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…
Lady C: The Long Sensational Life of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Guy Cuthbertson published 2026 Oh what perfect joy this was. I read DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was a teenager, because of course we all did – banned for years, controversial and full of sexy bits. I was a keen reader of Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970s literary feminism at its finest) and she had a long section on Lawrence, and particularly on Lady C. I read it through her eyes as a male-dominated fantasy, and…
# The Big Idea Being wrong is unavoidable. The real damage comes from allowing a bad assumption to shape everything you build on top of it. ## The flattering version A few years ago, we sold smpl, the coworking software company I had built with two close friends. An acquisition gives you a tidy ending. It becomes easy to look back at the decisions you made and imagine that they must have been good ones because, eventually, things worked out. I know better. When I think about smpl now, I see…
Cory Doctorow: “Age verification” means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry’s fondest dream, a world where it’s literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!
USA soccer fans show their allegiance prior to the u.s. win over australia in seattle on june 19. The first clue to my cluelessness about the current popularity of professional international soccer among Americans was the grandkid wearing a Lionel Messi shirt. He’s 9.That popularity is abundantly obvious right now as media coverage of the World Cup is everywhere, maybe bumping your favorite sport and team to a smaller headline. Fox Sports is showing all 104 matches live on one of its TV…
tag(s): #books #pic #link-post Remember when I mentioned I was behind on my RSS feeds? Well, almost a month ago, Nathan posted about his (mis)adventures getting libraries cards in different counties. The post unlocked some memories... The perilous journey to my Astérix comics I was about 6? maybe 7? I am texting my mom as I write this. Maybe she gets back to me before I finish the post :) Anyway, we lived outside the City of Buenos Aires, on the western suburbs. Which were not (and, are not?)…
Internet, meet my cat!
Today I have been trying to set up webmentions on my website. Brennan Kenneth Brown has a great article that goes through his process for setting up webmentions: How Webmentions Work on brennan.day. I learned that I need to set up microformats which I believe I have done correctly. It seems to be coming back correctly using this tool: PHP Microformats Parser The downside is I actually need some likes, reposts, replies, mentions and comments to test everything out. Let's see if the fediverse can…
2026-06-23Back at the car show...Hello! First, a technical note: I've blocked AI bots from scraping this website. The arms race will continue, but hopefully I can be sure that humans are the only ones reading this.For the past week, I've been on an unofficial hiatus as I pry myself away from the photography world (a bit) and get some work on spring cleaning.Today's photo is a simple one. It's the front of a car. I checked it against some references online and it seems to be a Chrysler Newport…
Review yesterday, giveaway today! I enjoyed the Uni Kuru Toga Metal in Orange, but it won’t be my primary Kuru Toga, so let’s give it away! This is my review model Uni Kuru Toga in Orange, with an 0.5 mm mechanism. If you are interested, read the rules below and enter away! Uni Kuru Toga Metal Mechanical Pencil Giveaway
I didn't do anything special for solstice this year. It's fairly hot in south west England - 24° C - and it'll only get hotter this week with highs of 34°. I had a quiet day in, cooking and cleaning. I've been struggling with feeling stuck in a rut lately, which led me to experiment with a manifesto against ruminating, inspired by (but unrelated to because it is not about games) seeing entries [(1)] to manifesto jam 2026. As a nod to the solstice I decided to watch some folk horror, A Warning…
