pain When I was a kid, I used to watch my mom work a lot after school. One of the things that stood out to me as a dumb child was the fact that she had thousands of unread emails. Of course, I wanted to be a mature adult too - when I opened my first email, it was a bit sad to see no notifications. my first received email, kind of nostalgic in a way Of course, that meant I was signing up for random things to get numbers - turning on notification emails, news updates from MSN, that kind of thing.…

The first few days of using Linux on vacation was a struggle. My Debian 13 based computer did not want to stay on the WiFi and was dropping every 120 seconds or so. It turns out the connection was not gracefully handling the varying signal strength fluctuations and subsequent jumping from node to node. I was not in the mood to deal with the issue, but I did because I only brought my Linux laptop and my phone. I had no backup. That was on purpose, because while technology was not the focus of…

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 397-400: ON AUGUST 17, 1945, three days after the emperor announced on the radio Japan’s total defeat, Prince Higashikuni became the first (and most probably the last) prime minister chosen from the imperial house. It was up to him to disarm the nation, hand over the country to the Allied occupation forces, sign the document accepting Japan’s unconditional surrender, and, most critically, raise the morale of the thoroughly…

[I don’t often write what might be called ‘diary entries’, but for some reason I felt compelled to write this one. I don’t keep a diary, so I had to post it here. Caveat Lector] I seem to be losing the motivation to do things — to do most anything, really. I’m not depressed or unhappy about this, or anything, just uninterested in doing things that would seem to require considerable focus, attention, and energy. Sign of age, perhaps. For example: I have almost entirely ceased reading fiction,…

NIST published a set of elliptic curves for cryptography in 2000. The seeds for the curves were supplied by the NSA, and cryptographers suspected the agency may have installed backdoors in the curves. And not without reason: the NSA did insert a backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator. Two days ago researchers at Anthropic [1] showed that the NIST curves were not seeded with a backdoor. The rest of this post will give the background necessary to appreciate this result. The security…

“Stathas pleaded guilty in 2023 to enticing a minor to engage in unlawful sexual activity” (18 U.S.C. § 2422(b)). He was sentenced to 180 months in prison and 10 years of supervised release. As part of the arrest and investigation, the police seized Stathas’ car, cellphone, wallet, and other electronics. Per 18 U.S.C. § 2428(a)(1), the judge should have ordered (but did not) a forfeiture of “any property, real or personal, that was used or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the…

Following Wednesday’s successful one-day stoppage, there were meetings of union members yesterday (Friday) to set up roster’s and make other preparations for similar industrial action on Wednesday 21st October. On Friday evening, however, a message was sent round indicating that next week’s strike action had been suspended on the grounds that a process had been agreed to construct a process for formal pay talks. That announcement made it onto the news last night. It is of course a good thing…

A Fiery Skipper Butterfly looking quite regal.

Disclaimer: These are my own thoughts and opinions. They don’t reflect those of my employer. I’m discussing my own personal feelings about AI. I think it’s fair to say everyone is having to grapple with this tech, whether it’s how to use it or how to avoid it. The following represents a snapshot of my grappling, nothing more. LLM coding advancements both impress and terrify me and I don’t know what I think about it or how to cope with it. I feel like I will be able to build things I never have…

Third time's the charm So, to cut to the chase: I guess I’m a guy who knits, now. I’ve been inspired by knitters such as Cynthia, Anna, and Daniel, (and many more folks!) who not only share their beautiful projects online, but have also helped me a lot with their advice and encouragement. Thank you all! I’ve always had fond memories of knitting: I’ve learned it from my Gran as a child. I don’t remember knitting anything more substantial than a scarf for my stuffed monkey. We made him jeans…

October haul. 3 in means I need to depart with 3 books. Trying to build that sweet spot of a library.

One of the hardest things about being on vacation is missing Truman back home. Mike and Chris are taking care of him and I’m sure he’s hanging out with the dogs, but I still miss him when we’re out of town. I snapped this photo the Friday before we left for vacation. He has taken up with getting into the empty box on my shelves in my home office, usually between 14:30 and 15:00 (2:30 and 3:00 pm). Sometimes he naps, other times it appears that he’s trying to use The Force to will me to give him…

1. ASMR is that full-body tingling some people get when listening to sounds like gentle tapping or whispering. It is detectable in the brain using EEG spectral analysis: ASMR amplifies low frequency and reduces high frequency oscillations (2022). (Technically: self-reported ASMR correlates with a shared EEG biomarker, but it doesn’t demonstrate the reverse – building an ASMR detector.) Hey, Apple has a patent on EEG sensors in AirPods (as previously discussed). Free product concept: AirPods…

When you’re the best in the world at something, you get paid disproportionate rewards compared to second best or tenth best. If you can’t be the best in the world at your current thing, quit and focus your energy on something you can be the best in the world at. (This is Seth Godin’s thesis in The Dip.) One simple way to be the best in the world is to focus on a few people. For example, in North America, if you’re not comfortable with apps and don’t speak English, Uber might not be very useful.…

