I replaced this blog’s Python spell checker that took more than three minutes to run with the new rubocop-spellcheck. I really love RuboCop for its standard approach to linting and auto-correction, which solves the difficult problem of deciding between tabs and spaces (use defaults). My typical implementation in Ruby projects is to add a standard .rubocop.yml, run rubocop -a, ask an AI to fix easy fixable violations, then run rubocop --auto-gen-config to mark all remaining ones as an exception.…

I’ve mentioned before my interest in the history and development of nuclear weapons. Currently, I’m reading The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers renown). In the first chapter, Ellsberg talks about his time working at the RAND Corporation during the missile gap years when the U.S. thought it was falling behind the Soviet Union in nuclear capabilities. Many of his descriptions sound strikingly similar to the rhetoric coming out of…

pressed flower collection 🔗 https://things.pagecord.com/a-scan-of-dried-flowers

I own two Pan Handle Rusty Route cabooses and one is in far better shape than the other. I'm starting with the most distressed and in need of repair, number 648. Built from a Silver Streak kit with full interior and lighting, the car is a fine example of what could be done by a skilled modeler in the 1960s to create a car with detail and charm. Sadly it has seen better days, but happily the repairs needed are straightforward.While I'd like to light this car again in order to showcase the…

I never used to be a peakbagger. For a long time, I never even really hiked to the tops of mountains. And then, sort of as a joke, I built an entire trip to Death Valley's Owlshead Mountains to hike the Lowest Peak in the Park. Because if you're going to hike a peak, why not the lowest? That led to hiking the highest, and I'm now a little more than halfway through hitting the highest peaks in the Death Valley ranges. I'm still not a peakbagger, but I have found that I like a good summit. Today…

In the before times, when we existed in the actual physical space we lived in and not in the endless screaming void of misinformation and FOMO that we call the internet, we learned about upcoming shows from listings by local promoters in things like alt weekly newspapers or even posters on bulletin boards, light posts, […] The post Robber Robber – “The Sound It Made” appeared first on Space Echo.

Detail of the arch on the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge that was built to accommodate historic Fort Point. The post Iron Arch appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

Somewhere in the waters around the Galápagos Islands lives a fish that appears to have applied an enthusiastic coat of bright red lipstick, put on its grumpiest expression and decided that swimming is entirely overrated.Meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini.With its spectacular scarlet pout, flattened body and decidedly unconventional approach to getting around, this little marine

This one is a bit different because of this: I don’t know how long it’s going to be until CLZ is back up and I didn’t want to hold off on posting the Pull List (even though no one would miss it if I did), so we’ll just do a really basic one. Here’s what I bought this week: Action Comics #1103, Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King #2, Dark Knights of Steel II #4, The Last Starfighter: Beta #1, Superman Unlimited #18, Wonder Woman #38 Kingdom Come 30th Anniversary Jenny Frison variant and David…

16-10-26 This was a brilliant day out. I'd seen a couple of folk (separately Caroline and Richard) post photos of the bearded reedlings near Errol. (Previously known as bearded tits.) Last year Mary and I failed to see them mid-November, in a drive-by shooting attempt on the way home after a family visit to Aberdeenshire. I knew Mary wasn't that keen for more of the same, so tried to form a plan to get there solo.My first thought was the train. The nearest stations to Errol are Perth and, less…

The PHP Foundation: PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 fix two critical vulnerabilities that can allow unauthenticated remote code execution. All PHP users are strongly encouraged to update immediately. Who is at risk: all PHP installations serving web requests, including PHP-FPM, Apache with mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed. We consider the risk highest for mod_php, with a demonstrated exploit where an unauthenticated request can trigger the attack before any application code…

Software Developers have been promoted into incompetence Download audio Developers have been promoted into incompetence # My Patreon The video version on Youtube. With the age of “AI” and agents, software developers have been promoted into incompetence. And it all comes down to comedy and satire. Sort of. That probably requires some explanation. If you’re actually working in an industry – any industry – reading about management theory is often indistinguishable from reading comedy. Not just…

Wednesday, October 21, 2026 - 09:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Often when a book or article brings in literary criticism to discuss a historic topic, I feel like it's more of an intellectual game. But in this case, it really does feel like the literary ant the real-life aspects are so solidly braided together that the approach makes sense. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #582e Linton 2022 Unmaking Sex Chapter 4 About LHMP Full citation: Linton, Anne E. 2022. Unmaking Sex: The Gender…

As a younger Alan, I could never forecast a future where I might be writing about enjoying cooking. That’s for other people! While I always haved loved food and eating it, strangely I am now at a point where the process, especially the inventiveness of it, is rather exciting. I mean to go from a collection of various ingredients to a meal one can share is enjoyable. As right now I am making zucchini pancakes without any kind of recipe nor measusing ingredients, loosely based on how my mom…

At least by American standards, I’m in decent shape. Military discipline and body dysmorphia keep me in the gym most days, fighting the natural degradations of age. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked in favor of entropy. Since moving back to the US, I’ve been immersed in the Standard American Diet (SAD). Sugar, sodium, saturated fat, preservatives, all processed to the nth degree for superior shelf life and addictive potential. Portions large enough to sustain three people. And after a year…

