Let’s stop entirely, or at least greatly greatly reduce, the common usage of the phrases “full stop,” and “frankly …”. These phrases have lost nearly all meaning and force after years of misuse and abuse and coercive cooptation. How many of these phrases there are; wielded as a cudgel to get me to “Now Hear This! I am important and what I say is IMPORTANT.” I can’t stand the grating of these phrases upon my soul any longer — so I had to banish them.

A delivery from the Beth Chatto nursery, always known for propagating quality plants in conjunction with the renowned garden she developed.

In my post about Scraper Junkyard results, I hypothesized a single, centrally-controlled web crawler that made requests from Rapid Seedbox Limited IP address ranges. After a closer look at the Apache combined format log files, I can confirm that at least one web crawler works out of Rapid Seedbox IP address space.

onthecareandfeedingofcatgirls: allthingslinguistic: Linguistics takes on the “Is this a pigeon” meme. all these linguist memes and not *one* made this pun?

In this week's big news (though it's only Wednesday), OpenAI announced a proof that the exponential-time hypothesis is false, with a Lean proof. Later Anthropic released their own paper. Ryan O'Donnell and Shiva Kintali posted follow-up proofs, smartly focusing on simplicity rather than getting the best bounds. OpenAI will partner with three of my favorite complexity theorists, Russell Impagliazzo, Mohan Paturi and Ryan Williams to verify and study the proof. I have not verified the proof…

Nothing highlights the slime mould that is Google as the Gemini names. First of all, why Gemini? Why is that the right name for a model? As opposed to a Google Intelligence - aGI, get it? Now let’s assume that it was named after the constellation Gemini, given all the imagery surrounding the release, why? I have a guess as it’s the brainchild of Google Brain + DeepMind - aka Google DeepMind - the twins of intelligence inside Google. But that is a deep cut and useless to help people. But sure,…

The Opening Argument of The Atlantic’s November issue is about the quickly growing resistance against data center construction. More than 500 jurisdictions have passed moratoriums or bans. This grassroots movement rose so fast and spread so widely that politicians in both parties, including Iowa’s candidates for governor and senator, are struggling to catch up with their constituents. The meteoric emergence of the data-center rebellion is a response to the speed and scale of construction, which…

This look at veils concentrates on the everyday veils of the mid-19th century, the 1840s through 1860s. It does not include mourning veils. Through my three decades of reenacting and history interpretation, I often found the most useful solutions to problems in 19th-century settings were 19th-century solutions. Cold at night? Use a soapstone for warmth. […]

The Beatles in 10 Songs, Part 1: “Twist and Shout” by Dr. Ethan Hein Aaaaaaahhhh aaaaaahhhhh aaaaaaahhhhhh ahhhhhhhhhhhh Read on Substack The Beatles In 10 Songs, Part 2: “She Loves You” by Dr. Ethan Hein Yeah yeah yeah Read on Substack

Why has it become common to call the machine learning, AI, LLM companies “labs?” Because that’s the narrative they want to tell about themselves. We aren’t for profit companies, eating up all the human content out there on the internet – we are scientists on the frontiers of exploration. We aren’t a business – we are a “lab.” We aren’t even “big tech” companies, because we’re on the side of the working folks of the world, enabling people to achieve things greater than anyone, including you…

Earlier this year the commenting system I had been using died without notice. Alas, all the comments were lost to the void. Since then I hadn't really had the time to look into finding a suitable replacement. Two days ago, by good luck and fortune, I had noticed a nicely integrated commenting system on the Vorpal Mace blog. Imagine my joy as I learned that yes, it is compatible with my platform! Two days later, and it is fully integrated. You have in essence two options for commenting: Without…

Apple Newsroom: Apple today introduced the all-new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, featuring breakthrough tandem OLED technology that delivers game-changing front-of-screen performance. Available in 14- and 16-inch models, MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display offers a visual experience unlike any other, transforming pro workflows with up to 2000 nits peak HDR and SDR brightness, an industry-leading 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio for exceptional detail, a 120Hz variable refresh rate, and a…

(Re)Ternus to the glowing Apple on laptop lids.

Steve Levy got to speak to Apple’s CEO (and others) about the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display for Wired (Apple News): I ask if Apple is about to break a long-imposed taboo and introduce a Macintosh with a touch screen. Ternus beams. “Who knew?” We are referring to the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display that Apple is releasing today at an event in Los Angeles. It’s got a mighty M5 Pro or M5 Max chip and a show-stopping tandem OLED screen. (A tandem screen has multiple light-emitting…

My wife asked me a simple question the other day - will our kids’ 529 accounts have enough money in them to pay for their college? The answer to that question isn’t so simple. There are only really three possible answers: probably, probably not, and the classic it depends. No straight-up yes or no. To figure this out, I first took into account the current situation: our kids are 6 and 8 years old; each of their 529s currently has a balance of a little over $40k. That leaves 12 and 10 years…

