Last edited 6 minutes ago. So hopefully this will be a quick post. I've been a bit more active online — as in, not just quietly reading blog posts, but yapping on message boards and stuff. Because of that I also discovered a bunch of new corners that I wanted to share here and give a general update on the state of my websites/web presence. This will be a bit of a listlog, I'm afraid. Here we go: Registered on quxnet last week and have been loving the vibes there so far. Loved the design of the…

Everyone remembers Scrooge as a mean, cold-hearted man, even though his entire arc is that he becomes a better, kinder man and develops empathy. Author A. T. Sayre’s main character in The Asterist is quite the Scrooge, too, but maybe we’ll end up remembering him in the better light he deserves by the end. A. T. SAYRE: Asterist, noun /ass ter ist/ – someone who lives on an asteroid. Often used as a pejorative for people posted on solitary observation or research stations in remote areas of…

In the third Dune novel Alia is ruling the empire as a regent while Paul and Chani’s twins, Ghanima and Leto, are still children. They are like her however, pre-born, and although they are only nine years old they have had the knowledge and wisdom of all of their ancestors since birth. They are concerned about Alia, they believe she has become an abomination, that she has been taken over by one of the voices in her head. Paul’s mother, Jessica, is returning from planet Caladan at the start of…

Tacita Dean’s FILM installation at the Marciano Art Foundation. For more photos, follow me on Instagram.About I My Book | Consulting I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Email

Each dot is one thing the plugin reads. As the story names them, they gather: the content schemas, the 540 brand variables (69 of them set per brand, in blue) and the 25 component families; the 297 component variants it writes arrive with Figma. Figma kits often tell a design system's story a second time. Designers draw the components, engineers build them, and the two versions drift because nothing ties one to the other. Every correction gets made twice, by different people, or often doesn't…

i grew up playing baseball. i liked it most of the time. i would typically stop liking it around halfway through the season. i think i would stop liking it because it would hurt, get boring, get grindy, it would just get... not that fun. that is how my life is feeling right now; grindy. Like when you are playing runescape or minecraft and it hits that point of not being fun anymore. i know that's a signal of burnout. i know it is a signal to slow down and take breaks. i know that if i change…

A few days ago I saw a post on Instagram about a simple test to figure out how you actually feel about someone: “two beers and a puppy” test. It was invented by Ross McCammon in his book, which has a ridiculously long subtitle: Works Well with Others: An Outsider’s Guide to Shaking Hands, Shutting Up, Handling Jerks, and Other Crucial Skills in Business That No One Ever Teaches You. Two Beers and and a puppy” is a test I developed while working on the Esquire story on the American “son of a…

OK FINE, I definitely caved. I’ve been playing Aion 2. I like it. I’m having fun. I mostly only play a little on the weekends. I’m currently missing my favorite holiday event in Guild Wars 2 because of it. I did the play test and made some new friends. I joined their legion and we play together when I’m able on the weekends. We do dungeons and PVP. They remind me of my main guild in GW2, but younger. Best of all, I’m having a good time. Which is what I’m definitely looking for. :)

OK FINE, I definitely caved. I’ve been playing Aion 2. I like it. I’m having fun. I...

If I were fired and someone new was brought in, what is the first thing they would do? from Andy Grove This leads to questioning what change do I think is hard but needs to happen in the team.

We're entering 1995, a huge year for pinball. The game I particularly want to talk about from this episode is Baywatch. The week that I fell in love with pinball, in 2022, Baywatch was one of the games I had access to on free play for the whole week, alongside Swords of Fury, Metallica, Jack*Bot, Star Wars 2017, and Game of Thrones. And I hated it. I found the game too over-the-top and flashy and unclear about what it wanted me to do. I was already struggling to understand pinball rules, and on…

Some of these guides are useful to plural systems. All links tested and working as of October 18 2026.This section in Multiplicity: The Missing Manual gives advice about this for plural systems. Some sections nearby give advice for plural systems who don’t have a therapist, self-help options, and why it’s difficult to find such therapists. https://kinhost.org/Main/ChoosingATherapistThe archive of this article is missing the infographic and the PDF, so please let me know if you have those. The…

Martin Brown, who is the general manager of Nestlé’s coffee and dairy business in Australia, said cappuccino sachets have been the “fastest-growing part of the market” since 2021. We keep a few boxes of cappuccino sachets in the kitchen cupboard for days when we don’t want to walk all of five to ten minutes to a nearby cafe for whatever reason. Too hot, too wet, whatever. Driving isn’t feasible either, unless we decide to go to a neighbouring suburb. Parking is a lottery where we are, and the…

Jim Gray started HPTS 42 years ago, and it still runs the same way at Asilomar with 0 proceedings, 1 track, 100 invited people, and ample discussion breaks. It's one of my favorite events, and I look forward to attending it every two years. This is my...umm...fifth HPTS. I have been attending all of them since 2015, but I seem to have missed it in 2019. Yep, my life is a blur, even for me.Here are my notes from day 1. I will put day 2 and day 3 in a second post.Keynote: Reality is the Final…

Other than the lack of color in the app icon, I like a lot about this. IT IS LITERALLY LIQUID AND GLASS.

