Is it possible to have too many dice? That's a question I recently asked myself after attending Gamehole Con and CleriCon this month. When I was younger, my answer would certainly have been no, in large part because, in the '80s, there weren't that many dice to buy, at least where I grew up. For the longest time, the only dice I ever owned were the ones that came in RPG boxed sets. They were almost universally terrible – either the infamous "low impact" dice associated with the Holmes D&D Basic…

I’m starting a company. It’s called cyberwitchery, and it’s a small product and consulting studio. For now, it’s just two people: Erik Svedäng and me. If…

In my latest newsletter, I examine consent and authenticity on an adult movie set. Read it here and subscribe.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I Newsletter I Email

ABC News: Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has suffered the largest hack in the sector’s history, with attackers attempting to steal $US6.3 billion ($8.9 billion) in digital funds this morning. Remember when we were told crypto-“currency” would solve fraud? It’s an immutable ledger, folks! By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-10-31.

It’s been 3 years but we are giving up those heavy futons that we got from MIL'sPart of the reason is that "someone" says it is "too heavy" to take out and put back into the closet every dayAnd another reason is that "someone" says his back hurts from sleeping on itSo instead we got these foldable mattresses which are super lightBUT they are a little bigger/wider, so you need to maneuver it as

Going through my Bookwyrm account and adding to my list the books that are available in my city's library system was strangely therapeutic/calming. At first, I was disappointed with a lack of choices in English. But: 1) some of the books I want to read are in French so there's that and 2) other books I wanted to read are translations, so reading them in French is really no different than reading them in English at that point. I mean, if I can't read the original, all bets are off, right?

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. Emma Smith-Stevens follows up on one of my favorite novels of the century, The Australian, with the surprising and powerful story collection, Greyhounds. Booklist wrote of the book: “In one…

We finished our current arc last session, so for our 2nd session in the month (Thursday) we had a fun in-between one-shot kind of episode. My sister and BIL hosted, and made us some pot roast and mashed potatoes (and it was slightly cool). I brought some halloween themed cookies. Our characters got stuck in a time loop! We were stuck in our morning routines as the time reset every time someone opened an exterior door/window. It was really fun seeing how our characters figured out that they were…

A journey through Unicode's whitespace characters and perfect hashing.

By default, Zsh globs are case-sensitive, so *.jpg matches beach.jpg but not CAT.JPG or dog.Jpg: $ ls photos/*.jpg photos/beach.jpg This is true even on macOS, where the filesystem is case-insensitive by default. Zsh shares this behaviour with Bash, but provides per-glob and global controls to make your globs case-insensitive and match all the files you probably meant. Per-glob with (#i) To make a single glob case-insensitive, use the (#i) glob flag, which makes the rest of the pattern…

On Monday, my wife and I were on a little vacation in Oklahoma City (before my surgery). That day, Apple announced the iPad mini 8. And later that same day, while visiting Penn Square Mall, we happened upon an Apple Store where the new iPhone Duo was on display. So I checked it out firsthand. It’s interesting comparing the Duo and the iPad mini. A tablet… A phone… The new iPad mini 8 and iPhone Duo have some things in common. Their tablet displays are around 8” across. Their interfaces are iOS…

The evening sun lights McKinney, Texas’ Erwin Park. The post Parkland Evening appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

Hi everyone. It’s been weeks since I last wrote a post. I’ve been struggling intensely again, but as of today it looks like the situation won’t spiral entirely out of control. You see, for months now I’ve been suspecting that my institution’s higher-ups, such as the behavior specialist, were making use of the fact that I didn’t know my rights. I more or less know my rights now and quite aggressively fought for them over the past few weeks. At the same time, I knew that, being quite a…

Sometimes we find our simple path has run into confusion, into complexity; we try to explain what is inexplicable, to acquire knowledge of the unknowable, and we fall into borrowed patterns, into the borrowed clothing of belief. Sometimes it takes the shock of an encountered other to break the clouded glass with its ancient engravings, its beautiful pictures of the unseen. A simple disagreement over a quotation I had read her from a book I was reading, and the whole frail fabric that I had…

First Grittibänz of the season. From this afternoon's errand run.

For any US members of the Nerd Tribe who are a bit undecided on the relative benefits and harms of voting in the upcoming elections, let’s take another look at whether partisan control of the 3 branches of the US government makes any difference to economic and social outcomes. Summary: Republican presidents are bad & Democratic presidents are good for the deficit as a fraction of GDP. The rest mostly doesn’t survive LASSO regularization, leave-one-out crossvalidation, and a low error rate on…

The ocean along the California coast is now record warm, and literally reaching new heights It has been a wild week along the California coast, and not in a good way. Ocean temperatures have now reached record highs along the entire California coast (and on both sides of the Baja California peninsula, for that matter) […] The post As unusual low-latitude storm approaches SoCal and threatens serious Four Corners flood risk once again, record-warm and record-high ocean conditions persist along CA…

I’ll be speaking at Yorkshire DevOps’ fourth anniversary event on Thursday, 5th November 2026Q, hosted by Lloyds Banking Group at their Wellington Place office in Leeds. The talk is based on my article, The Comforting Lie Of SHA Pinning.

