Evolutionary progress at times rewards less intelligence in a species. “High intelligence is just one evolutionary strategy,” says Georg Striedter, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine and author of Principles of Brain Evolution. “Some species do well in evolutionary terms precisely because they invest in other features, not intelligence.” The Virtue of Being Simple, by Brandon Keim. It is survival of the fittest, not the smartest.

last night on the way to lisa's to hand out candy, i stepped on a huge crack in a broken curb and it jammed my leg up. if i haven't been lifting weights and walking regularly, i feel like that misstep would have really fucked me up. fortunately after a few miles walking on the treadmill, my hip seems less mad at me. anyway, you asked! welcome to the retro... halloween is such a fun holiday. the weather was so nice, the kids were so funny and picked such cool costumes, and the community really…

The Checkout Counter #47 i feel like i spent half of october at the movies! i had a good time volunteering at the local film festival and it reaffirmed to me that, yes, watching movies on big screens with other people is very fun. it was also very fun to create eight new webpages for this year's weird web october and see the cool pages everyone else was making.goodbye, october! thanks for reading :) Film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, 20261Comedy, horror, romance. When a young filmmaker…

My other half and I are trying to do various crafts that we would otherwise not experience. Last December we made stained-glass sun-catchers, and today we went down to the Southampton Art Gallery and took part in a ‘wet felting’ class. What is ‘wet felting’? Well, you could probably read a guide, which explains it better than I can, or if you want a 5-second explainer: You layer wool into patterns, you apply soap, and squash it flat, which sticks it all together. I’m pretty happy with my…

Vines grow on the McKinney Cotton Mill building in McKinney, Texas. The post The Old Cotton Mill appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

September 2026 in photos

I had a very interesting Halloween. That has seemed to be a theme for me. Huh. I am watching a Star Trek movie. I like sci fi stuff. I am cooking some chicken thighs. I d

In October I rode the Green Mountain Gravel Growler route in Vermont with a few close friends. It’s a route curated by bikepacking.com that consists of back roads, dirt roads, and single track trails. It wasn’t as blissfully car-free as the C&O Canal or the loop around Lake Konstanz that I rode earlier this year, but in exchange for sharing the road occasionally, we got loads of variety and beautiful hills to climb up and coast down.As the name implies, the route is structured around breweries.…

“I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.” — [Friedrich Nietzsche](> “I am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because I can no longer believe in you.” Source: Beyond Good and Evil - Project Gutenberg Source: www.gutenberg.org

Tags: #critiques #essays #artReal costumes for Halloween are better. I should clarify that by real I mean home-made or crafted costumes, made by yourself or with a group of amateur friends. Definitely not lame store-bought things that have some image printed on cheap foam fabric. That’s lower than fast fashion. Custom, work-for-hire built costumes, there I have to say “it depends”. It depends on the originality, the cleverness, and the participation of the wearer in the vision. It’s the same…

“The century that trusted in the future” started to dissolve in 1977, says Franco “Bifo” Berardi.1 Since then society has fragmented to the point that it has become un-recomposable. Recomposition means people finding a common ground for understanding and acting together for a common goal. “Human beings perform productive actions, but they are not conscious actors of what they are doing, and seem unable to join their feelings and thought in a common space of consciousness.”2 Since we are unable…

I planned to some side-project programming to get rid of my blues after the work week, but that didn’t happen. Instead I went for a walk, had Blut- und Leberwurst, went for a Chäsbängel, slept a lot and somehow still not enough. And now the week is over. Reply by email

This is what 25 lbs of candle scent comes in. 😬 Taking our candle making up a couple levels from the 16 oz bottles.

Saw this beautiful Fiat Nuova 500 in my neighborhood, 1957 perhaps. It's nice to see these old cars lovingly restored, and on the street not in a museum. 近所でこの美しいフィアット・ヌオーヴァ500を見かけた。たぶん1957年式。こうした古い車が愛情を込めて修復され、博物館ではなく街中で走っているのを見るとほっこりする。

Your browser does not support audio playback. Like I said, I like to sing random songs to my baby girl. This morning, I freestyled a song called 'Jongdal-baby' (종달베이비). In Korea, when babies wake up too early, we call it 종달기상. 종달 (jong-dal) means cuckoo, so we're basically saying the baby is waking up too early like a cuckoo bird. I've been calling my baby a jongdal-baby since she's been waking up around 5 AM for the past three days. The audio was recorded at 5:40 AM, and of course, there was…

Bertha Wegmann, Despair. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Not much of a post today, I fear. I’ve somehow fallen into that deadly pit otherwise known as comparison of self to others. On a weekend when one friend is celebrating a marriage and an old frenemy is on TV promoting her book and looking great doing it, instead of feeling unmarred happiness for them both and going about my day, it’s all I can do to drag my envious self to the screen or page. None of the cheer is helping me get…

