The big friggin' appleWent to NYC to visit a friend. This is the friend I went to Japan with - I love him very much. I'd never been to his place though. I never made it over there because I found excuses to not go, and refused to live life to its fullest for whatever gay reason... Unfortunately, New York City is fantastic. I've never seen a place like it. Not even the hyper-modern cities in Japan are like NYC. Nobody there's afraid to go outside. Not once did I feel like a weirdo for just using…

I probably will revise this post in the next 24-36 hours. But hopefully not too much. After a good sleep I suspect I’ll have some edits. Ten years ago I articulated my understanding of “indie web.” I’m cutting and pasting those 2016 words verbatim because they are still what I believe. And it’s still why I consider myself indie web. And I still participate in IndieWeb events. A repost I’m still a believer in the web. The “indie web” some call it now. I’ve had a personal website in one form or…

Wandering along The Wye chucking a lure about - for 11 hours! And perhaps the gentlest takes I've experienced pike fishing - but they fought like stink when they realised they were hooked. A Bulldog accounting for the 14lb 1oz pike (top) and a SG 4Play tempting the 18lb 14oz fish (above). That SG is one smashed up lure! And back to my (tail cropping) self-take photos.

I spent much of Monday in the hospital for “tests” involving various bodily fluids – one more reminder that the human body is profoundly ridiculous. In two weeks I’m scheduled for surgery. The text for the day was Karl Shapiro’s “Hospital,” one of seven poems he published in the July 1941 issue of Poetry. Five months later the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, the U.S. would enter World War II and Shapiro (1913-2000) would write the poems he is best remember for while serving in the Army in…

It’s definitely exhibition season. I took time out from wallpapering to visit the Uckfield show (excellent as usual) and will post some pictures later this week. But first, what have we been doing. Michael was on duty on the Bluebell Railway and caught the 9F on a test run. And the following week went as a punter on to the ‘Giants of Steam’ gala. He sent me these records of the magnificent ‘Duke of Gloucester’. Meanwhile, the usual suspects were playing trains exhibiting at the 17th Reigate…

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Go-Ahead Group’s presence in Kent has been steadily increasing during 2026 so I recently made a couple of visits to catch up on developments. The Group’s ‘Kent Country’ branded operations are part of Go-Ahead London and began a couple of years ago in November 2024, following the company’s success at winning the tender to run the Fastrack network (formerly run by Arriva) including the introduction of a new fleet of Irizar ie tram type battery-electric buses. After a…

I've felt the fires in the distance, finally getting up close to one of the beacons. For a long time the fires scared me. The only shine for so long, before they are fed for the path, for my path. To continue in search of the next, and the next, and the next. Eventually, all the large ones will have been used as feed. The search will continue for subtler and subtler fires. Until finally, you notice, the whole world glows.

you guys i've made a huge mistake by not preparing anything and being tired from working. its starting to feel like fall, i say this because its finally not 80 degrees, and it will probably even rain this week!! i'm burning the trader joes honeycrisp apple candle, this is a stupidly good candle. i buy one every year and savor it. it's only $3 or something else reasonable. i had to work today and i'm on my 4th cup of coffee, which should be my limit. also just so you know, i wrote like 4.8k…

Geoff Mann, London Review of Books: The dubious achievement of prediction markets is to have found a new way to exacerbate and exploit the simultaneously frantic and passive experience of the world that is a defining aspect of our age. Like any kind of gambling, they are enervating. We put our money down and then (unless we are using a hairdryer on an airport thermometer) fidget anxiously till it’s over. The world happens to us. This passivity is characteristic of the politics of those who…

Apple just announced an iPhone that folds, a HomeView that listens and talks, and now, it seems, the company is going to reveal the first Mac laptop with a touchscreen. Since the word “Pro” is in the name of this experience (not an event!), don’t expect any low-cost stuff. There will definitely not be any new MacBook Neo or iPad computers. Besides, AI bubble has not burst yet. ~ Link: Apple Announces Special Event for October 28: ‘Pro and Tell’, by Chance Miller, 9to5mac

Robert Rooney, McSweeny’s: I understand the concerns. After all, I am attempting to assemble a living human being from dead human tissue and bring it to life with electricity, which isn’t generally considered something a person does after carefully considering the possible consequences. But what am I supposed to do—stop? I mean, I want to stop. I should stop. And yet… ~ Link: Won’t Someone Please Stop Me, Dr. Frankenstein, From Building the Creature?, by Robert Rooney, McSweeny’s

There's a spare corner in the barge, so I decided to fill it with a log burner. After all, it gets cold on the cut in winter, and we don't want our sailors to freeze. I looked at a few photos online, and then decided to just mess around with some bits of plastic tube. The result looks OK when seen through the windows, it even has a tiled hearth. If we are going to make smoke, there better be a way to let it out, which means a chimney on the roof. Here, it became apparent that I'd not thought…

For today's installment of Trick or Treat Through 31 Days of Toy Terror I'm finishing up Trick or Treat Studios' Day of the Dead line by taking a look at Dr. Sarah Bowman, the film's primary protagonist and someone who can fight the other zombies in the line. She's a solid choice for the line due to her role in the film, played by actress Lori Cardille, though I do have to admit that she's the least interesting of the figures since she's not a zombie and she doesn't rip apart like Capt. Henry…

My mom was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950. Growing up the youngest of eight kids in a small house off the downtown core, she was quiet, shy, and always the baby. Her three older brothers received the bulk of the family’s praise, attention, and money for education, while the girls were taught to sweep floors, work the stove, and scrub the work clothes clean. My mom used to sit on her front porch and memorize all the license plates of cars that drove by. She’d guess the numbers from a distance,…

Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game is a spin off of the hugely successful Terraforming Mars. The background story is the same. You are mega corporations working on making Mars habitable. Three things need to be achieved. You need to create oceans. You need to increase the atmospheric temperature. You need to increase the oxygen level. Once all three are achieved, the game ends,

When it all comes crashing down, and it will, believe you me it will, there will be people who will be trying to make sense of it all. Some of those people will look to the past in order to build the future, which makes sense until you understand that's what we've been doing for a few thousand years. Some say the past is prologue. Eugene O'Neill wrote "there is no present or future —— only the past, happening over and over again —— now.” I don't know about either of those things. The past sets…

Decision models have exploded onto the scene recently, starting with TypeSafe’s Jev, followed by Perplexity’s Decider, Liquid’s d1, Cloudflare’s Clef, and OpenAI’s Decisions API1. These models promise fast, inexpensive classification. Decision models are an appealing low-cost alternative to LLM judges2 for automated evals. But whether they’re the right choice depends on the cost, performance, and latency requirements of your use case. We’ve also noticed people using the default decision…

One of the perks of being both perpetually unemployed and a credit card nerd is the ability to "afford" to go somewhere on a whim with the help of award travel and the generosity of your best friend who is willing to host you for free. And it turned out to be one of my best decisions... maybe ever? One of my closest friends, initially "just" a language partner, told me last month that he would be headed to the Bay Area for a few weeks on a business trip. His first time in the US. We had met in…

Monday, October 19, 2026 - 20:00 The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Linton goes deeply into the details of the 19th century French conflict between the law and biology around sex categorization. Major category: LHMPTags: LHMP LHMP #582c Linton 2022 Unmaking Sex Chapter 2 About LHMP Full citation: Linton, Anne E. 2022. Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51182-4 Chapter 2 Outlaws from Birth: “Doubtful Sex” and the…

Book review for The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I rated it 4.5 stars. This fantasy/mystery novel was the 2025 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and a rather fun romp of a book that I absolutely sped through. It’s from the perspective of Din, who works for an eccentric investigator named Ana, as they set out to solve a gruesome murder mystery. The world building for this book is great. The pair live in a world where humans augment their abilities (e.g. to have super strength,…

On Tuesday, June 18, 1968, 200 people attended the dedication of the then new Snoqualmie Falls Park in Snoqualmie, Washington. As part of a massive renovation, Puget Sound Power had created a covered observation platform overlooking the majestic and sacred Snoqualmie Falls and the roadside Snoqualmie Falls Lodge known for their dining room. At the... The post Snoqualmie Falls, Lodge and Vista Point Postcard by Smith-Western Co. – CT-292 appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

I’ll jump straight to the headline: I’m calling time on my role as CEO at Welcoming Australia. When you believe in an idea and its potential, you build it in a way someone else can lead. That’s been my modus operandi since I began community-centred work; by that measure, it's almost time to hand over to someone else. In May 2027, at our National Symposium in Melbourne, I will deliver my final address as CEO of Welcoming Australia after more than 11 years in the organisation. The comfortable…

From the desk of Benji Welner in Stanford, CA. I do not believe that software engineering is undergoing a tectonic shift due to large language models. I have, at this point, seen a large enough sample of code produced by the frontier of so-called artificial intelligence: it is often impressive but always incomplete. The nature of a computer program is that it does exactly what you tell it to do. Any programmer would tell you that bugs are almost never an error on the computer’s side of things,…

Going all the way back to the early days of The New Leaf Journal in November 2020, I have published five articles on the subject of rotting decorative pumpkins in Brooklyn. We have so many articles on rotting pumpkins, as well as happier non-rotting pumpkins, that I created a collection page for the topic. While I courageously bring the surely international New Leaf Journal audience important reportage about decomposing pumpkins in Brooklyn, I would prefer – for aesthetic reasons – to not have…

Winter Garden Shine – New York, New York I shot this inside the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway, where my wife and I watched Mamma Mia! Like most, if not all, Broadway shows, photography is not allowed during the performance. I get it. It can be distracting to the performers, the nearby audience, and even the photographer. If you’re busy taking pictures, you’re not concentrating on the performance. That said, I wish I could take pictures during the performance because, to me, photography is…

It’s hard to believe it’s been over 20 years since we took these two photos in Tucumcari, New Mexico. We were on a cross-country Jeep tour in our first Jeep (2004 Wrangler Sport X). It was the day after chasing our first storm with golf ball sized hail in Amarillo, Texas.

t2linux (CC-BY-SA-4.0) It’s nearly impossible to buy reasonably priced compute hardware in the current market. Consumer memory has regressed to 2009 prices and high-end video card compute has skyrocketed12. While looking around for DDR4 RAM and systems on eBay, I discovered 2019 Mac Pro units at seemingly reasonable prices. Their value dropped as Apple abandoned the Intel architecture. Although Apple released a version of this model with the newer Apple Silicon, it couldn’t even utilize the…

There's been conversations on Twitter about what it means to "snap out of depression" lately, and the implications of it and how tiring/ableist it can sound has weighed on my mind a lot. Especially in wake of my deep depressive episode that lasted for a good while (a month plus, even) which made me think about my life up until now, living with this for more than 10 years as I had. "You have to snap out of it someday, no one but yourself can save you" is frankly terrible advice, in my…

Tonight I am stepping outside my usual range for this year’s challenge. This one was my wife's choice because she likes werewolves and Alexander Skarsgård. Most of what I have been watching has been from 1984 to 1987, but as I was watching, I began to think about something specifically for my Valhalla, Alaska, setting. It has wolves, isolation, strange local beliefs, and the tournaq, or tornrak, wolf-demon.Hold the Dark seemed like a good choice for all of this.Hold the Dark (2018)Medora Slone…

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” ― Mahatma Gandhi #100DaysToOffload (No. 180) #prayer #faith #quotes