Samii and I got married 11 years ago, on this day! It randomly happened to be the unofficial, "Back to the Future Day," as well, due to how, in the flick, "Back to the Future II," October 21st, 2015 was the exact day a still-young Marty McFly visits when he travels to the (then) future and meets a bunch of old iterations of people he knows. 11 years later, here we are! I'm so thankful to Samii for our awesome boys, Clarkson and Gibson. Much love to her and our two kiddos as we commemorate our…

Photo by Richard Kalvar I know longer remember where I found this photo by Richard Kalvar, a well-known American photographer who got his start in the 1970s. Don’t you wonder how he captured it? Was he hired as an event photographer for what looks like a pretty boring, organized luncheon and suddenly lucked out at the irreverent moment of protest? What a wonderful contrast between the very dressed up older woman and her childish bubble blowing. But there’s more going on here. It looks like she…

★★★☆: I enjoyed the heavily stylized action scenes and the plentiful practical effects. The overall concept was a little thin and the non-action parts had weak dialogue, but it was a fun ride overall. FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

★★★☆: A fun premise bolstered by a truly unhinged Jim Carrey performance. The physicality, the facial expressions, the frenetic babbling. No one else can have such an impassioned conversation with a blue pen. He was such a force in his heyday. FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

—Ellie Black

ACROYEAR & TIME TRAVELER MICRONAUTS REACTION+ FIGURES (SUPER 7) The list of current toy lines I’m actively invested in these days is a very short one. Mostly, it’s the McFarlane Super Powers and Super 7’s Micronauts. I’ve loved Micronauts since I was a kid, but it’s been a lot of loving from afar, because vintage pieces in good shape are tricky, and the attempts at reviving the brand can be even trickier. But, it does seem like Super 7’s been having some success with their go at it, and I’ve…

S.H. Figuarts has really been pushing the One Piece line lately and they're doing a solid job of beginning to fill out some rosters/ teams/ storylines. I mean, One Piece has been going for decades and there are so many different characters and arcs, but it really feels like there's a renewed effort on Bandai's part this year. The main pre-time skip cast has been getting a lot of attention lately and now we have a "first appearance" version of Tony Tony Chopper, the doctor of the Straw Hat…

The Dark Tower is a Mythic Bastionland campaign of my own creation inspired by both Browning’s Poem and King’s western/fantasy series. It relies on the core text in most ways, but has several notable changes, the most important of which is that rather than “seek the Myths” the knights all swore to SEEK THE DARK TOWER. There are five player characters: Sir Dorza the Moat Knight (he/him). Sir Lucian the Halo Knight (he/him). Sir Judoc the Story Knight (he/him). Sir Serana the Dust Knight…

In March, I'll give a lecture at Villanova on "The Real Unitary Executive Problem." My argument will be that the Framers erred by creating a president who is both the head of state and head of government. America managed this problem fairly well through a series of norms and fictions that lasted until the end of the Cold War. Today, though, the original misunderstanding about executive power is doing significant harm. Most constitutional democracies reject the Framers' model. They instead have…

Learn how to use Tachyon, Python's sampling profiler. “Tachyon” is a new sampling profiler that was introduced in Python 3.15. It provides a CLI that allows running and profiling scripts or attaching to running processes. Tachyon logoIn this article you'll learn what statistical profiling is and how to use the Tachyon CLI to identify performance bottlenecks in your code. 15 days of Python 3.15 To celebrate the release of Python 3.15, over the next 15 business days I'll be writing about a new…

I am thankful that, in 2026, a few anachronisms still exist in small town Indiana. Ladies and gentlemen, the White Steamer in Washington. Everyone clearly knows each other. Cash only. Menu on the wall with those black press-in letters. Old men at the bar talking about the weather. 10/10

When we read Shirley Jackson's story from the Saturday Evening Post admonishing you to embrace newcomers to your community even if they forthrightly admit that they use magic, "Strangers in Town," we learned that Hugh B. Cave also had a story in that famous magazine in the year 1959. Today we'll read that Saturday Evening Post story of Cave's, "The Mission," but first we'll sample some of the genre work for which Cave is famous, a long blood-drenched horror piece from a 1934 issue of Dime…

So in case you missed the news from my last blog post (I haven’t exactly made it to the cover of Newsweek), I have released a demo for my space based autobattler Ridiculous Space Battles. You can grab the demo from here. In the run-up to release I knew a bunch of players had said they really don’t like the idea of grid-based movement, which marked a change from Gratuitous Space Battles, but I thought people would be won over when they tried it… Anyway, to cut a long story short, almost everyone…

The PHP security releases of 21 October add a new setting: memory_hard_limit_percent. It changes what memory_limit means. memory_limit is now a soft limit. A second, higher limit sits above it. A process that reaches that one is ended on the spot, with exit code 137. No shutdown functions, no error page, no line in your PHP error log.

I found in Newsonat by Mark Rogers his 5 Ws of Reading. So here are mine. WHO - An author you would love to have a ‘one to one’ with? That’s definitely James Altucher. I’ve binge-read almost all his books. I found Choose Yourself when I was on my way out of burnout and it inspired me to adopt a daily healthy practice—that idea alone changed my life. Although I’ve stalking James a lot, that probably I’d have to come up with good questions. WHAT - What genre do you most gravitate to? I try to…