The latest set from LEGO® Architecture, 21066 New York City – The Big Apple continues The LEGO Group's enduring love of the city that never sleeps. Its simple colour palette does not mean there are no new elements: there are recolours to enjoy. Let's take a bite and see what's inside.Continue reading »
When I was a little girl, I had a secret reading spot.We had an attic that you could only reach via a wooden ladder that was hidden behind a ceiling panel. In my eyes, that little rope on the ceiling was the gateway to my reader’s heart.The roof was slanted, and on the sides, my mom had made curtains to hide all sorts of occasional use stuff, like Christmas decorations, luggage and out-of-season clothes.One of the things hiding behind those curtains was a stack of mattresses.I loved to sneak up…
Late, for the Summer Solstice This was meant to be walked on 21st June. It was also meant to be walked at sunset. My first excuse is that I have been busy on the coastal walking. My second excuse is that we have the 1am England Mexico game this weekend. I am not staying/getting up late twice in succession. My third excuse, I would be shot for lighting fires in the tinderbox heatwave we are experiencing.Summer Solstice: The Longest DayJune brings the great pivot of the year: the Summer Solstice,…
Wired: “Satellite technology is being used to streamline rescue efforts in Venezuela following the two earthquakes that struck on June 24. Space agencies have shared images with emergency authorities and the Venezuelan government that not… More
Whenever I find myself needing to update a previous blog post, I either correct it inline and add a small note on top, for small tweaks, or write a whole new piece for larger changes. My last blog post talked about how to use CSS to style a "block" such that it acted like a form radio button. When I worked on that demo, I was a bit worried about accessibility. I did one quick check with an online tool, and thought I was ok. I was not. When I shared my post on LinkedIn, Kevin Bonett shared this…
A typical, unfiltered view around town. ☺️
Most Fridays, I share a handful of pieces that caught my eye at the intersection of technology, media, and society.Did I miss something important? Send me an email to let me know.Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe for free.OpenAI proposes handing Trump administration 5% stakeIn order to ward off backlash against AI and curry favor with the Trump administration, Sam Altman has floated the idea of giving 5% of OpenAI to a wealth fund that pays dividends to both the government and citizens…
It suddenly occurred to me today that it's actually pretty strange to strive to do most things by myself in an overly independent way. I have this romantic idea about solitude and independence. That it's this perfect state of being where I can be my true self and thrive. A thought that I am not quite a whole enough person to deserve being around others. An easy way to not feel like a burden to anyone or feel like I will let anyone down. A kind of shame and embarrassment that I treat with…
Since gradient.horse went online in January 2026, six months have passed, and more than 600 000 horses (and non-horses) were drawn. There are now more horses on gradient.horse than in the wild. The image model I trained to filter out vandalism works very well, but it also hides a lot of ingenious drawings. You could see them if you’d activate the SHOW NON-HORSES setting, but most people do not. Interestingly, there are some topics that appear again and again (besides the obvious desire for…
The 4th of July hasn’t felt the same to me in quite some time. The country I was born and doesn’t feel the same as it once did. Yet it does. In ways I wish I could ignore. Those are obvious observations many share, I’m sure. To me they are painful ones. Very painful. I’m not one who ever believed that this country (or any country), given the way governments and people work, was divinely founded or inspired to do what is right. Humankind is too arrogant, too selfish, and too human to think that…
At the start of the week, I posted about Horror Movie rules and the Final Girl. The topic of the Steven Jackson Games Magazine's Slasher Flick. I had never played that, but I did know about the RPG Slasher Flick: Director's Cut from Spectrum Games. I went back to Slasher Flick to see what it has that I can use to help flesh out my ideas for Jackson, IL. Obviously, Slasher Flick leans hard into the whole slasher sub-genre of horror, whereas Jackson is more supernatural horror. The list of movies…
Surprise! Today’s post is about a video from Periscope Films from sixty years ago on the fundamental building blocks of computers from way back then. Right off we’re told that computers no longer rely on primative things like electromechanical relays (gags) or vacuum tubes (wretches). NOW computers are made of TRANSITORS, and we truly are living in the future! (18 minutes) The cool thing is, while they’re much faster now denser now, and faster, and we have much simpler ways of interacting with…
Thought it was about time we did another one of these. Looking through my archives, I found a bunch of arcade production line photographs that to my knowledge, haven’t been shared before. I originally posted some arcade factory pictures exactly a decade ago here – which is also worth checking out if you missed it. (Holy smokes, is the blog really over 10 years old now?) We’re going to jump around a bit, and these images are in no particular order, but let’s start at the fledgling early years of…
The best thing that happened this week It's been a really productive week with a lot of meetings (yes, those can be productive) and work done. I'm currently moving slowly on the migration of our production cluster to use Envoy Gateway. So far so good. It's almost suspicious how smooth the migration is. My iPhone game Burst is doing very well in the App Store. I've got people saying it's quite addicting and a great game overall. Especially the fact that it's free and doesn't show any ads is…
Source Every U.S. state has experienced temperatures of at least 100°F – even Alaska.The hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States was 134°F (56.7°C), measured at Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913. It remains the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded anywhere on Earth.Many states have also reached temperatures well above 115°F (46.1°C). During the Dust Bowl of 1936, North Dakota soared to 121°F (49.4°C) despite lying just 150 miles (241 km) from the Canadian…
Hey everybody, I have a really important update for you all. Anastasia has found a new spot to sleep in, and it’s fucking fabulous. She found it the other day when I was going through an old cabinet for my lady things (pads), and OMG why have I been hiding it for this long!?!?!?! It’s got a box to sit in inside of a cabinet. *SWOON* Can it get more perfect? I’ll tell you where it is, but if your name is Sunny then STOP READING RIGHT NOW HE’S NOT ALLOWED TO KNOW BECAUSE HE’LL JUMP IN AND SNIFF…
Link: Cascade PBS launches Local Public as standalone streaming tech company, by Matthew Keys at The DeskI’ve got some complicated feelings about this announcement from Cascade PBS:“Cascade PBS, the non-profit television station serving western Washington state, has spun out its technology division into a separate company that will help similar public broadcasters carve out their own streaming and digital identities.The new company, Local Public, will help develop streaming applications for…
@openmentions.com For 99% of problems that us computer people fix, we’re just googling the problem for you.
