emeritus professor of philosophy and law at Boston University, has died. The following memorial notice is by Aaron Garret (Boston University). David Lyons David Lyons passed away at his home on October 24th at the age of 91. He had an extremely distinguished philosophical and legal academic career. David was John Rawls’ first doctoral student and his thesis became the groundbreaking book Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. After a year at Oxford under the supervision of H. L. A.…

Liminal Spirit: Forfeiture HymnsOut 6th November, self-released Hot off the heals of last year’s ‘Unwell’, Liminal Spirit waste no time in expanding on their debut both musically and conceptually with this next offering, ‘Forfeiture Hymns’. All the same elements are in place. Meandering, microtonal guitar lines. Ponderous, faltering drum patterns, displaying an oddly freeform rhythmic centre belying their programmed origins. And the same tantalisingly agnostic approach to melody is deployed, as…

Torso of a fertility goddess (yakshi), from the Great Stupa at Sanchi, Denman Waldo Ross Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I’m sat in my office with a coat on, cancelling my birthday party. I’ve got some unexpectedly big building works happening in my flat which is one reason for it, but it’s also in keeping with the past 6 months. Although the quality of my sleep is better than 2-3 years ago, a constant level fatigue has drifted in and with it, a slow social withdrawal. Friends probably…

New and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access philosophy books, and more… . (If we missed something, let us know.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy New: Bioethics and Moral Reasoning by Jennifer Flynn. Epistemic Closure by Marc Alspector-Kelly. Revised: Medieval Theories of Practical Reason by Anthony Celano. Isaiah Berlin by Joshua L. Cherniss and Henry Hardy. Emotions in the Christian Tradition…

I’m ending The Defender’s Dispatch after 13 issues. Issue 013, published November 9, was the last one.I started the newsletter to give practical cybersecurity and IT stories more room than a roundup allows. I’m glad I made it, but preparing the web edition and email every week became a source of stress. Some issues went out later than planned, and I don’t want to keep promising a schedule that’s wearing on me.I wrote a longer note about the decision on the Dispatch page. The full archive will…

Your truly (wearing glasses) at Grund. Image: RUV I’m back in Minnesota after eleven days on my eleventh trip to Iceland. For the most part the rain held off until the very last day, which was mostly spent in the aiport. I wouldn’t recommend my agenda on these sojourns for a casual tourist, it’s almost all cultural and excepting the bus ride from and back the airport, no landscape. Ten days at

Almost every personal knowledge system dies the same way: the ideas keep coming, but the maintenance doesn’t. Keeping it up to date is your job, and one busy week is enough for the backlog to grow so large that you stop touching it altogether. When you have time, you tag your notes, link them and turn loose ideas into tasks; when you don’t, everything piles up in an inbox that turns into a graveyard. Willpower is a poor engine for that kind of work. What changes this isn’t a smarter AI. It’s a…

The link. The paragraph: “If you have a starch and you break it into small sugars, technically you could call it beer,” says Zoran Gojkovic, director of brewing science, yeast and fermentation at Carlsberg. “Banana, it’s a starch. If I break that and make a beer, it will be banana beer. We did try, it did not taste good.”

Utahraptor the Dinosaur Comics character has existed for a substantial majority of the time Utahraptor the genus has been known to science

In my beginners guide to writing snail mail, I hand out a few tips for getting started with letter writing as a lovely way of conversing with friends and strangers. I’ve sent 21 letters since then, but the fun doesn’t stop there: receiving a reply is just as exciting. Many people dismiss letter writing as a thing of the past—an activity one engaged in when one still had the time to sit down and write. The more society sped up, the less letters are being written: just send a quick email instead.…

Dogs tree a Cat ! Coat Rack Folk Art. Hand cut and painted wood circa 1935 - 1940. Collection Dull Tool Dim Bulb / collection Jim Linderman 62 inches tall. #dogfolkart. #catfolkart. #Dogs. #cat. #folkartfurniture

Updated November 2026 Ina Garten knows her way around a roast turkey, which makes perfect sense since she’s the Queen of Roast Chicken! As Ina often says, roasting a turkey is just like roasting a chicken, only it takes a little longer. After cooking all seven of Ina’s roast turkey recipes, I can confidently say you can’t go wrong with any of them. Every single one earned a 5/5 rating, but each bring something unique to the Thanksgiving table. As a lifelong dark-meat fan, Ina taught me that…