Saturday, we went to get our flu shotsIt was super fastAfterwards, I wanted to go grocery shopping but we were too early, so we grabbed a snack at KomedaTheir pizza toast has egg salad in the middle, different but tastyI did my grocery shopping and then we headed out to ShibuyaThe Tokyu Hands (or Hands) is closing its shop that had been in business for 48 years! Chances are if you’ve shopped

by Cláudio Alves Sometimes, the story behind a project’s making can be more interesting and engaging than the finished product. Such is the case of Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer’s latest and the follow-up to her critically acclaimed Corsage. Its development started during the production of that 2022 Sissi pseudo-biopic, when the Austrian director began contacting police, psychologists, and other experts who could help her develop a script inspired by the pedophile ring scandal that had been…

Check out As in guillotine... for more. In which I briefly comment on the books I read each month, so a few years from now when I’m trying to remember one of them, I’ll be able to find it here. Since I’m a media omnivore, it also includes games, movies, and any other media of note that I engaged with. Do we have similar tastes, or will you be questioning how we ever got connected? Let’s find out! Books The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does – 5th Edition by John H. Armstrong, et al Impressively…

You can check your own box. Just not yet. A few days ago, I wrote Life Imitates Art: The $6.3 Billion Binance Hack and ended it with “I wonder what is going to happen next week.” It’s Monday morning in New Zealand, and a bunch has already happened. Binance said it would reopen withdrawals in phases on Sunday, and it did. Bitcoin went first, between 06:00 and 09:00 UTC, followed by 14 other networks, including Ethereum, Solana, and the big stablecoins. CZ’s announcement was four words: “BTC…

I'm regularly reminded of what a powerful influence music can be to human beings. I didn't go to church today. I'm still not feeling well after dealing with a mysterious illness this past week and I didn't want to risk being out in public or feeling suddenly worse in the middle of church. So I decided to watch “Music and the Spoken Word,” the weekly broadcast of The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. They had The Orchestra at Temple Square accompanying them today and, as always, the music,…

How many times are you going to change the title? How many domains do you own at this point? I don’t know and who cares? They’re cheap. I fiddle with shit until it feels right. I wish I felt right. Yes, I’m still bitching about the flu. I haven’t had a fever for two days now, but I still feel like microwaved garbage. The fatigue is profound. I can drink a cup of coffee, close my eyes, and almost immediately drift off. It’s a strange feeling. My sinuses are so fucked, it feels like I’m…

tag(s): #linux #programming #emacs Recently this article (which I haven't read 👀) was posted to both reddit (still trying to quit) and Slashdot (one of the sites that would replace reddit, at least for tech news) about the 50th anniversary of Emacs. Seeing that reminded me to check my notes (technically, emails) and September 2026 was my 10th anniversary as an Emacs user. Back in 2016, I wouldn't have imagined I was going to publish open source code with a GPL license (which I did in my last…

23:34 - Goddammit, I just got charged for a Substack subscription I forgot about and don't even read anymore. CHF 48 is a lot. Good for the writer, I guess. I just canceled but it won't apply until next year.

November! The kids spent the week away with their grandparents and their 3 year old Mandarin speaking cousin. They returned with key phrases in Mandarin that any 6 year-old should know - dinosaur, elephant, bottom, Granny [father’s mother], Grandad [father’s father]. On Wednesday I went out for cocktails with Rowan in Soho. It was very good to catch up, but the venue I picked was too loud… or… am I old? Lachie and I took two days off and walked the 50km from Eastbourne to Brighton over the…

I have decided to journal my single life journey. It is a confusing fucking thing and honestly the goal is not to help anyone other than myself. If anyone happens to be going through the same thing, well then I am so sorry. I have other posts about what happened, will not explain again because I don't want to. But this is just a little first dump before I go do my usual routine of watching Brooklyn 99 until I fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night from my cat jumping on me. I…

From hospitality exchange to venture capital, from grassroots community to corporate platform. The story of #Couchsurfing is a warning about what happens when we confuse building a network with building a community. The story of Couchsurfing is more interesting than a failed social network, it is a history of what happened to native #openweb paths when grassroots roots are overtaken by #NGO turns, startup culture and eventually the fantasies of the #dotcons. There are lessons here for anyone…

müde Es war eine beschäftigte und tolle Halloweenwoche. Ich habe diese Woche viele Beiträge geschrieben: MONDAY CLEANING: DINING TABLE, WINDOW SILL (SPYDER'S ALTAR) QUEER*SPACE HALLOWEEN AFTER-SCHOOL HALLOWEEN PARTY CELEBRATING SPYDER'S 6TH DEATHDAY HALLOWEEN 2026: A HAUNTED HOUSEWARMING Ich habe drei Kostüme getragen und bin auf drei Partys gegangen. Halloween 2026 war ein Erfolg. Neue HoffnungEs ist ein neuer Monat und zum Glück habe ich neue Motivation, um einen Job zu finden. Ich werde…

I made an advice handout* for my young players, who are all interested in becoming DMs. Many players get their start with the most recent edition of D&D, and I think much great playing advice is aimed at adults familiar with systems other than D&D, so this is an attempt to bridge that gap in my second and last entry to the Player Advice Blogwagon. If you want a pretty two-page version to hand out to new DMs or GMs, see my itch page ($1). If you do not have a credit card or can't afford it,…