18-10-26 Nothing planned to intercept the decent forecast so I hopped on a late morning tram and got off at Balgreen not much before midday. A walk I've done lots before, usually with Mary, but solo today. Round Saughton Park and upstream a little then back down the Water of Leith to the Botanics and home. I didn't expect to see much and wasn't disappointed. Or was I.Balgreen tram stop, looking back towards towna depository of pigeonsI was nearly tempted to head onto Corstorphine Hill as the…

The link. The paragraph: The packaging, which describes Cold Standard as an “American Lite Brew,” reflects founder and CEO Joe Chura’s mission to change how people think about the category. “We don’t call an electric car a ‘non-gas car,’” he says. “Nonalcoholic beer is one of the only things we describe by what it’s missing, and I think that holds the whole category back.” A bonus this week, because you may notice something similar about these two Bluesky posts from different sides of the…

And the Dukes of Chaos reached into the flesh of the living, taking whatever their power could command turning it unto the purposes which they saw best. From such works were the Elder Brood delivered – a horde of flesh driven to pinnacles far beyond the pale boundaries of nature. This scroll describes the creation of the essyat – one of several races “bound to the service of the Galchutt and all who would follow them”. Names such as the akop, nyogoth, solesik, and tilaxic are given as others…

26 Zip | INDEX | 28 Trophy One of the biggest cases of mass hallucination ever perpetrated: the idea that deforming the human foot by squishing it into rigid structures that do not allow for natural movement, is both healthy and beautiful. Once your eyes are opened to the idiocy — and the harm it does to the entire human structure — you can’t go back. Highly recommended watching: https://stupidshoesmovie.com Self-imposed constraint: Use the letters of the prompt word inside a 2-inch square to…

This is the first paragraph of a review cut from the TLS in 1989. I was in my fourth year of reading novels and looking everywhere for ideas for what to read next, often keeping reviews that excited my interest. What set Gabriel Josipovici's reviews apart was the inclusion of the novel under review within the wider landscape of the form. Until then I had been reading the novels from the second camp unaware they could be any different. I enjoyed them for sure, but then I read The Unbearable…

Kate Towner Under Review:The Scarlet Ball. Nghi Vo. Tor Books, October 2026. Nghi Vo’s The Scarlet Ball is about pain. It is about sex, beauty, power, love, cruelty, and sacrifice, and the links that chain these things together. It is about young women suffering in the hope of becoming powerful old women, and about old women paying the overdue price of their power. It is about the men they form toxic bargains with. It is about what you are running towards and what you are escaping from. It is…

We have discussed in many posts here how artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting—and could affect—different aspects of academic philosophy’s research ecosystem. We have seen AI-written articles published in peer-reviewed journals and AI-written referee reports. There have been journals flooded with AI-generated submissions. More and more of philosophy’s institutions are organizing and encouraging research on AI. There are efforts underway to test and measure the capacity of AIs to produce…

A Minute of FilmTwo weeks before Ohio was to choose its next governor, a one-minute video began circulating online with no name attached to it. In it a woman named Donna Arthur looks into the camera and tells the viewer that her daughter has “a serious problem,” that she is a liar, that she lies about her past. The daughter is Amy Acton — physician, former director of the Ohio Department of Health, and the Democratic candidate. The past in question includes a stepfather charged with raping her…

In this little game, you are a giant cat with the mission of destroying a city. Which city? Any: the game pulls map data from OpenStreetMap, a free alternative to Google Maps.

It’s almost vacation time for me, and what a vacation it is going to be. I’m heading to Japan soon, so for the first time in as long as I can remember, The Pen Addict blog will be quiet for a couple of weeks. If you want to follow along with what I am up to you can follow me on Instagram. I’m going to try and post there regularly, but we will see how it goes. It’s a big adventure, and I am ready for it. Things will return to normal on these pages on November 9th. Talk soon!

Long before whales travelled our oceans, extraordinary marine reptiles hunted beneath the waves.Some had enormous eyes. Others had long, tooth-filled jaws, powerful flippers and streamlined bodies beautifully adapted for life at sea.Among the most remarkable were the ichthyosaurs, whose name means "fish lizards."These ancient marine reptiles looked remarkably like modern dolphins, although they

I like how the only thing legible is the one word NOT supposed to be there: Erin K. wanted her daughter's cake to be oriented vertically, or portrait-style, but the baker wasn't getting it."You know, the long way?" *headdesk* When you want a big 75, NOT a "big 75." Can I quote you on that? In fact, a lot of butchered instructions end up as new nick names: Give up?They wanted "thank you" written in pink. And this one didn't want any gel icing: Here's a blast from the past: a Historical Society…

Storm Boelo was hammering the Greenwich peninsula when I arrived. Inside, Autechre seemed to channel that violence into a dense electronic maelstrom with nowhere to shelter. I like to stay curious and try different gigs. A couple of weeks ago, we saw my wife’s favourite Mongolian metal band. This weekend, Autechre scrambled my brain with a kind of electronic industrial madness. I do like much of Autechre’s recorded material, so I find myself wanting to believe in the kind of live experience…

2026-10-26Hello! While I have disabled analytics for this website, I have a hunch that no one read yesterday's article in full. Not that it matters; my ending punchline should make it clear I'm quite happy avoiding the spotlight.I keep a timeline of the moment of photographic capture, and it was interesting to see that I took no photographs during the latter half of my walk. Was I burned out of doing creative stuff for the day, walking to the train station from an intense photo festival? No, I…

Gemini 4’s model card is a compact 14 pages. Its safety and security report has 217. This is The Way. It also means we have a lot of new reading material. I will quickly summarize the model card, then focus on the safety card. As always, many statements here also apply to other frontier labs. A lot of this one is probably for diehards (and members of technical staff) only, plus those who find this interesting. Most of you do not need to dig into the cards on this level, and I found most of what…