In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Marco Marra, University Killam Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia, Distinguished Scientist at BC Cancer, and Terry Fox Leader in Cancer Genome Science. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and inductee into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, he is also a recipient of the National Killam Prize in Health Sciences and the Canadian Cancer…

begone, pesky blocks

A comic book's cover can be a huge asset or a major hindrance. If you've got a dull one, that is a problem…but when you've got something that really pops for one reason or another? Yeah, that's helpful. Randomly, two covers made me stop and say, "Yeah, I dig that," recently. Let's look:Writer Dan Watters, artist Kyle Hotz, colorist Dan Brown, and letterer Steve Wands are bringing us the upcoming Elseworlds mini-series, "Green Lantern: Doomed Cosmos." It follows a future where humanity is…

When consuming educational materials, I often want to watch faster than the player permits. 2x seems to be an upper limit on many platforms, and that makes sense; 2x can be pretty fast. For material that’s review, I want to go even faster, like 2.5x. Here’s how I bypass this artificial constraint: open developer tools and ensure that the video HTML entity is in scope. You might have to scroll down to it, or highlight it with the element selector. Then, type this into the developer tools console:

Observing color. (Again.) It seems this same door keeps on giving. Feeling a bit under the weather, hope to dodge a full-blown cold. I guess we'll see…

begone, pesky blocks

The much-anticipated MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display arrived today with touch support, "a whole new way to interact with your work" according to Apple. Steve and Craig were somewhat less enthusiastic: ‘Ergonomically Terrible’ — Steve Jobs Said Touchscreen MacBook Wouldn’t Work, but Apple Is Finally Doing It Anyway "We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work," Jobs said at the company's "Back to the Mac" event in 2010. "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It…

I have made no secret of me deep skepticism about President Trump’s tariff policies since he announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025. My first-blink “Thoughts on the Trump Tariffs” from a few days after the announcement has held held up reasonably well, and I have posted follow-ups on the subject a number of times since. For an overview of economic thinking on the subject, I recommend the six-paper symposium on tariffs in the Summer 2026 issue of the Journal of Economic…

If anything, my career long use of dog metaphors summon, I hope, both the attributes of loyalty, but also the refusal to relent pulling at something. So… it’s been 16 years since I took a dive into the myth of humans processing visual information 60000 times faster than text. If It’s Repeated Enough… And I never let up in scrounging deeper down the information holes indeed that looks to average one per year. But still, the trail has been cold since 2015 when (with help) I was able to surface…

Believe it or not, there is a World Satire Day (or rather World Day of Satire), inaugurated in Nigeria in 2019 and, I think it's fair to say, not very widely observed. Its date, November 9th, seems to have been chosen for no particular reason. Today, October 28th, would be a much better candidate, as it is both the anniversary of the publication of Gulliver's Travels and the birthday of Evelyn Waugh (born 1903), who in my opinion was at his very best in his early satires – Decline and Fall,…

Last month the Trump administration launched America.gov, an AI-assisted chatbot that unsurprisingly injects a lot of partisan agitprop into its responses on behalf of our dogshit authoritarian government. While America.gov (which uses both Elon Musk's Grok and Google's Gemini) struggles to correctly inform the public about the January 6th insurrection, it does, at least, contradict the President and correctly state who won the 2020 election:bad job, robotThe same can't be said for Google's…

I wanted to give everyone a day in the life of a music fan in the ’80s. So, if it’s the mid-‘80s and I’m a carless teen and I’m looking to buy records, here’s what would happen. Backpacks were not a cool thing. People may disagree with this, but it’s absolutely true. Not until the ’90s did backpacks come in vogue for all students and the like. A few of us brought them to college, up and to the early ’90s, I just carried my crap in my hands. Anyway, maybe you wouldn’t take a bag, ‘cause you…

Link: ChatGPT Is Building Detailed Psychological Profiles of Its Users, by Maggie Harrison Dupré in FuturismIt probably shouldn’t be a surprise that chatbots like ChatGPT are profiling their users. Still, there are some surprising numbers here:“A staggering 96 percent of memories were created unilaterally by the chatbot, according to the study, meaning that the users had little overt control over the data points that ChatGPT logged as their interactions wore on. Stored memories were also deeply…

Crucial Track for October 28, 2026: “Cough Syrup” by Glee Cast I wasn’t even a huge Glee fan, but I do like Darren Criss covers. :) ∞ via Crucial Tracks

Statistical literacy is important. I love examples of folks using statistical concepts without being snobby statistical gatekeepers. For instance, see jargon-free statistical literacy that helps people make important decisions about their children's health or informs the immigration debate. As stats teachers, I think we are remiss if we don't talk about political polling in our classes. At least a little bit. Here is a brief, nonpartisan interview about political polling you can use in class to…