A sticky note from Philip K. Dick's In Milton Lumky Territory: The roar of water kept either of them from talking for some time. She had put bubble bath into the water, and it foamed up in massive pink layers as she waited for the tub to fill. At last there was enough water in the tub. He marvelled at the amount of water she needed. And she did not want it as hot as it was; she carefully switched on the cold until a good deal of the suds had been damaged. The whole affair struck him as…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Daniel Pope’s novel Go Help Yourself is an endearing debut, the Pacific Northwest slacker novel of the year! John Keene wrote of the book: “Corbin Taylor Moore, the Seattle-based anti-hero…

More video store love. As Racket reports, Vinegar Syndrome, an obscure film preservation label out of Connecticut, opens a shop in Minneapolis this week. Seems like the focus is on discovery here (leaning towards their deep catalog of films) vs offering a broader, general inventory.

They Got It Wrong: the Guinness Dictionary of Regrettable Quotations — David Milsted This is one of those books that you keep by the toilet, to browse little segments of as the occasion directs. I thought I’d enjoy this, but in fact it was a grind. It opens with a chapter on political quotes, and they are pretty relentlessly depressing. As the book moved through quotes about the the arts and sciences I kept waiting for it to become fun, but it rarely did. Part of the problem is the consistently…

I occasionally post about a movie that prominently features language, and today’s installment is To the Ends of the Earth. Criterion Channel is currently featuring a dozen Kiyoshi Kurosawa films, and having worked my way up to 2019 I gave this one a try. (My favorite is still his first big hit, 1997’s Cure, but I like his style so much I don’t mind watching even the less successful ones.) It’s about a reporter for a Japanese travel program who visits Uzbekistan with her crew and has various…

The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle.Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When…

I don't know why, but Locked Up Abroad is one of my comfort shows. I've watched every episode at least twice, and since there's a whole channel for it on Roku, I sometimes just let it play all day. I'm not sure what's so appealing about it as it's literally just the same drug smuggling story told by different people over eight seasons. It's always a person between 20-30 who feels "lost" in their life, decide to start traveling to "find" themselves, and then meets someone who's like, "Want to…

Programming is fun!

9:06 – Mon 12 October 2026 12:01 – Mon 12 October 2026 9:02 – Tue 13 October 2026 12:03 – Tue 13 October 2026 9:04 – Wed 14 October 2026 12:04 – Wed 14 October 2026 9:05 – Thu 15 October 2026 12:07 – Thu 15 October 2026 9:03 – Fri 16 October 2026 12:06 – Fri 16 October 2026 Bonus Told You So Follow Me As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless…

The baby really enjoyed feeling the redwood bark and the cooling shade. His flat path was like a less crowded Muir Woods and we loved the stillness. 17000 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville, California 95446, United States

I’ve held on to my iPhone 13 Pro for longer than any other smartphone I’ve had. I love this thing. I’ve been case-less for the last couple of years. I’ve dropped it more times than I can count, so it’s certainly got some character. But it’s never broke. I swapped out the battery ~ 6 months ago. I was worried it may start swelling. Small price to pay to keep it running for little longer. My family sometimes comments about how I used to get every new iPhone model. Oh, how I’ve changed! I thought…

I have always had an interest in computers. I took some summer computer classes at our area vo-tech school when I was in elementary school. One of the highlights was getting to play games at the end of class. These games were text based–choose your own adventure games that involved knights and dragons. Those were the days of green phosphors on a black background computer terminals. No OS with a graphical interface like we are use to today. During my senior year of high school, I took a basic…

I was wondering which Halloween candy would make the best laser, and came across reports that Jolly Ranchers are fluorescent. I got out my UV flashlight and am able to definitely confirm this is true.The type of fluorescence varies by color, but blue raspberry has a particularly dramatic color change from deep blue to hot pink.Blue raspberry Jolly Rancher, illuminated with 395 nm (presumed) LEDIt's interesting to note that the green Jolly Rancher actually seems to be dimmer under UV light. My…

Like everyone else I spend a lot of time on my phone during a regular day. But I try my best to avoid just doom scrolling Instagram reels (though that does of course happen), and instead try to spend my phone time somewhat intentionally. So here is a short list of some of my favorite apps I use to help me maintain some sort of mental clarity during a busy week.EverlogThis is my journaling app of choice. There are many others like it, but this one is my favorite. It does exactly what I need it…

Hi everyone. It’s been a while since I last touched the blog, sadly. I somehow couldn’t get motivated. Today though, I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s 9:30PM as I start typing this post and I’ll probably go to bed right after finishing it. Will check out my fellow coffee share bloggers tomorrow. If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s still been insanely warm for this time of year. Yesterday, the daytime temp even reached 20°C. We thankfully did get some rain.…

This is a game I've been wanting to play and review for over a decade, but haven't had the means to do so until now, which is kind of exciting. Japan-only games on the X Box and 360 are inherently interesting, I think, since they were kind of doomed from the start, because those consoles had such small userbases there. This one is also interesting in its own right, being as it is a kind of game that represents a specific time and space in wrestling that, as far as I know, doesn't have a lot of…

I love this idea of Robert Birming: Maintaining a gallery is a bit of a hassle on most indie platforms. I’ve tried various ways of doing it, but it always ends up the same way: I forget to update it. Therefore, I decided to create a /photo slash page. Like a /now page, but just for photography. One photo, swapped whenever I have a new pic I feel like sharing. Now that I’ve picked my DSLR again, I’ve created my own /photo page, go check it out!

