I have come to suspect that to most people thinking is painful. Some of us are addicted to thinking. Some of us find it a necessity. Johnny enjoyed it. I even have the suspicion that he enjoyed almost nothing else.-- Edward Teller, eulogizing John von NeumannI listened to Ananyo Bhattacharya's "The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann" in my car during the many commute hours Bay Area traffic afforded me. I thought I should share the Johnny phenomena here.I knew about von…

Defs a back loaded week for me - big Friday and weekend. Work was 2 days a week today which was a lil stinky, but we did drinks which was nice. Two new fits this week, both v different! I got a new dress from the same brand that made the other white floral dress I have!! Just wanted 2 have more like,, summer-y dresses that I could wear 2 work :3 It's v diff to what I usually wear but I fw it! My hair is still drying in that selfie </3 but you'll have 2 trust I look good LOL. The other fit was…

Wisemans Ferry is a town located 75 kilometres north-north-west of Sydney. Named after Solomon Wiseman, a former convict who received a land grant in the area. Wiseman established a ferry service on the Hawkesbury River in 1827 for the transport of produce and provisions to the convicts building the Great North Road; the ferry continues to operate today. The road to Wisemans Ferry we took was via Cattai/Maroota, which is surrounded by the Cattai National Park and Maroota Ridge State…

It’s on HBO Max now, the video says Netflix but people kept telling me it isn’t on there so I’m reposting to say that they just moved it to HBO Max since I posted it the first time. Go watch it there! Scavengers Reign! Jason Pargin review on Meta. He says it is one of the best sci-fi things he has seen. I have not seen it. Lots of ckips online, etc.

Suppose you have a predictor \(X_{it}\) on person \(i\) at time \(t\), and an outcome \(Y_{it}\), where the outcome is generated by \[Y_{it}\mid X_{it}=x = a_i +1\times x+\epsilon\] where \(\epsilon\) are iid \(N(0,1)\) errors and \(a_i\) are iid \(N(0,1)\) random intercepts. I will show you the data generation code later, but this is honestly Further suppose that you fit a linear model by least squares lm(y~x, data=the_data) ## ## Call: ## lm(formula = y ~ x, data = the_data) ## ##…

Cosa si può fare? Cosa si può fare? Non si può fare niente! Esci dalla mia mente! Esci dalla mia mente! Santamarea – Zanzare Gridano sinceri Santamarea[1], a stento sovrastando l’inquieto caos delle classi medie con cui condivido questa carrozza dell’Intercity 505 che, come la via Aurelia, connette dove sono nato al cuore dell’Italia[2]. Intenzionalmente, indosso la medesima felpa che portavo ieri di fronte al fuoco di Balla Coi Ratti, a San Faustin, dove fui battezzato[3]. Sapevo già che…

Sometimes I wonder how it is to see the world from the perspective of an insect. It always feels like they are up to something. 💬 Reply via e-mail | 📖 Sign my guestbook

From the 1990s into the early 2010s, I always used ergonomic keyboards hooked to a PC or Mac (Microsoft Natural Keyboards were a favorite). But once I started spending most of my time using a MacBook, I got used to using the flat, basic keyboards attached to Macs and when I later moved to desktop Macs, I used Apple's own wireless keyboards for the next decade and a half.When they added a Touch ID sensor on the Apple Keyboard, I was instantly hooked, and got accustomed to using the sensor to…

Energy and persistence conquers all things. Benjamin Franklin Tomorrow, October 26, 2026, makes it exactly one year since me and my co-founder decided to start up Record Rack again. So far we've onboarded 5 shops all from the same business owner. It may sound small, but it wasn't easy at all. Here are a couple random lessons I've learned from working on it. You are not the user. Scenario 1 — There was a feature we thought our users would like: the ability to record a phone number for each…

Perfume PosseTree, No Tree So, Sunday the weather sort of calmed down, meaning sunshine, with a sharp shower every once in a while. This was after Friday and Saturday madness (storms Austen and Boelo – yup, two named storms in two days). Just gales… Continue Reading → Perfume PosseTree, No Tree

Surrey Arms (EM) remains a firm favourite of mine. Under new ownership, lots of details have been added as well as new signals. And Port de Crozon (1:50 scale), metre gauge in France, is another brilliant Gordon & Maggie Gravett creation. I do note though that their layouts get smaller as they get older! I quite agree – lifting large baseboards is getting less and less fun. Bluish Moor (proper TT) is an extensive loco depot and wagon works based on Reddish. I liked Littledean (OO), a light…

STUFF I'VE WRITTENWhich means what?. Why a value only starts working at the sentence you write after it.Also this week: Why does my CV get rejected immediately?. That two-hour rejection probably wasn't a robot, and what you could try instead.From the Archive: Free Habit Tracker Template. If the practice behind a value has lapsed, this is the unglamorous way back.STUFF I'M READINGYou should never be angry at work. Anger usually means you care. It also costs you every ally you needed.Nice is for…

Today is one of those days you just want to hunker down indoors with a warm blanket, a good book and something hot to drink . . . and . . . well . . . while you have the kettle and the fire on, you might as well bake something cozy to enjoy along with that hot drink. I don't think you can get much cosier than Gingerbread. It is filled with lovely flavours that just spell "Home Sweet Home" to me. Scents and flavours that make us think back to our childhoods, and the comfortable warmth of our…

Preorder Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster! Manage and clarify how often the characters rest to maintain the pacing and challenge of your RPG. How often characters rest in your RPG has a dramatic effect on the game. Too many rests and the characters enter every conflict armed with the full capabilities of their characters ready to burn. Too few rests and players can feel helpless and frustrated as their characters dwindle down to their last remaining hit point. Clarify how often your players can…

