Last night I rode up to Nashville with a friend to catch DJ Shadow on tour to celebrate 30 years since his debut album Endtroducing..↗.. I've been listening to Shadow for probably 20 years; my companion for the evening had never heard his music (even after agreeing to join me). Wick-It the Instigator The show opened with a large bearded fellow who called himself Wick-It the Instigator↗ performing some fun hip-hop style mash-ups. He covered a lot of ground, pulling in bits from all sorts of…

[A half-baked AI-assisted follow-up to System-Induced Vulnerability in Human Users of AI.] The previous post described system-induced vulnerability as increased human susceptibility to consequential harm produced or amplified by AI systems over time through repeated interactions and bidirectional feedback loops. Taking after much of the literature on this topic, which also frame the problem in that manner, several of its examples involved situating a harm in relation to mistaken premises or…

Today I continue my playthrough of the complete works of Steve W. Lucas, which is harder than it sounds, because what are the complete works of Steve W. Lucas? Last time, for instance, I played through Haunted House as published by Silverlind, except it turns out it was also published as a type-in a year later, newly dubbed as House on Misty Hill. The game that Haunted House was derived from (Frankenstein Adventure, by a completely different author) was used by Lucas again to make The Monster’s…

And they took the gifts that Nature left for them and turned those gifts to their own ends, shaping them through rites of chaos to become a teeming legion – least among their servants, but limitless in number. This scroll describes “seething caverns of chaos, impossible in their vast expanse” and filled with “the seething terrors” that are the “least among the servitors of the Endless Sleepers”. These corrupted masses are called the Elder Brood and some are given names: Akop, tesk, marbassik…

Flags of Rockefeller Center – New York, New York Walking uptown on Fifth Avenue and looking around like a tourist—because I was one—I happened upon this scene. I spotted three flags framed by the trees on the eastern edge of Rockefeller Center. Dramatic architecture is fantastic, and I live for making those photos. However, quiet compositions like this also delight me. It’s probably something that most people didn’t see or simply ignored. I love finding little visuals like this in plain sight.…

Do they ever strike out? They feel like the team most ready to step into the biggest spotlight as a champion.

Fremantle2026 October 25 (Sunday), 10:36AM· Wikisource · Wikimedia · Toolforge · The Wikisource Contest tool is back online. It doesn't seem to have minded being upgraded to PHP 8.4, and oddly it was using an old OAuth consumer despite there being a newer one right there made for it (the older one had an old callback URL, using tools.wmflabs.org, which is currently not working due to the PHP debacle). This post is also on Mastodon. ← Previous My main RSS news feed:…

for the most part of two years, now, i have posted something here every day, barring a few intentional breaks on account of intentional digital detox, and usually followed by some larger piece borne of that time away. recently, however, gaps have emerged. i will tell you: these breaks in posting here reflect my disengagement with much else in my life, too. all that happens and no longer happens when hopelessness overcomes all will to act. perhaps this is ultimately appropriate, if i consider…

Marius Kociejowski has written to tell me the poet, critic, translator, Islamic scholar and voluptuary of sound Eric Ormsby has died, apparently in Prague, at age eighty-five. As always when a good writer dies, our impulse is to honor him by reading his work. In 2012, I reviewed his collection The Baboons of Hada: Selected Poems (Carcanet) and wrote: “Born in Georgia in 1941 and raised in Florida, his career has been unusually scholarly and cosmopolitan, qualities that distinguish his verse yet…

I just wanna post about this cause I thought it was noteworthy. My partner made the best steak I've ever had in my lifeeeee! I normally hate steak cause it's always tough and hard to chew through whenever I get it at a restaurant! I don't care how you cook it, rare, medium, whatever. I just want it to be tender! And for some reason that's always been too much to ask, so I just never got it! But today my partner had these really nice ribeye steaks that were on sale, super big. They made them…

I have gotten so picky with my eyeshadows that I immediately know how good they are the first time I use them. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from high end or drugstore brand, from a Western or Asian brand. I’ve tried expensive eyeshadows that are a complete miss and some very cheap palettes that […]

When do the clocks go back? The clocks go back today, the last Sunday in October. 25th October is the earliest possible date the clocks can go back, ushering in darker evenings at the earliest opportunity. When did the clocks go back? before 1916: they didn't 1916-1924: various dates in late Sept/early Oct 1925-1938: the day after the first Saturday in October 1939-1947: it's complicated (thanks to Double Summer Time) 1948-1949: the day after the last Saturday in October 1950-1952: the day…

Nivalis is one of the great cities of the gaming multiverse. I love the place. It snuck up on me. Ever since Cloudpunk, I've just wanted to walk the streets and chat people up and get hot noodles from Food Mood. Like I said back then, this makes no sense. Nivalis is an unvarnished corporate dystopia. The streets are strewn with trash, the water is contaminated, the sky is roiling filth. Everybody who lives there is strung out on debt and drugs and (for the lucky ones) dehumanizing makework…

I managed, at long last, to finish off the painting of this Bristol Beaufighter I printed ages and ages ago. It's intended to support my 15mm North African Brits, assuming I actually get a game or two with them one of these days.The model is 1:144 scale, up-scaled from one of Plane Printer's excellent 1:200 designs.