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run: Clear and dead calm. I wasn’t sure what I would do for today’s run, but with it in single digits before I headed out, I wore my Echo hoodie again. The temperature began rising fairly rapidly and by the end of the run–before 11 a.m.–it was already up to 14°C, but I didn’t feel as overdressed as I did on Wednesday. My Performance Condition was rated at a fairly mediocre -2 starting out, but I felt good, more relaxed and not pushing, just moving along at an…

I went for a swim with Julie the other day. It was cool and blissful - about the same water temperature as the day in spring when I took a call from photographer Alex Ramsay He rang to let me know we'd been offered an opportunity in Salt, Girona, at the Casa De Cultura Les Bernardes (CCLB) to exhibit Os - a collection of Alex's exquisite black and white photos of bones and my poems written in response.I took Alex's call on my Bluetooth earbuds while swimming head-out-of-the-water breaststroke…

I started this project before the massive boom in Claude-enabled decomps started rushing the scene, so this may now be mostly of historical rather than practical interest. I planned on comparing more applications but see little point now; I’m publishing more or less as it was last time I touched it. It should also be noted that when I wrote this, the Pi 5 was a lot more affordable! Windows On Intel dominated the late PC era, and there’s a wealth of software available for the platform,…

Saturday, October 17, 2026 - 07:00 lhmpodcast.jpg Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 354 - Why is Intersexuality Relevant to the History of Lesbianism? - transcript (Originally aired 2026/10/17) Content Note Let’s start with a content note. Historic discussions of intersexuality have a hard time avoiding the word “hermaphrodite,” which today is considered offensive when applied to intersex persons. However, in historic use, “hermaphrodite” was used in a variety of contexts to indicate…

I've written before about getting started using Lemonade for local AI with VSCode and OpenClaw. Today I want to run through the CLI commands I use to get the most out of my Lemonade install, from installing custom models to benchmarking, using custom llama.cpp versions and more. listLet's start at the beginning with a list of all the Lemonade approved models that you can install. You can browse what's available on the website but we're on the CLI today so we see them all with lemonade list. And…

I browse catalogue after catalogue of home decor new bed, new sheets, new everything a silly item on my bookshelf new bookshelves too and I know why I always leave the shopping cart full and abandoned

Dear Constant Reader, Happy Friday! Here’s your tip! If you’re using something with words on it in your act, make sure they can be read in the back of the house. It would be a shame if your punchline was lost because the letters were too small or there wasn’t enough contrast between the printing and the background. These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 17 Patrons. I appreciate you all so much!

Innovations in art to tend towards Mannerism. As a form matures it turns on itself, as creators, and some portion of the audience, become more interested in the form itself. So we get more art about art. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) is young (age 22, 23) Francis Beaumont’s play about plays, where the sophisticated six-penny boys’ company audience gets to indulge in mockery of the vulgar taste of the petty bourgeois one-penny theater-goers. The play is supposed to be The London…

Work went fine yesterday, so after that I rushed home to get ready for commander night! It was a good time! I won 2/3 games, one by just playing propaganda on turn 4 (commander players refuse to pay taxes) and another by cheating out my new Emrakul and taking a few extra turns! Then I chatted with my friend until my partner got home from work! She (my friend) reminded me about early voting, so I did that today! Went out, voted, treated myself to my favorite sandwich shop, visited my friend at…

Most Fridays, I share a handful of pieces that caught my eye at the intersection of technology, media, and society.Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe for free.I've been blogging since 1998. A while back, I was very privileged to be interviewed about my journey writing on the web for 28 years as part of the Wonders of Web Weaving series. I think it's a great audio conversation; here it is in its entirety.Two 23-year-olds used AI to create a daily audio briefing. It’s now the top news app…

In der Sendung Corso vom 16. Oktober ging es um Videospielmashups und -reimplementierungen, die mithilfe von “KI” erstellt werden. Ich konnte ein paar Gedanken beisteuern dazu, darauf verweisen, dass einige der Erzählungen vielleicht nicht ganz so sind wie dargestellt und auch darauf, dass hier natürlich auch potentiell diverse Gesetze gebrochen werden. Das Interview kann unter https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/reverse-engineering-durch-ki-wie-videospiele-gerade-frei-im-netz-landen-100.html…

There is something very charming about old-school children's television shows like Thomas the Tank Engine, Postman Pat, Fireman Sam, Tots TV, Rosie and Jim and Come Outside with Auntie Mabel. They represent an ethos of children's television that has been annihilated by the twin needs of toy makers and advertisers. Older shows like these offer a vision for children's television that has been lost by almost everyone but a few holdouts at the BBC. Now, I am using "television" to mean any…