DRAFT Why do people nowadays defend systems that make their own lives worse? Why do movements that begin by challenging authority end up creating new hierarchies? Why do communities built around freedom develop gatekeepers, purity tests and informal leaders who become impossible to question? Why do people who oppose #dotcons corporate control still spend their time copying corporate platforms, business models and organizational habits? These are not isolated contradictions, they point towards a…

An exuberant tiny folk art painting. Note tiny young woman lower left. As this is only 3.5 x 5.5 inches it certainly qualifies as a miniature. The gentleman is 1.5 inches tall. Vibrant colors from being in a frame a LONG time. Likely Northeastern US.Anonymous. Any ideas as to artist? Miniature Folk Art Painting 19th century Ink and watercolor Courtesy of Box Lot on Facebook. Collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb #folkartpainting

Martin Stürtzer: Antares Station Release Information Artist Martin Stürtzer Title Antares Station Release Date October 17, 2025 Genre Electronic / Berlin School License N/A Label Self-Released Download BandCamp Rating 8.7 Introduction I had an experience with this album that I have not had in at least a decade. I placed this album in a playlist that I call my “review queue”. This is the list of recordings that I’m evaluating, deciding if they are worth writing a review about. I made it through…

I have always been a fan of asciinema and of Charm's VHS. asciinema records a terminal while you use it, and VHS types a script of commands into a terminal and films the result. I wanted their animations in the READMEs of my projects, but I always forgot the syntax of VHS's tape files, and I always mistyped a command halfway through an asciinema recording (and then started again). I also always forgot to re-run those recordings when my API changed, and they got out of sync quickly. Fortunately,…

We’re down to the last six cruise ships of the season here in Charlottetown, with three in port today. This is the view down Prince Street this morning.

The rain is hammering down outside. Cold winds whip at the trees and the rooftops. I'm wearing a thick green jumper. And yet, for some reason, I'm still here typing up a trip to Milan that happened back in July, when it was so hot I had to wear a stupid hat. I know you don't care, and to be honest, even I've lost some of the will, but I have to do it for completion's sake, you know?When you leave San Cristoforo station you're confronted with this enormous spiralling loop above your head. Climb…

I am not breaking any news when I share the following trenchant insight: spam is back, and it's worse than ever. I'm seeing it across pretty much every front of my digital life right now, and it's one of the reasons I've pulled back from public fora like social media. The noise is simply too overwhelming. I remain optimistic that this is cyclical — that it will get solved in due time, in much the same way email spam was solved, until the phishing email was relegated to a punchline in outdated…

The USA is mostly batshit crazy: We have experts. They always have something to say. Quite rightly too. As for the colour of Mountain Dew, all I know is that it came in a number of different colours - at one time anyway. Most of them were quite bright. Lurid even. Possibly disgusting. Why drink that stuff?Kids like it. I have personal experience.Is it actually for sale on this septic isle these days? I think a ban would be in order. Outlaw it, quickly. Along with any other things that are too…

Few things have become as topical since the fighting in Ukraine kicked into high gear in 2022 as long-range strike and air defences, preferably of the kind that US-based billionaire can’t switch off at a whim. And few companies are better placed to meet those demands than MBDA. As such, the EURONAVAL press trip kicked off with a presentation by the company at their facilities in Le Plessis-Robinson outside of Paris focusing on their missile programmes. The portfolio of MBDA – the “only western…

Title possibly signs checks the article doesn’t have backing for. This is just a brief pro forma project update. Not much new functionality or anything to announce, last few months have mostly been bug fixes and technical debt cleanup. Most big parts of the search engine are in place, and while there are many things that could be better, we’re less likely to straight up see massive new features, at least in the immediate feature. Per familiar intuition from binary searches, the closer you get…

There are many myths in sports. One of the enduring ones is that the best athletes win on their talent; the dopers are the lesser ones who can't rely completely on their natural ability.This myth persists despite Lance Armstrong, Jose Canseco and numerous other cases. News has emerged that the Tokyo marathon gold medalist & 2025 world champion has been provisionally suspended for doping (link). Oops. The process has begun, and we'll soon learn if he has an "explanation" for the abnormality.This…

American politics in recent years has become unserious entertainment with very serious and life-changing consequences. Something broke when the country elected its first Black president in 2008, and it has never been put back together. Perhaps it’s because white Americans did the lazy work of assuming that a Black president meant that our nation’s race ... Read more The post Vote like your life depends on it and why I am supporting Troy Jackson appeared first on Shay Stewart-Bouley.

Up and down again this week, not helped by it now being winter – gales, rain, cloudy skies – and several nights featuring hours lying awake. Searching for the bright side, the downs feel more related to specific issues than the overall and overwhelming downs of a couple of months ago did. I’m guessing the lack of sleeping is due to continuing to be a bit slack about exercise. As someone fully on board with the importance of regular exercise (no matter how tedious it is to do) it’s been more of…

Why shouldn't an opera be set in an office? Not merely set there; performed there! On Saturday night, a couple of dozen audience members were ushered in to a genuine office in Tooting to watch a short comic opera by Opera UnTouched. It was a burst of sunshine in a rainy day. We're at Ben's leaving party. A flustered woman is busy on the telephone. Will Ben ever get her attention? Both Grace Watkins & Stephen Whitford are astonishingly good opera singers. They cover all the tropes, hit all the…

The AI RCEssion is driven by tech debt, but that debt is not evenly distributed. AI isn't the adversary coming to destroy us, it's the auditor pointing out our decades of neglect and lack of investment in secure systems.