Though still rather warm for late October, it was cool enough to finally fire up the backyard bonfire with the boys. It was the 7 year old’s idea to do hotdogs and to call us the Backyard Bonfire Bros since Mama was away. It was the 3 year old’s first time that he was actually conscious of, so he had a blast. He kept gasping and saying “This is amazing!” and calling the sparks “sprinkles”. He was also a very enthusiastic fire poker and dumper of fallen pine needles for kindling. After covering…

I think this is a really good explainer.Loading tweet...But I have a slightly different explanation that’s pretty elegant to remember.1. Both models and harnesses are made to help you get what you want from AI2. Models are getting much better, but they can only do so much because they don't know everything about you and how you like things to be done.📚 Knowing you is the whole point of the digital assistant I described in The Real Internet of Things back in 2016.3. Harnesses are like model…

Making candles for the 2026 Things 4 Good Candle Fundraiser!

By now regular readers of this blog are quite familiar with my affection for the 1996 Apple Network Server, Apple's Unix-through-and-through $10,000+ server that only shipped with, and only officially ran, Harpoon, its unique superset of IBM AIX. An ANS 500, the lower tier of this dorm fridge-sized computer, was the first server I ever personally owned, a nearly-new hand-me-down after Steve Jobs convinced Gil Amelio to cancel the machine and the bookstore's vendor at the University I worked for…

I’m enjoying using and building Release Notes so much I added some great location features today and polished up the user experience! Notes can save where you are with one tap, and name the café or park you’re in iPhone photos bring their place and time with them, HEIC included Notes without a place of their own show that day’s city A new Map page shows every note with a place, filtered by words, tag or release Place links in notes and emails open on Release Notes’ own map A design pass across…

Bryan Cantrill has a great line from a talk where he cautions against anthropomorphizing1 Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. I think it’s also a mistake to treat any tech company like a person. Here’s the full quote: You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think ‘oh, the lawnmower hates me’ — lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about…

So I made a thing. Augite is a static site generator for Git repos. I use it to generate code.inqk.net. It’s like stagit but supports TextMate language grammars for syntax highlighting.

This is just a rant. I am currently helping a Mon Refugee School. They are from Myanmar and have been living in my country for more than 10 years. This race of people called Mon. They get very little help as not many knows their existence. The school desperately needed English teachers. The last few months, I have been asking for referrals from my network. One candidate finally called me. I explained to her that: The role is to teach English at the school. The commitment is 1 session 2 hours a…

I've been taking part in Weird Web October 2026 with a handful of "fun and weird" things. Today is day 25 with the theme ascending, for which I've made something... pretty silly, really: A S C E N D I N G. It's based upon Matter.js's demonstration "ragdoll", but with only primitive shapes (not ragdolls!) and with variable gravity: objects fall "to the left" by default, but if you grab or throw one it'll behave more-normally until it collides with something else, then it'll continue to "climb…

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. Seth Fleisher’s novel The Farther Shore is a deeply atmospheric and profound debut. Kirkus wrote of the book: “A compelling novel inspired by the pioneering naturalist Eugène Marais and his…

Beginning with my October 31, 2020 review of a visual novel called Bad End, I have made a small tradition of reviewing visual novels that are plausibly in the spirit of Halloween. I continue the tradition in 2026, starting today with my review of Oniguisama, a very short freeware Japanese visual novel written in Ren’Py by a two-person team under the banner of Chubby Cat Games. Oniguisama touts itself as a “simple, short horror novel game.” It puts the player in the shoes of a young girl who is…

Do I Even Like Computers? Published: 2026-10-25 In which we have a cheeky little existential crisis. Illustration by j-g00da. License: CC0. A visceral sense of exhaustion is what I feel when I interact with computers and computing communities these days. Exhausted by the way people talk to each other online. Exhausted by how it has spilled into real world conversations and attitudes. Exhausted by the endless churn and by the way The Next Best Thing is constantly shoved in my face. I don’t know…

Key things that are happening now… as of October 2026 October marked two years into working at Beacon CRM. We had a bad August, but we’re coming out the other side of that. We’re now in the process of rolling out the Google Spanner update to all customers. Globe started two services in September, it’s been a change to go from one gathering of ~300 people cramming into a school hall to go into two. As always with these changes there are teething issues to work through, but it’s been encouraging.…

The previous post defined the polar triangle of a spherical triangle in terms of its sides and angles, but it doesn’t construct the triangle. It only specifies one of a family of triangles located anywhere on the sphere. How do we know that polar triangles exist? There is a geometric construction that starts with a spherical triangle and constructs a unique new spherical triangle, and one can show that this new triangle has the angles and sides described in the previous post. There is also a…

Good sequel, tying together all previous plots, while also allowing Chucky to multiply, while also being an Elm Street 3-style psych-ward-set serial killer thriller. Andy is back, torturing his own personal Chucky head after a cute girl from the latest Final Destination breaks up with him. Wheelchair Nika is still alive too, so is her niece (now Mike Flanagan’s Carrie) and Jennifer Tilly-as-herself and the doll version of Jennifer Tilly, and hey, why not bring back the girl from part two, it’s…

This is one very eye catching box cover! Ba-dum-tss! The game title is as literal as can be. You play a pack of wolves, and you compete with other wolf packs to be the dominant one on the map. You get to experience the life of a wolf, and all this is done using several clever mechanisms. The map is divided into regions, and there are five terrain types. Those six