Danmei Review: Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu Authors sometimes break the worlds they’ve painstakingly created. It’s often accidental. They’re too close to the story to notice the mistakes or their grand ideas cause contradictions and inconsistencies in the plot. As an author it’s possible to craft a world in which 2 + 2 = 5. You make and have complete control of the rules so they can be whatever you like. The only catch is that the rules must remain consistent. If they’re any exceptions to a…

I am continuing to experiment with writing some fiction on this blog. Here is a story I wrote today.Where were words when you needed them the most? Lena had been searching for the answer to that question for her whole life.For Lena, telling a story to light coming from a million miles away felt somehow easier, more comforting, than looking someone in the eye. A woman of few words since childhood, when “please” and “thank you” comprised most of what she said, the light of the stars opened Lena's…

One of the few things I hope the Trump Administration succeeds in accomplishing is in grave danger of not happening -- thanks to the incompetence of said Administration.According to ClimateWire, contradictory briefs on energy-related cases might show up at the Supreme Court like two left feet on a dance floor:Right-wing advocates including Steve Milloy and Myron Ebell, both of whom served on President Donald Trump's first-term transition team, said in interviews Tuesday that they were…

Last week I printed a small booklet, folded it, stapled it, and mailed copies to friends and family. I used my sweet Dungeons & Dragons stamps! Eight pages, in color. It’s the second volume of our Cruft Manor zine, and this time the subject is personal security. Last Christmas, Michele and I made a zine to send out to family and friends. We loved doing it. I wanted to make another zine to scratch that itch. As a topic, I decided on personal security because I kept having the same conversations…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Keely Jobe’s novel The Endling is a surreal, unsettling, and engaging debut. Foreword Reviews wrote of the book: “An electric and unnerving novel, The Endling follows a radical feminist…

Bob Dylan - Yaamava’ Theater, Highland, California, June 18, 2026I woke up last Friday morning feeling like the whole thing had been a dream. Had I really flown over the Rockies from Denver to LAX? Had I really battled hellacious Los Angeles traffic to get out to my friend Ryan’s place in Eagle Rock? Had we then battled even more hellacious Los Angeles traffic on the way out to Highland, CA? Had we wandered through the Yaamava’ Casino, feeling alone and forsaken amidst the nightmarish…

i really vibed with his music. have not watched any of his interviews before a couple of days ago, but now that i have, i feel even sadder. i don't like many people or many musicians, and it's sad that he's gone. his music was a quiet presence in my life for many years, his art has supported me throughout some hard times. i don't really have much else to say, other than that. he seemed to value freedom, honesty, and the connection between people. i treasure that as well. stupid fucking…

Modern-day fly anglers are incredibly lucky to be living through a time of intense specialization, particularly in the warmwater space. From the sometimes mind-boggling lineup of species- and technique-specific fly lines and rods, to the immediate availability of high-quality predator flies from highly-skilled fly tyers with ecommerce businesses, it’s never been easier to approach niche fly fishing targets with a high degree of preparedness.

The promised continuation As mentioned yesterday, for some reason I can only put one slider per post and maybe that's for the best because I have to stretch these out rather than just dumping them all into a giant mess post. Saturday had a good daymoon, but Sunday? Sunday had a great daymoon. Enjoy: /* image for the RIGHT of the slider*/ /* image for the LEFT of the slider */ Full res: Moon | Tree msds-camera-focus-adventures photography

From the 23rd June 2025 to 23rd June 2026. I’ve been spending less time in England during the summers as of late, so I went back to my roots and spent more time in and around London, with the occasional camping trip. I love England in the summer and would rather spend time escaping it during the winters!

I’ve been getting emails from journalists asking me to comment on the new White House executive order on quantum computing. Alas, I don’t have time for a long response or interviews since I’m at a beautiful science camp in the California mountains, and heading soon to STOC’2026 in Salt Lake City. But I gave anyone who asked me the following statement, which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog as well. “I hope that at least some of the new funds made available from this…

Lately I've been feeling like some part of me is trapped in ice, or stuck at the bottom of a lake. Unreachable, like crossing into the part of my hometown where there's never any phone service. It makes me feel like I don't have all of myself at my disposal right now. (Do we ever?) It's a late night at home, real home, though for me this isn't really late. I'm listening to classical music, something I haven't done in a while. Stepping into my bedroom always makes me a little strange, like all…

I love this video on shillelagh making by Eoin Reardon. Also, from another of his videos, I learned the wonderfully symmetrical rule about renewing the finish on a handle (and maybe a walking stick?): re-oil once a day for a week; once a week for a month; once a month for a year; then twice yearly.

My goblin post was fun, and it gave me a hankering to do something similar with halflings. Why halflings? Well, mostly because I like that in AD&D, every halfling has 1d4 dogs:I have long been fascinated with halflings' penchant for having lots of dogs. In AD&D, a halfling lair has 30-300 adult combatants, the same number of adult noncombatants, and 60% as many noncombatant children. Depending on how you interpret the above, a halfling village will have from 30 to 3,120 dogs (average either…

This week my colleague Sean Gonsalves and I wrote a feature for The Verge about how billionaires have hijacked billions of taxpayer dollars intended for better internet access, and instead shoveled that money into the pockets of openly technofascist billionaires in exchange for doing nothing differently. It's a real hoot; we explore how the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, included in the 2021 infrastructure bill, was a generational opportunity to improve…