After years of collecting my personal data and studying myself to find a better perspective, I have gathered my past experiences to add them to a pile of my secret yesterdays. I can see how the pile is so high that I swear I could pile them up to the sun.I find myself asking the constant and age-old questions about me and the black and white difference between good and evil.First, I have to say that no, I am not a bad man. However, I can attest that yes, I have done bad things.Perhaps one could…

A killer mix for grey skies, open roads, and getting for whatever the week’ll throw your way. Good morning! This week we’ve got some assorted thoughts on “seasonal” music, word of mouth in the current age, and a great mix of fresh tracks and fan favorites. Another week into November, and fall has finally shown up in my corner of flyover country. For those of us in the shorts-and-hoodie crowd, it’s truly our time to shine. Winter’s fury and the monochromatic landscape that comes with it’ll be…

It seems like a century ago, but when the web (or WWW for world wide web) first started in the 90s, web sites were fun. There were no standards and very few rules, which meant people were free to do what they wanted within the restrictions that HTML and web servers put on them. As … Continue reading Remembering when the (world wide) Web was fun (and how it still is)

love after all.

My paper “Coase’s fable” has just won the “best paper award” this past weekend at this year’s meeting of the Southeast Academy of Legal Studies in Business (SEALSB) in beautiful Atlanta, Georgia! (I will post my work to SSRN later today; in the meantime, shout outs to my colleagues for their contributions to my paper, including Humberto Barreto for pointing out Frank Knight’s influence on Ronald Coase, Steve Medema for bringing to my attention the “LSE cost tradition”, and Mary Morgan for…

In 2005, legendary film director Steven Spielberg and EA announced a partnership, in which the two would work together on three original video games. This was nothing new for Spielberg, who had partnered with LucasArts on 1995 adventure game The Dig before this, and with EA itself on the Medal of Honor series: Spielberg was responsible for Medal of Honor’s concept, story, and production, and was inspired to make it after directing Saving Private Ryan and watching his son play Goldeneye 007 on…

A small town police department in Ohio has had a rare machine gun in its collection for years and wants to pass it on to a museum but can’t. Sheffield Lake, Ohio (pop. 8,950) is about 35 miles west of Cleveland on the shores of Lake Erie. The town’s 12-officer police department has kept an old belt-fed machine gun in its basement since 1989. Found during a welfare check, the circa 1918 Colt Vickers WWI aircraft machine gun was impounded because it was not legally registered with the ATF, and…

While passing through the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania recently on an industry trip, I recalled a fierce battle fought some 110 years ago. During the late summer of 1916, the “blue” gentlemen volunteers of the Yale Battery, after spending weeks learning their trade while school was out, drilling by day and attending military science classes until 9:30 p.m. each night, put their 3-inch guns to work, defending their ground around the Tobyhanna Artillery Range (now Army Depot) against a “red”…

NORFOLK, Va. (May 16, 2026) – Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan (DDG 72) returns to Naval Station Norfolk, May 16, 2026, following a historic 11-month deployment to U.S. 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Fleets as part of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group. During their historic deployment across four fleets, the crew of Mahan conducted 19 replenishments-at-sea and executed 25 sea and anchor details. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist David Smalls, III) The…

We all know that November 11 is Veterans Day, right? Not in 1976, it wasn't. Thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, Veterans Day was changed to the fourth Monday in October, starting in 1971. It didn't go over very well; veterans groups especially objected to it, some states never did change the date, and in 1978 it was moved back to the original date. That's still in the future though, and so you'll not see any war movie marathons. What you will see, though, is NBC's memorable miniseries…

I've been using RSS readers for close to 20 years. It's the only way I consume any writing these days. If there is no RSS feed for a website, it might as well not exist. If there is, and the topic is interesting to me, there is a high chance I have it in my list. There are, after all, around 1300 websites I subscribe to. Since moving to Linux and Android and setting up my own home server, I have been using a self-hosted instance of FreshRSS for all my needs. But holy shit, that thing is ugly.…

Raspberry Pi 5 prices rose four times in ten months. A full Pi 5 homelab kit now costs as much as a 16GB N100 mini PC. Prices, power and Jellyfin compared.

Daily Drawing 1044