Who even BUYS physical media anymore? Asked the guy whose experience with gaming is exclusively on his phone and a PlayStation 5, whose only interaction with music as a medium is via Spotify and Walmart radio. Who buys physical media, anyway? A question I’ve been seeing a lot lately, ever since Sony announced that they’re killing the medium and experience of owning things, now, and forever. But we’ve been through this song and dance before. Many times, actually. Spotify has been slowly killing…
The team is finishing our last bit of summer break, and we’ll be back next
I’ll go first. I love the way living on the coast tempers extreme weather. Heat waves are slightly less hot, and cold snaps are slightly less cold. I never knew I loved the sea air until I started spending time in London. Coming back to Thanet was like rediscovering something I did not realise that I missed.
Pretty grim day of news in the industry today, with Salma Alam-Naylor stepping away from developer relations work permanently, Josh Comeau taking a sabbatical from making courses and GSAP’s once-vibrant forums descending into a ghost town. The reason your token guzzler “produces” anything that could be described as “good” is because of the years of hard work from people that actually care deeply. The reason what we do was fun was because of the soul that these great people — along with many,…
98% sounds like a lot. If someone wins the lottery 98% of the times they play, they are clearly blessed. Getting a top mark (e.g.: 10/10) on exams 98% of the time will likely lead to an honour diploma. But a restaurant where clients don’t get of food poisoning 98% of time is getting people sick on a monthly (or even weekly) basis. If an employer pays their employees 98% of the times, I definitely wouldn’t want to work there. If I pay before leaving a restaurant only 98% of the time, I’ll be in…
The blip is over. We have Fable back. Utah teapot: happy fable/mythos easter Wednesday, to those who celebrate Here is the official letter restoring Fable, great job everyone. Notice it is addressed to Tom Brown, not to Dario Amodei. Anthropic had to make the controls more stupid for now, but this is a big win. j⧉nus: YES!!! I’m really proud of Anthropic for their successful negotiation with the government. Also positive update on the government being sane and possible to cooperate with. Afaik…
Link: Journalism Has the Receipts. It Won’t Use Them., by Yoni Greenbaum in Backstory & StrategyArts organizations learned long ago to prove their economic value with hard numbers: attendance, tourism revenue, multiplier effects. News, as Yoni Greenbaum argues here, likes to cling to civic virtue and assume that the work should speak for itself.“Journalism operated on a commercial advertising revenue model for over 150 years. Publishers sold readers to advertisers, while editors fretted about…
When I talk to my cats, I do this in a special voice (don't judge me; I know many people do this!) but even after all these years, my "I'm talking to a cat" voice does not elicit any response from them. It's as if they are unable to hear the difference between my regular voice and my cat voice. Now, imagine you're on the planet Arion-7. An ugly bugger of an alien slowly and ominously moves toward you, growling, with highly acidic saliva dripping from its teeth and the corners of its mouth (yes,…
Traps & Treachery has received more use in my D&D games than any book outside of the core rules. Originally Published March 14th, 2002 If a publisher walked up to me and said, “Justin, I want to produce a D20 sourcebook. What should I do first?” Then I would say: “Buy a copy of Traps & Treachery so you can see how to do it right.” CONTENTS Traps & Treachery is a 172-page, hardback D20 supplement which retails for $24.95. Although printed in black and white, this makes it roughly equivalent to…
Andy King writes: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗱’𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘄𝘆𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗽𝗼𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗮 𝗚𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗲 My wife called to me. A constable was at the door. He handed me a subpoena to appear for a deposition in the case of Francesca Gino v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Srikant Datar. The subpoena puzzled us. I don’t believe I’ve ever met Francesca Gino, and I am certainly not an expert on her case. Why not call me or email me with any questions? As directed, I arrived at the offices of Ropes & Gray,…
I was recently summoned to a meeting in Stockholm, a city I had somehow managed to avoid despite living in Copenhagen for years. My Swedish experience, up to this point, consisted entirely of trips to Malmö — the closest Swedish city to Denmark and, more importantly, home to a Costco. As an American living abroad, I am duty-bound to report there every six months so the proper authorities know I'm still alive and to procure my ceremonial barrel of peanut butter pretzels. It's less a shopping…