How many △ do you see? (The Void, 2016)One of the prompts on Prismatic Wasteland's blogging list is: "the scariest monster you can imagine that has 2 arms, 2 legs, and no magic abilities".As cliché as it is, I think it's humans acting in strange ways. Which is why I think cults endure as such common and strong antagonists. A couple of recent examples that spring to mind are Midsommar and even Obsession, or Firefly's reavers. Oh, even The Purge might be a good example.I think the creep factor…

i'm thoroughly surprised at myself and how my art has been going. a week or two ago i got a new sketchbook, mostly because an artist i follow on youtube uses almost exclusively those, when she doesn't make one herself. i've never seen them out in the wild, but the art store with the Good Paper Selection had one last one when i went to replace some used up pencil colors. and something about it really unlocked things for me. i think it's the quality and the size. quality: despite being a…

Orginal post: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks James Cram, son of James and Dorcas (Woodman) Cram, was born probably in Montville, Lincoln County, Maine (now Waldo County) in March 1825 and died probably in Burt County, Nebraska after the census was taken on 7 June 1900.1 He married say 1846, Lousia Bailey, daughter of Thomas Turner and Harriet (Turner) Bailey. She was born in Pittston, Kennebec County, Massachusetts (now Maine) 13 February 1815 and died in Nebraska 5 January 1886.2 After a few years…

I’m a bit proud of how streamlined my daily comic process has turned out: drawing, painting, scanning, editing, uploading, captioning, and posting. I even built myself an app that makes it easier to turn a multi-panel comic into a series of slides, one for each panel, so I can post them to Instagram. It’s still quite a lot of work, but I think I’ve made it as quick and easy as possible. Gigabyte is, for whatever reason, fascinated by the scanning process. She always comes running when I turn on…

The War Above

16:53 - My digestion has been off since last night. I've spent my suddenly free Saturday mostly lying around and sleeping. I need to stop guilt-tripping myself.

As I switched to Emacs (with Doom Emacs) as my main code editor, I had also begun to explore Org Mode, and later migrate most of my notes from Obsidian to Org mode, by using Pandoc and the Obs2Org Python package to convert my notes from Markdown format to Org format. This means Org Mode has become my primary note-taking tool. As a coder and Linux user who likes to customise the tools they use, I have taken a lot of notes that contain code blocks, as well as text blocks to use in my…

Theodoros Zarkos, MSc, Medical Ethicist - Social Scientist - European Social Policy and Social Rights; Independent Researcher, Kiato, Greece Photo credit: maido155, via Wikimedia Commons The European Commission’s proposal for an EU KIDS Act, published on 17 September 2026, contains a provision that is easy to misread if it is viewed in isolation. Article 14 would create specific duties for AI companions and general conversational chatbots accessible to minors. Yet the proposal does not begin…

Autumn began almost a month ago, but where I live it doesn’t feel like the Autumn I know until about now. For the first time last night the cool winds blew in with gusto. I looked up at the moonlit tree tops as they bent violently; just as effortlessly as tall blades of grass in […]

I’ve always been a fan of musical styles that are formed when people from different traditions interact. I’m sceptical that any musical tradition is ‘pure’ in that way, because people have alwayse met, listened to and been inspired by each others’ musical styles and traditions, so you can hear subtle or more overt influences in most styles of music. However, I think it’s really exciting when musical traditions that seem very disparate are merged. It seems as if it can’t possibly work, but what…

I recently came across Brennan's post noticing that Claude Code has been showing up in the commit history of a bunch of my IndieWeb projects lately. That's true! I was wondering when someone would notice. I haven't been hiding it, but I also haven't written anything about why I'm doing it, so this seemed like a good time to finally get my thoughts down. The principles are about what you own Brennan's post summarizes the IndieWeb as: the main idea being to empower individuals to own their own…

For a century (610 - 711), Heraclius and his descendants were emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire, ruling over the Byzantines from Constantinople. To get these descendants, he had two marriages.The first was to Fabia Eudokia, betrothed to him before he became emperor. She and her mother were kidnapped by the previous emperor, Phocas, to try to prevent Heraclius from attacking Constantinople. They were released by members of the Greens, who favored Heraclius in his revolt. Once they were safely…

There is a newly leaked bill that Anthropic is purportedly shopping around is (if you assume its bugs get fixed). It is similar to the FRONTIER Act, with stronger preemption of state laws, stronger transparency provisions and weaker enforcement provisions. Having slept on this, I find it unacceptable that Anthropic is actively shopping exactly the type of bill I have warned we will need to fight against during the lame duck session. They are trying to use this last time with a Republican…

When we are in love with someone, we observe everything about them. We notice every little thing. What bothers them. What makes them happy. What irks them. We try to learn them, one day, one moment at a time. We are so consumed by them that even our thoughts are filled with them. We replay the moments we spend together, interpreting what their actions might have meant. Then we stop doing that. There comes a point when we have them, and we stop noticing them. We no longer pay attention to their…

🏚️🏚️🏚️🏚️ 3.5/5 Black Houses - The world outside of Gormenghast is just as a mad. The post Titus Alone (Gormenghast #3) by Mervyn Peake appeared first on The Wallflower Digest.

What I'm...Making A bunch of Canvas question bank creation for green construction A Canvas exam to replace an IRS online test that was taken down just before the last week of class Working on Still course issues are my primary focus OCPD workbook Contemplating Tofu Where are we going to move next summer? Why my computer occasionally stops working on my home wifi network for multiple days at a time but works on my mobile hotspot Why I may disagree with Buddhism fundamentally (is it really noble…