1. Sacrifice yourself for someone else. eg. pretend it was your turn to do the dishes even though obviously it’s your sloppy housemate. 2. Give people access to dangerous, but vital, information. eg. contribute photos to Wikipedia pages about body hair. 3. Speak up for those who can’t. eg. say « wooooo » in an eerie voice once in a while to empower any dead people in the area. 4. Be an example to everyone around you. eg. show kids that trying and failing to become a professional fortnite…

Once more, nice and loud for the people in the back: Stop blaming and shaming people for wanting to survive. Biological facts don't care about your weird-ass moralizing. Humans need food and water and shelter. In what we are pleased to call "civilization", other humans have locked access to those things behind an artificial paywall, so humans also need money. You can't sneer your way out of that fact. You don't get to tell people that they have to starve in order to deserve to live.

It feels good to be back. Today my band, The Fourth Section, has released the first new single leading up to our upcoming second album. The single is called From Chicago, With Love and was inspired by the story of a woman I met during a visit to Chicago several years ago. I'm especially proud of the artwork. We made it ourselves. If you like the song, please feel free to get in touch. We always love to hear from fans. We've been working really hard since the release of our first album Paper…

The horror and trauma of decades of warfare is over. The Empire has fallen and peace reigns...which means a return to prominence for the Galactic Racing League. Speeder racers from across the galaxy converge for a new championship, but the rich family of spoiled brat Kestar Bool has basically bought him the championship. Organiser Darius Pax hires the racer Shade to take the fight to Bool, if he can.Star Wars: Galactic Racer is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a racing game in the…

The people who benefit from AI the most need you to THINK that it's inevitable in order to make their money (Photos in this post are mostly unrelated. As always, I'm a highly visual creature and I have a ridiculous photo backlog so I pepper stuff in. enjoy) Here's several of the cats mistaking a sound I made in the kitchen as the treat container so they're gathering around the pole (which I still need to take down and pack as part of the move smdh) in anticipation because I usually chuck them…

Author Under Review:The Salt King. Natasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, August 2026. When I was younger, there was a show, Father Dowling Mysteries, that centered on a Catholic priest and a female detective who solved crimes assigned to them by the local archdiocese. Its standout episode was about the murder of a priest who was looking for treasure in one of the district’s smaller churches. It later turned out that the treasure was salt hidden in said church’s basement. As everyone looked at the salt,…

I've never used Pillowfort, but Nonbinary Neurodivergent Person's notice about how the indie Tumblr clone Pillowfort is going down inspired some brief thoughts of mine. They aren't really about the platform proper, but I figure retrospectives similar to those touching on Cohost's shutdown would work best from actual users anyway. That said, I can see how my thoughts could help people out, if not in an evergreen fashion... so I figure I should just post them. Common wishes regarding onsite…

I know, I know, all the money is in the corporate world and AI right now, but I just don’t understand why 1Password aren’t building their own version of Paperless-ngx. The fundamentals are all there.It would be such a cool thing.

I’ve been a tea nerd for longer than I’ve been a coffee drinker. I’ve always said that I can deal with a bad cup of coffee in exchange for the caffeine boost but I cannot cope with a bad cup of tea. I consider the “diner scenario”: at a diner, I will gladly order a cup of drip coffee from the bottom of a pot that’s been sitting on a Bunn burner at too high of a temperature for too long before I’d order a cup of hot water with a Lipton tea bag dropped in it. Swilly coffee dregs I can tolerate,…

Yum!Image by Joseph on UnsplashThis is my response to the Food Questions Challenge by James, which I really wanted to write about! I love food 😋 So, here are my answers: #What was your favorite food growing up? As someone who grew up in Delhi NCR, my favorite food is unironically Naan with a curry like Chole. This is the comfort food that I can eat every day, and I’m craving it as I’m writing this 😭 With some onion and chutney on the side, it’s just heaven 🫶 Another thing my grandma used to…

Neutrinos don’t interact strongly with regular matter. Countless neutrinos stream through us all the time with no effect. But neutrinos weren’t always so weakly interacting. In the earliest cosmic moments neutrinos still interacted strongly with protons, neutrons, and electrons. All of these particles were in thermal equilibrium for a time until the Universe could expand to a critical point. At about a second after the Big Bang neutrons decoupled from other material particles. They began to act…

From mathematical proofs to biological discoveries, AI is connecting ideas across disciplines, bringing new scale to Don Swanson's "undiscovered public knowledge".

Economists and policy-makers know, in a broad sense, how to respond to a negative shock to aggregate demand in an economy, like the financial meltdown leading to the Great Recession of 2007-09. The financial crisis shrinks demand in the economy, recession hits, and unemployment rises. The government can play a role in softening and shortening the recession through expansionary fiscal policy (spending increases and tax cuts) or monetary policy (lower interest rates). To be clear, this policy…

21:10 - I've been slacking on things I need to do. Apathy is one helluva drug.

Here are some random provisions, sundries, and treasures from my Mongolian Empire-inspired game.Basic PitchYou are the weakest and least loved of your clan. You have been betrayed and driven out of your ancestral herding lands by your former brethren, the cursed Shü Ebsö. It is only by the will of the sky god Dusassu and the host of lesser spirit-gods of grain, wolf, and copper that you all will survive the Endless Plains with no herd save the horses you escaped on. But you are the Rodnu Ebsö,…