We use Starlink as our primary internet service, though with cellular as a backup. We used to use an Actuated gen 2 dish, but earlier this year bought a new Standard gen 4 dish, with the intention to mount on the roof of our motorhome, so we can have Starlink internet service while driving down the road, plus don’t have the hassle of setting up the dish each time we stop. To mount the Starlink dish to the roof, I bought a magnetic mount, so we’d be able to somewhat easily remove it if needed:…

If you've ever thought "I wonder what playing a fantasy TTRPG with the guy known for making graphic novels about 90s internet teens would be like," well, now you can find out!I'm running a tabletop RPG campaign on StartPlaying.games, and this link gets you $10 credit.StartPlaying is a service where you can find professional GMs and play TTRPGs online. I've used it as a player and love it. After several years of friends telling me "you could totally do this professionally," I decided to sidestep…

One of the things I really wanted when I began putting together Jackson was it to feel real. I wanted places these characters could hang out and locations that felt like something from the Midwest in the mid 1980s. So while I love my haunted houses, hidden underground tunnels, and everything else the "bad land" has to offer, there are far more "normal" places to visit that will come into play. Colleges In addition to two High Schools (Jackson Public High and Saint Michael's Catholic), Jackson…

Franz Schneider Brakel GmbH + Co KG: Forty years after the Brakel door handle workshop, FSB is bringing back an unmistakable design by Dieter Rams. […] Revised and future-oriented, the entire lever handle is now manufactured locally in Brakel from aluminum. The gray tone of the rgs reappears in the new Aluminum Pure finish. These minimal interventions were carried out in close coordination with Dieter Rams — and the standards he set for his design back in 1986 continue to meet today’s…

It’s been going around the gaming bigsites (PC Gamer, Time Extension, Kotaku, Eurogamer and others) that due to a quirk of US copyright law Richard Garriott, who begin the Ultima series in June 1981, may finally be getting back the rights to his now-ancient series from the corporate behemoth, Electronic Arts, that has long owned them. The details of the story are that this only involves the copyrights, not the trademarks. But trademarks are different from copyrights, they must be continuously…

Spider plants are easy houseplants, but can be sensitive to fluoride in tap water. 11 Spider Plant

I have been playing the New York Times Crossplay game against the computer in hard mode and most of the times I win. Here’s what I’ve discovered: These have been my observations. Give that, to beat the computer, I will I say most of the time I will beat the computer in hard mode. Crossplay … Continue reading How to win the New York Times Crossplay game against the computer in hard mode (June 2026)

As part of a recent language programme, I was asked to give a short speech in Japanese. I'm finding it quite challenging to learn, so this was a golden opportunity to talk about something else it is teaching me. Setup: 皆さん、最近、面白いことがわかりました。 私の三つの趣味は、同じ趣味です。Folks uh, recently I realised something interesting: My three hobbies are the same hobby. Triple: その三つは、エレクトロニックな音楽と、走ることと、日本語の勉強です。The three are: electronic music, running, and studying Japanese. Beat 1:…

A federal district court judge just rejected a Justice Department order for Maryland to turn over its voter rolls, which is another excellent win for democracy. It’s unclear how the Justice Department planned to use the voting histories and personal data of millions of Marylanders. But the agency’s attorneys have stated in other court proceedings that it planned to share the lists with the Department of Homeland Security to aid immigration enforcement.

I saw this BRM Aero Bistell B23 on Flightradar24 scheduled to arrive at EKSN yesterday, but I couldn't make it to the airport. Luckily, it was still there this morning, so I had a chance to photograph it and chat with the owners. They were a lovely retired couple from Germany, making their way to Norway to do some aerial photography.

This has come up a few times on the blog already: Carroll/Langer: Credulous, scientist-as-hero reporting from a podcaster who should know better 7 steps to junk science that can achieve worldly success A suggestion for Freakonomics and Sean Carroll: Interview Nick Brown Two researchers in the Harvard psychology department published a paper reporting that they could make people heal faster by telling them that more time had passed. Nick Brown and I looked at this paper carefully and didn’t think…

Memphis Mayor Paul Young: Had a productive meeting with SpaceXAI President Michael Nicolls on Monday. In the meeting they committed to resuming construction on the recycled wastewater treatment facility no later than Q1 2027. This facility will offset water usage from both SpaceXAI and TVA. Our engagement that led to this commitment will continue until the facility is complete. Samuel Hardiman, for The Daily Memphian: The facility was expected to treat wastewater from the City of Memphis’…

The Flatpak website has been running on Middleman for years and time hasn't been kind. Touching the project resulted in seeing 42 vulnerability warnings. The gem itself hasn't seen an update in ages, and the dependency list is rather large. Very recently, which happens to be 4 years ago, we've done a rebrand to reflect the fact that Flatpak has hit it big. There were a few hints of the old baggage, but overall it didn't feel like a website from 2007. But it was just lipstick. For the layout, I…

The kind that leaves you exhausted and welcomes a satisfied sleep.Currently Listening: Feems “Good Luck”Reply via email

From Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky (my daughter) on 6/20, completely out of the blue: Re: Assessment Thursday 10:30: The assessment visit is at the Avant. All their departments meet you to make sure you’re a fit. I think it takes about an hour. Somebody will take you. The summons. I am Josef K, summoned to appear before the Agency, unnamed and unidentified judges who will oversee my case. The Agency requires that I supply them with a packet of evidence, print-outs of responses to a long series…