Tom Waits - Mediasound Studios, New York City, December 14, 1976Tom Waits still pops up occasionally — a film role here, a Massive Attack collab there — but it seems like he’s more or less retired these days. And hey, fair enough! There’s something to be said for just relaxing and enjoying your old age after decades of good work. However, Tom could certainly give fans a little more in the way of archival releases. There’s a recent 50th anniversary edition of Small Change out now, but there’s no…

40889 Build, Paint and Play from LEGO® Ideas is a gift with purchase (GwP) set, which means you can't simply pick it up in store or order it online. You have to meet the predetermined spend threshold at LEGO to receive the set as a "free" additional bonus; the added anxiety for collectors here being the inevitable "while stocks last" disclaimer. The threshold is US$130/ £115/ 130€/ AU$210 and the set launches on Wednesday 28 October 2026.There aren't any new moulds, which is entirely expected,…

I've used Things as my main todo list app for years now. There's been slight interruptions at times when I switched back to something else for a bit because of its theoretical benefits (Todoist to work together with my colleagues, Obsidian to keep my tasks and notes in one place), but I keep on coming back to Things. Recently though, the fact that Things runs as a native app that syncs, but otherwise doesn't really communicate or integrate with other tools, has really started to become a…

Listen sometimes a man just wants to try to draw his cat Salty Dog as a Red Mage in FFXIV and ends up accidentally giving him a Gen-Z broccoli haircut and/or Mae Borowski-style nightmare eyes

We went to DisneySea! As discussed previously, we (really, I think it’s me) like to go to Tokyo Disney Resort at least once a year. Last year, we realised in the final days of December that we hadn’t been but were able to squeeze in a last-minute visit to Disneyland on New Year’s Eve. I wanted to be a bit more organised this year and so I’ve been waiting for the right weekend for the past few weeks. Friday rolled around last week and the forecast for Sunday was pleasant, a car was available to…

Before you read this, I suggest you read post 26.8. We’re going to think about hypothetical twins. When they become adults, one works in a bank: the other becomes an astronaut. The astronaut goes on a very long journey often at speeds comparable to the speed of light. During this time, the banker twin becomes old and retires from work. Then the astronaut returns home but is much younger than the retired banker. So we have twins who are very different ages! How can this be possible? The previous…

The best thing that happened this week Our daughter is enjoying her holiday off from school, and this week we went to see Aladdin the musical (the kids' version). We had a really good time and it was a well put together show. We also went for dinner to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. Playing Copious amounts of Diablo III have been played this week. I've started a new seasonal WW Barb and having a blast with it. I'm already up to 70 Paragon and doing millions of damage. What a game...…

A few months ago, inspired by Dar Williams and Jacob Geller, I stopped by the National Gallery of Art, specifically to check out Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman's paintings on display, before continuing on my way to a concert nearby. The depth of Rothko and Newman's work typically comes from the depth of their uniquely mixed colors. Cameras can't capture them, screens can't reproduce them. Artists and scientists put immense effort into recreating and restoring these subtleties when necessary. As…

If you regularly use nature recording apps and platforms like ObsIdentify, iRecord, eBird, or iNaturalist, you likely focus on the immediate thrill of the find, logging that rare moth, submitting a crisp recording of a bird song, or mapping the local flora. Yet few of us consider what happens to our data when we can no longer log in due to chronic illness…or death. What becomes of your biological legacy, and will system administrators, conservation scientists, and future researchers still be…

love has many facets: an idea, a hope, a myth, but mostly it is a mystery to me i am talking about romantic love my lifestyle is special i value freedom i don’t need much i prefer being alone i don’t have to work i like to read and watch i care for privacy and security i spent time in front of my laptop the chance that i’ll meet someone is slim and i am content with getting old alone having said that, i still believe in love the woman who accepts me as i am the woman who makes me a better man…

You may remember last year’s post about Lou, one of Mavis and Marvin’s 2025 fledglings. I always had a special spot in my heart for this little one, and hoped he’d stick around for a while. He did stay around all winter, but disappeared around the start of this spring’s nesting season. In many ways, I wasn’t surprised if Mom and Dad had encouraged him to move on. Their previous stay-at-home fledgling, Lucky, remained with them for almost three years. While he or she was a well-loved family…

I feel a little bad about this one. It has been sitting on my desk to the left of me for a very long time on my TBR pile. I wanted to get a review of it done back when it was new. Then, when the revised edition was out on Kickstarter. Now we are in between editions. This particular edition is no longer available on DriveThruRPG (which is disappointing, to be honest), and the new one isn't up yet. It is a good game and perfect if you are like me and want to have a focus on Witches and Witchcraft…

MrEdders123 on Youtube went way way beyond the call of duty and made a video on nearly every aspect of SSI’s classic RPG Pool of Radiance, the first official D&D product to attempt to adapt the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tools to computer play with any degree of completeness and the first in the legendary “Gold Box” series. It’s nearly ten hours long. It’s true that the length is kind of ludicrous, but in its description there is a helpful directory of chapters to get you to jump around it to…