Early Voting Is Way Up Compared to 2022 Most people get 15 minutes of fame per lifetime. Political science Prof. Michael McDonald, of the University of Florida, gets it every 2 years, as his speciality is tracking early voting. He is reporting 12.0 million in-person early votes and 13.6 million mail-in ballots returned so far. Here is his best guess at the demographics. Note that some states don't register voters by party and/or don't break down voters by all categories. On the left is the…

26 Oct 2026 Speaker: Larry McEnerney, University of Chicago (Leadership Lab) Original Link: youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM The Craft of Writing Effectively My Reflections Mostly people used to listen to us or read us because they were paid to do so. Teachers, office workers etc. But that doesn’t work in the normal world. You are not writing to get your own ideas out, you are writing to change people’s ideas. No one cares about your idea. People care about why it matters to them. What really…

This is one of the most common pieces of advice for anyone who wants to finish more books. Just read whenever there's an opportunity. Because reading is fun. While waiting in line at the cashier. On the train. Waiting for the doctor. While I agree that reading is a good use of these idle moments, I can't realistically do it all the time. Sure I can easily put out my phone, open a reading app, start reading a chapter or two. The challenge, for me, is setting my mind into reading mode. Most of…

Three entries this week that look like they have nothing to do with each other. Generational slang, who gets called sane, and an afternoon in an office that isn't quite my office. Read together, they're really one entry. Every one of them is about how something reads depending on where you're standing when it reaches you, and what you do about all that.

Hope you had blessed Sunday! ✝️🙏 Time for another Catholic Meme Monday. The post Catholic Meme Monday— Issue 248 first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post Catholic Meme Monday— Issue 248 appeared first on The Simple Catholic.

Not a lot of stuff for me from GETS. There were a few purchases for work projects, but I'm still being restrained as I have so much stuff in the stash, and not enough time to build it all!Of course, as regular readers will know, I'll buy pretty much anything Groudle Glen Railway-related, so when I saw that Saddletank Books had some bookmarks and a badge featuring "Polar Bear", they were obviously coming home with me. I don't need three bookmarks of course; a couple will be Christmas presents in…

When the business titans and power brokers of mid-19th century New York wanted to wheel and deal over lunch or dinner, they headed to the all-male dining room at Astor House—Gotham’s first luxury hotel, located steps from City Hall. But what about their wives, mothers, and sisters—where could they share a table if they wanted to catch up over a meal? Not only did the 360-room Astor House have innovative features like private bathrooms and an in-house gas plant. This hostelry, built by…

A remedy to my current situation would be digging my hands into mud. It's a tactile sensation, and I'm itching for something that feels. Not in the metaphorical, pretentious kind of way; I genuinely just want to cling to stuff between my fingers. I think that makes sense? Maybe? Here I am again clumsily pasting pieces of definitions together like it'll somehow make perfect sense to you. I recently moved into my first solo apartment, returning to the province where I spent my undergrad years. I…

My previous arrival in Iceland was memorable by a record-setting snowfall the day before: The drive into Reykjavík was like a trip through a winter wonderland: A verrry slow trip: When I finally arrived in Reykjavík Vatnmýrin was draped in enchantment: THREE DAYS UNTIL ICELAND… hopefully without this much snow but, the forecast is for at least a half inch of rain every day.

I often think about the continuity of personality. Not in the abstract sense, as an academic exercise in human psychology. Rather, as an aspect of your life and mine. Are we the same people we were at age twelve or twenty? Is that a metaphysical question? Is it trivial?At the trivial level of DNA, of course. Our genetic inheritance is always with us. But why is it, when I look back at my younger self, I am puzzled and sometimes ashamed? Why the hell did I do that? What did I hope to accomplish?…

Image was taken with an iPhone 18 Pro Max

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all. ▰ One guitar, one incredible guitar pedal, which turns an opening series of notes into an endlessly drifting drone. Beautiful stuff. It’s by Perry Frank, who is from Sardinia, Italy. ▰ Keinseier, a film composer based in Hamburg, has been going to town on a specific set of electronic…

So I had an entry, pulled it last night, reposting this morning. As I found a holy grail of mine yesterday, which is the Yaz Upstairs at Eric’s cassette tape. And I thought about it all night and all morning. It was an unspoken subculture in the early ‘80s. Where people who had it, had it, and people who didn’t, didn’t. But I was only partially kidding when I said, if we met last century, this is the basis of our friendship. Or this was probably the basis of our friendship. But there is a…

Something is afoot with LEGO® Sonic the Hedgehog™ 77120 Shadow's Mech vs. G.U.N. Trooper. Today I take a look at the new 2 x 4 plate with ball joint, before analysing the other parts and the construction of the set that introduced it.Continue reading »

Most of what I post here is short: a thought, a link, a line or two. Bear's post lists are built around titles, which never felt right for notes. So this blog now runs a small CSS "micro layer" on top of its theme: Notes show up on the homepage as cards with their full text. Each card's date is its permalink. There are no titles to click. Longer posts like this one keep the theme's big-title look. Because the layer only targets Bear's own markup, you can swap the theme underneath and the notes…

Marcin Wichary details how a redesign of the volume control interface for the iPhone sometimes caused music to become extremely loud all of a sudden. I have encountered the same design bug multiple times too, but ln the reverse. All of a sudden, whatever audio that is playing seems to have stopped playing through my earphones. The first time I encountered this, I thought my bluetooth earphones had lost the connection. I switched playback to the iPhone speakers and then back to the earphones.…