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…
FLOSS communities depend on donations. Even a small donation of five euros a month can help a FLOSS contributor. If you use free software, support it with a small donation. Show that you care. Visualize your donations, and tell everyone that you donate. Make it normal. It should be at least as normal as paying big tech companies for stealing your data. People will never stop writing code because writing code is really fun. You know, it will always be, at the very least, a hobby. And I will say,…
“I’m very fond of the take-home essay, as there’s something irreplaceable about the experience of articulating a theory over the course of multiple weeks—doing background research, letting the ideas marinate in one’s subconsciousness, and chiseling away at the draft until every word is perfectly placed.” That’s Tom Kaspers (University of Chicago), expressing a feeling many professors have about teaching in the early days of the AI era. Yet unlike many who have either ignored their students’ AI…
Imagine finding an antique jewelry set you love and discovering that it was worn in
This fierce predator with the luxurious coat is Smilodon fatalis — a compact but robust killer that weighed in around 160 to 280 kg and was 1.5 - 2.2 metres long.Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids. It is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber-toothed cat. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely
It takes humans years before they fully comprehend their separateness from their caretakers. At least that's the widely accepted psychological theory. A newborn doesn't know that they are not their mother and vice versa. This is understandable, of course. After all, it wasn't long ago that they were growing inside of this other person where they were literally one, mind, body, and perhaps even soul. One of their first acts, upon emerging into this bright, noisy world, is to seek the intimate…
Argh. There are a ton of scams going around in the literary world right now (and I know because I get at least 10 a week myself) but one of the latest scams is coming from someone pretending to be me. INFURIATING. Basically, fellow writers are getting an email from me saying that I wantContinue reading "If you got an email from me asking you for money, no you didn’t."
Present-day models tend to produce code that is too defensive, too complex, too local in its reasoning. They avoid strong invariants. They add fallbacks instead of making bad states impossible. They duplicate code, invent bad abstractions, and paper over unclear design with more machinery. Worse though: I so far see very little progress of this improving. If anything, on that front it feels to me that we might even be making steps in the wrong direction. At least for my taste, present-day…
Raw was done with a wide hake brush on 12×18 sulfite paper. I used a light grey muddy wash and pushed the color to blue in the computer. , I love how the rough ruling pen meets the sharp flat brush on Libra. , Jumping with Roman Capitals and popups , I often have trouble with the letter “S”. But the rest of Squeeze came out ok. , This Dragonfly was done on the big sheets (like “Raw” above). They’re a pain to scan! , Cya next time! , PS—The Writing Life, Annie Dillard, 1989 I listened to The…
An AI-generated Michael Caine will narrate a 13-hour audiobook version of The Odyssey, Variety reports. The project is the work of leading AI speech start-up ElevenLabs. I’m disappointed that Caine, who knows a thing or two about being a struggling working class actor trying to make a name for himself, would put his name to something that stands to limit opportunities for new talent further down the ladder. → Variety
Ellsworth Kelly, Seaweed, 1949, oil on canvas, 72.4 x 99.7 cm, : @albemuth at the Phila. Museum I forget what a delight it is to read Ellsworth Kelly’s catalogue raisonné, especially the first volume, which covers Kelly’s years in Paris. As Yve-Alain Bois, who’s writing the CR, has noted frequently, Kelly was exploring and discovering and inventing so many things that would become the focus of his decades-long career. Between this generative importance and Kelly’s own exhaustive archiving, Bois…
Everybody loves Terry Long. Women want him. Men want to be him. Even after their divorce, his ex-wife remained obsessed with him. He had it all. The perfect man. Everyone’s fantasy made flesh. That is, at least what writer Marv Wolfman would have had you believe. Marv Wolfman, probably. This is because, most people – myself included – assert that Terry Long was a self-insert character for Marv, someone who was a few years younger, arguably better-looking, and a total babe magnet who had pulled…