In the early days of Muhammad (c.570 - 632 CE), the founder of Islam, not everyone in that part of the world automatically agreed with him. A distant kinsman of Muhammad's, Abu Sufyan of the Umayyad clan, who opposed the new religious leader. The Battle of Badr had Muhammad's followers on one side and Abu Sufyan on the other. Abu Sufyan's eldest son and father-in-law were killed at the battle.Then Muhammad married Abu Sufyan's widowed sister in 629 and entered Mecca in 630, whereupon Abu Sufyan…

Apple unveiled the iPod 25 years ago on this date. The iPod became an app when the iPhone was launched. Today, the iPod lives on… at Apple Music's 404 page. ~ Link: Apple Music’s 404 Not Found Page is a Fully Functional iPod, by Lex Friedman, Lex On Tech

Rather amazing this, but to run trains you... well, you need some trains.Heuro Train thinks they will run a lot of high speed trains from Amsterdam to Paris in 2030, and have a capacity agreement with SNCF Réseau for the French part of their high speed route (see this from Treinreiziger), but they have no trains.And I can see no way they can get any by 2030 either.The render on the Heuro website looks rather like a AI slop take on an ex-DB class 406 ICE which have been available for sale second…

Minecraft is one of the games that followed the x.y.z format, but do they complied to the Semantic Versioning Specification? Probably not, and that's we're I come in to determine the "real" version of the game. In this post you'll find an extensive analysis of all releases (releases; alpha, beta and pre-releases are excluded) to get the semantic version number.

Clear and still. Noise from the valley dies down as the sun climbs the sky and destroys the inversion layer. I notice every crack between the boards on the porch floor is jammed with tulip tree samaras.

Recently, a friend gave me a copy of The Philosophy of Hegel as a Doctrine of the Concreteness of God and Humanity, Volume One: The Doctrine of God by I.A. Il'in, translated and edited by Philip T. Grier. Il'in is of interest in part because he is said to be Putin's favorite philosopher. (After about fifty pages, I wonder to what degree Putin has ever seriously engaged Il'in's work.)Toward the end of Chapter 1, "The Concrete-Empirical", Il'in writes thatOne can accept without question, that if…

Well…I guess it was only a matter of time. I held out for as long as I could, but today my boss made it very clear that I would be out of a job, if I keep refusing to use generative A.I. There’s no wiggle room, there’s no reasoning, there’s no escape… I listened to a long monologue of his vision for the company and the people working here. He’s a good talker and while I’ll admit that he did manage to move me from my stance of “absolutely no A.I.” to “maybe a little” … he obviously had some big…

Two things you can never get back: time and teeth. The proliferation of refund fraud means that before sending you a refund, the US Internal Revenue Service requires you to verify your tax return. The IRS letter directs you online – first to verify your identity via a third party commercial company called id.me and *then* to verify the return at the IRS site. I had to do the personal part of this via video call. This meant first typing in a load of details I wouldn’t normally disclose on a…

Economy class brings out the opportunist in me. Every flight, I spot ways to get a bit more comfortable, and every flight, two philosophical questions give me pause. The questions are roughly: am I taking advantage of the airline, and am I doing my fellow passengers wrong?

by Prof. Guy Rub, Temple University Beasley School of Law What do Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson do for a living? The obvious answer is that they are Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court. That is presumably how they spend most of their working hours. But if we look at their income rather than their job descriptions, the answer becomes less obvious. In 2025, an Associate Justice earned an annual salary of $303,600. That same year, Justice Jackson received…

Last week’s post garnered a lot of responses from readers about the historical shows they’re

For this, my first Fantastical Fiction post, I want to share three books that cross genres due to one or more ‘fantastical’ elements. James Rollins has written any number of books that while on the surface might be classed as a thriller or an adventure but, when you look closer, also included fantastical elements. AMAZONIA by James Rollins The Backcover Blurb: The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has…

Well this is interesting. I’ve reviewed Cheetos Man n’ Cheese – but that actually was rotini. This is actually a macaroni style pasta. Spicy? I guess we’ll see. Good? Again, I guess we will see – let’s try it! Samyang Buldak Mac n’ Cheese Sweet Corn – United States Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). Looks to be meat free but check for yourself. To prepare, fil to line with room temp water and microwave 3 minutes at 1000W. Finally, stir and enjoy! One of the cups. Detail of the side…

If you’re new to the Disquiet Junto music community, did you know: There’s a complete list of all 773 weekly projects to date. There’s a free weekly Thursday morning email newsletter containing the latest project instructions. There’s an FAQ, or list of frequently asked questions. Group discussions about each project occur on the Lines (aka llllllll.co) message board. And just in case there is any confusion on this topic: participation is entirely free. No sign-up cost, not potential cost, no…

The Society for Scholarly Publishing runs a Fellowship Program. “Each year, we invite future leaders into our organization to support them through mentorship, leadership, and collaboration, but it is our membership that benefits from the emerging generation and thought leadership of our Fellows.” This year the Career Development Committee of the SSP has selected twelve students from over seventy applicants from fifteen countries to receive their fellowship support. The committee assesses…