From the desk of Benji Welner in the sky between Austin and the Hamptons. I continue to insist that winter is the best quarter at Stanford. And that late is better than never. Academics Classes were sort of hit-or-miss. I don’t know how that should translate into my enrollment practices going forward but I will certainly consider my options. ME103: Product Realization (Design and Making) Woah! As it turns out, metal is a big leap up from plastics. To quote a dazzlingly handsome fella’s project…
Setting sun reflects in the water at 5th St. in Hermosa Beach. 5thストリートのサンセット ハーモサビーチ、5thストリートの水面に映る夕日。
Player CharactersCai Singh Avery Skitnik Cosimo Loperfido Mark Nakamura Guanyat Secundo Emma Kowalski Ernest Finns (Sic) The good ship and crew arrived on Newcomb and were shuttled off to prison. The warden gave a big, self aggrandizing speech about the virtues of hard work and Mark Nakamura tried to ask a question but the guards beat his head in twice. Things got worse for Mark as later in the showers he was jumped by some fellow prisoners and got his head bashed in with a bar of soap in a…
Frontier LLMs are becoming infrastructure. People increasingly use them as the interface to the world's knowledge. They write software, learn, conduct research, communicate, and solve problems through them. As they become general-purpose infrastructure, they should increasingly be treated like other infrastructure. The closest historical analogy is the telephone network. Telephone companies made enormous upfront investments to build nationwide networks. Society allowed them to recover those…
Another “blast from the past” with The Explodo Boys, a Minnesota-based multi-genre band from 1979. The was original was an early James Brown release on the Federal label in 1960. It reached #72 on the Billboard charts before fading away into obscurity. When I made this recording the Explodo Boys band was on the verge of splitting apart. They had one last week booked at Bootlegger Sam’s and
What is Magic, Daddy? My little one asked. I can see myself in your eyes when you are smiling, I answered. I don’t know whether she got it or not, but she smiled.
In Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), the historian Allen C. Guelzo quotes the nineteenth-century English Liberal statesman Richard Cobden, who asked, “If the United States go wrong what hope have we of the civilized world in our turn?” Guelzo replies: “Preventing that wrong turn was what the preservation of the Union was about. Emancipating American slaves would remove the cause of that wrong, and make the Union worth preserving. But neither of them would be possible…
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, at a Meta town hall reported by Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen at Reuters: In retrospect, he said, the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” and that the company’s bets on the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” Zuckerberg was referring to AI agents, automated systems that can execute tasks on behalf of a user. Conversations he was having “with our top…
Ever struggle with reconciling free will with the possibility of an all-knowing God? You are not alone. This article examines some wisdom from C.S. Lewis and my personal life experiences to reconcile these seemingly contradictory ideas. The post Reconciling Free Will with God’s Omniscience: Evidence from C.S. Lewis and My Life first appeared on The Simple Catholic. The post Reconciling Free Will with God’s Omniscience: Evidence from C.S. Lewis and My Life appeared first on The Simple Catholic.
Buy an EMF meter before buying electronic toys for kidsThe Electromagnetic Field (EMF) is a health concern. The EMF causes ionization in the body, creating free radicals. These free radicals cause oxidative stress, leading to DNA damage and inflammation. And as with everything else bad, kids are more vulnerable than adults. Electronic toys and EMF Electronic toys, especially with moving parts, usually have a motor. And for that motor to function, a temporary magnetic field is created using the…
Rick Beato recently interviewed Mike Elizondo, and they got to talking about sending mixes to other people for their opinion. My favorite point came when Rick asked him, in reference to Mike sending mixes to Dr. Dre, 'Once you decide to do that, can't you just kind of get in his head and figure out what he's going to like and not like?' Mike agreed completely. This is something I've talked about here before. If you're in a band, for instance, and you're going to send something to the other…
As a child, I once mistakenly pressed the "B" button in the elevator in my grandparent's Miami Beach apartment building, and found myself intruding on the custodial staff at lunch time. There was an absolutely revolting smell I couldn't identify. It felt like a violent attack (if you told me it was mustard gas, I'd have believed you). I mashed the "door close" button, desperately trying to escape. It was garlic. As a child, my parents would drive around the Lower East Side looking for parking…
Yeah, so... this happened: LN Daily on lloydnebres.net As the initial engagement with Codex — the first project I do with it — I decided to put part of the corpus of my blog when I was at Finalis, the eponymous LN Daily, on my domain. [ in progress... ]
“I realised fun things wouldn’t come my way just by waiting for them. I thought when I got into junior high, it was time for me to make a change. I’d let the world know I wasn’t a girl who was happy sitting around waiting. And I’ve done my best to become that person.” –Haruhi […]
In their day, Beatties didn't just sell British model trains, they were a supplier of the foreign stuff too. In those days, modelling anything beyond these shores was seen as weird; it still is in a small way today. Still, you could go to your local branch and pick up catalogues to get your fill of German goodness, which is why I've acquired a few for the collection - 1976 to 79. Looking through, there is very little familiar to my eyes, but then I'm no expert on continental trains. Some of the…
This is David, your adjacent possible guide in the search for signal among noise. You're reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for curious minds who love when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!». As every Friday, I'm here to help you make sense of what’s happening, and imagine what could be. It's great to have you.1. Adjacent Possible«Ambition sets our destination, but adjacency sets the next move.» I love the concept of the «adjacent possible» – and when I say I…
There’s an intersection along a neighborhood greenway near me that I thought might be a cool place to paint an intersection mural. (Not that I have any experience with large scale painting lol) I wrote up a loose proposal for our neighborhood safety grant program, but the organizer wasn’t confident it would be accepted. I reached out to the city and staff told me that there is interest in painted intersections from Council but it’s low priority… so an actual project proposal might be enough to…
I had the privilege to meet up with Derek Sivers who inspired me to start this blog. Here is his write-up.