This month saw 49,764 votes cast in 26 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 15 council seats changed hands. For comparison with September's results, see here. Party Number of Candidates Total Vote % +/- Sep +/- Oct 25 Avge/ Contest +/- Seats Conservative 26 11,789 23.7% +5.4 +7.9 453 +2 Labour 23 11,495 23.1% +0.0 +10.6 500 +2 Lib Dem 19 5,225 10.5% -1.8 -14.4 275 0 Reform 26 10,225 20.5% +3.8 -9.4 393 -3 Green 17 4,107 8.3% -11.3 +0.3 242 0…

Unpopular ideas about social norms: Self-explanatory title. I agree with pretty much all of them except 11, 12 (there’s something about it being a gender’s safe space where they can do their own thing), 13, 18 (prestige gives people goals to strive for, even if it may be misguided), 19 (gifts should just be cash with a recommendation on what to spend it on).Superhuman charisma is coming, and will be tremendously fun and interesting and cause lots of problems: People often underestimate how…

While Halloween episodes were fairly common on television sitcoms of the Fifties and Sixties, they were rare in comparison on dramas. An exception to this rule was the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Dodging Domino." It aired on November 1, 1962, and Halloween was front and centre in the episode."The Case of the Dodging Domino" centres on college professor Damion White (David Hedison), who has taken credit for a melody that he didn't write, "Pearls and Jade." The actual writer of the tune…

In the previous post we looked at a simple multithreaded task executor that behaves roughly like its Python standard library counterpart. The biggest missing feature was being able to return values from run tasks via future objects. In a fully dynamic language like Python this is fairly straightforward, whereas in a language with static typing, such as C++, things are trickier.The simplest solution is merely to make your Executor class a template, parameterized by the function you want to run.…

I’ve been gradually connecting more devices to Home Assistant, and my garage door was next on the list. It’s a roller shutter door controlled by a Somfy Rollixo RTS. The existing radio remotes work perfectly well, but I wanted to operate it from Home Assistant without replacing the controller or adding another proprietary hub. After discussing the options with ChatGPT, I settled on a SONOFF MINI-ZBD. It’s a small Zigbee relay with volt-free (dry) contacts, which makes it suitable for connecting…

A Right Royal Round: Tamworth’s Pubs, Pints & Hidden HistoryA Day Exploring Tamworth I had a brilliant evening exploring the pubs of Tamworth. I started at The King’s Ditch before calling into the Sir Robert Peel, the award-winning Tamworth Tap, Market Vaults and Hop House, then finishing with Old Bank House and the wonderful Moat House. There was a lovely mix of historic buildings, traditional pubs and modern beer choices, with some fantastic welcomes from the people I met along the way. I…

I believe that we are living in a time of great spiritual corruption, and that most people have become so accustomed to it that they no longer recognize it for what it is. There are things happening openly in the world which ought to bring a person to shame, yet they are celebrated, defended, and encouraged by people who seem to have no concern whatsoever for the condition of their souls. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this, and the more I observe the way people live, the more…

Among the Halloween candies this year are Sour Patch Kids Glow Ups Ghosts "with edible confetti that glows under blacklight". I only found them in large bags rather than the individually-packaged trick-or-treat size, which is just as well, since they might disappoint kids who don't have blacklights handy. Beloved by nightclubs and fans of cosmic bowling, blacklights emit ultraviolet (UV) light. Although UV light isn't visible, when its high-energy photons hit things, some of those things absorb…

In which I shoot a variety of lasers at Jolly Rancher candies and see if any of them light up.

Hot take on the Apple Music — iTunes — icon in iOS 27.2. It doesn’t bother me. Do I like other designs? Yep. Sure do. Do I hate this one? Nope. I don’t. This is going to sound really weird coming from me but it doesn’t look weird, or bad, to me because musical notes are usually displayed on paper. White paper. I know, I know, it’s digital. Also, look at that beautiful Daft Music and MusicBox icon. 😍 Yeah, they‘re amazing!

Last year for Halloween I dressed up as the brainrot character Tung Tung Tung Sahur. It was an interesting way to gauge how much time everybody spent online. Half of my friends didn’t understand the reference, although the costume was a massive hit with trick-or-treating middle schoolers.I’m convinced I was ahead of my time. This year, Spirit Halloween also started selling brainrot-themed costumes, and people are racking up tens of millions of views for dressing up as AI slop characters. None…

Sound familiar?An incumbent attempting to establish a false reality through accusations and loud repetition. These people don't get embarrassed.