But all new images, a bit of a reprise for the Torgano Wild West demi-rondes I got at last year's Plastic Warrior show, from Adrian Little, to remind those with a bit of spare time this Saturday, that if they get their arses to Whittton (Twickenham), they too might find something like this to take home, at the best Toy Soldier show in the calendar, but I'll be there, looking too! Held at The
It’s my last photo Friday from the Mediterranean and most of the photos are from a quick trip to the Argive Heraion, Nafplio, and the pyramid at Elleniko. It’s impossible not to take a cool landscape photo from the Argive Heraion. Most of my shots at Nafplio were slightly out of focus for some user-related reason, but even an out of focus squirrel occasionally finds a nut. The pyramid at Elleniko is also endlessly photogenic.
Playing the game with the WizTerm client. There are apparently even more advanced client applications. Multi-User Dungeon AKA "MUD1," "British Legends" United KingdomIndependently developedWritten in 1978 for a DEC PDP-10 at the University of Essex Date Started: 12 June 2026Date Ended: 27 June 2026Difficulty: Moderate (3.0/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) Summary: The original Multi-User Dungeon combines the attributes and leveling of an RPG, the text…
After last week's announcement that the next book from Bear Alley will be THE SHRINKER I have very little news. The proof arrived, looked good, I made a couple of minor changes and I'll be ordering a second proof. After that I'll be taking the usual "early bird" orders ahead of official publication with a bit of a discount, and then we'll have the book on sale as usual.For your
Back at college, I remember walking up to my friend Mike’s house on Halloween and seeing him frantically painting bright, red briefs onto a pair of nice blue jeans. He was really going at it, too — slapping the wet brush all over the crotch and pockets, wagging his tongue out like a dog. Of course, an hour later he showed up to the party as Superman. And though he didn’t leap any tall buildings in a single bound he did manage to drink most of the punch bowl faster than a speeding bullet. More…
Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, July 6 through Sunday, July 12! This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes: When the event will take place What the event is Where the event will take place Who is holding the event This week’s events Monday, July 6 Tuesday, July 7 Wednesday, July 8 Thursday, July 9 Friday, July 10 Saturday, July 11 Sunday, July 12 Monday, July 6 Event…
"To be cringe is to be free." My friend said this today while we were speeding away to a mystery destination that I assumed was near the IKEA she and I patronize when we want to eat, catch up, and walk around a bit but what was actually a different IKEA in a different city altogether. The drive was good and the conversation was lively and for a while there I forgot about the things that were bothering me and just remembered how fun it can be to just be a guy in a passenger seat in a car going…
I came to Bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ by chance. I was looking for a home for some writing, radio transcripts, and a small profile online displaying some of my published fiction. Because I have no social media presence and I regularly submit work to literary magazines, I thought it was time to step forward a little, to enter the digital world in the most subtle way. This time, though, I made myself a promise. If I started a blog, I would keep it active. That promise came from a comment made by one of the guests…
Today turned out to be a bad pain day, so I didn’t get much accomplished. I did my morning rounds, as usual, but as the day wore on, things just kept getting worse – and I was mostly just sitting at my computer, crocheting some new items for the market on Saturday, not attempting anything … Continue reading Our 2026 Garden: flowers, tomatoes and strawberries
Just like publishing a book and going to print, passing your Gerber files to a PCB assembly house usually results in days and days of checking everything is correct, pushing the button, and immediately finding an error somewhere when it gets back. Kind of makes you wonder what the fuck you were doing during those hours and hours of checking! I had been holding off pressing the button on this one due to the pathetic level of the NZ$, getting 2 of these baby’s assembled at JLPCB worked out at…
You've probably heard that boiling water kills weeds. It's one of those tips that floats around-usually mentioned right after vinegar and just before something involving Dawn dish soap. But does it actually work? Sort of. On some weeds. In certain places. If you do it right. It won't touch anything with a deep taproot unless...Read More
