15 Hooray | INDEX | 17 Contraption Self-imposed constraint: Use the letters of the prompt word inside a 2-inch square to illustrate its meaning. Hongdian Black Forest fountain pen, EF, black ink on 120 gsm paper.

I just finished reading null: $cat /dev/null_ by Dienw Neb. I found an ad for it in the back of 2600 Magazine that piqued my curiosity. I’ve mentioned it here a couple times recently. If you’re the kind of person who’d be reading these words I’m writing, you’d probably enjoy this book, and you should get your hands on a copy. I don’t even know where to begin. There’s almost nothing I can tell you about the stories in it that wouldn’t spoil it in some way, and it’s far too good to take that away…

Yay, a Gum Gum Person. Also, the arms are disproportionate to each other, something I’ll fix if I revise this.

Ok. I want to start out by saying this is not the movie I thought it was. I wanted a movie that was about psychic powers. This is about a cursed Aztec idol home to a demon.So. A win? Yeah, it was still fun. At least I can log this as a first-time view. I am sure this movie has nothing to do with SNAP! nor being the lyrical Jessie James.The Power (1984)A college professor has an old idol containing an evil demon named Destacatyl. Before long, it is in the possession of some Los Angeles…

Spotted while on a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago - and it made me chuckle. I had to ask, and it seems that B.L.O.G. stands for Buckden Lodge Owners Group, for users of Buckden Marina, nothing to do with those of us posting away on the internet...Not sure an AGM would be a great idea. The Treasurer's report would be a bit of a disaster, and you lot might vote me out!

This is David, your trusted gatekeeper between your precious attention and the firehose of the wild web. You are reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for curious minds who love it 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. The bombarding of childhoodHere's a little challenge for you: Read this article and whenever you read kids or children,…

Yes, I am posting these backwards and forwards now as I work to catch up. Based on a photo I took on September 12.

Look how cute this thing is: Jameson Dow at Electrek: Citroën has unveiled a concept electric version of its classic 2CV, aiming to bring the vehicle to market in 2028 for just €15,000. For the entire second half of the 20th century, the Citroën 2CV (“Deux Chevaux,” French for “two horses”) held a special place in Europe’s automotive landscape. The affordable, comfortable, yet underpowered vehicle had enormous popularity, selling millions of units over its production run. Its cute, quirky look…

How about another spooky car? Today I'm checking out yet another vehicle in the 2026 Halloween series of Hot Wheels and this time it's a Dodge Charger Stock Car that is showing off its Halloween spirit. This one isn't as inspired as the Baja Hauler I looked at a week or so ago that was outfitted for delivering pumpkins but it's still a neat little frightening automobile. Let's go fast and turn left over and over after the break...The Facts:Length: 3 1/8ths inchesNon-Scalper Price: $1 to $2…

from EXQUISITE DAMAGE (2019)....

Barry & CaitlinWe had quite a build up to last weekend's Colchester Comic Mart and it all seemed to be over in a flash. There were the usual worries — would I have the right stock and the right number of books — and some unusual worries — would the new book arrive on time for me to launch it. Thankfully, I'd put those worries aside by Thursday, when I swapped them for a madcap afternoon — and

Thanks for the tight squeeze before you hit the road. We’ll miss you too. Later, baby. AWESOME! There’s even more awesome here: Photo from: here The post #570 When a little baby gives you a hug before it leaves appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, October 19 through Sunday, October 25! 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, October 19 Tuesday, October 20 Wednesday, October 21 Thursday, October 22 Friday, October 23 Saturday, October 24 Sunday,…

Thurn and Taxis by Karen and Andreas Seyfarth was the 2006 Spiel des Jahres winner. Andreas Seyfarth designed Puerto Rico (published in 2002). It was hugely popular and when it didn’t win the Spiel des Jahres many people were upset. Then a few years later Thurn and Taxis was released and won the SdJ. I have played it many years ago, and at the time didn’t find it interesting.

A few weeks back Daniel and I worked collaboratively this piece making fun of Christine Brennan. We did something similar tonight in re: a similarly idiotic Threads post. I'm still working on editing it but it's a banger. While editing, I caught myself thinking about what I wrote yesterday. It felt good to be in that part of my brain. I don't mind sharing that I took a look at some MA programs at TMU, York, and the University of Toronto earlier today. Would I go back to school at 48 or 49?…

I had an hour to see some shows today, and here are some things I saw. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Unnatural Landscapes at Lisson is his ongoing series of diorama photos in large-format prints and on folding screens. I mostly came to see the screens, which, the painted diorama backgrounds printed in color on the washi surface are especially confounding. Jordan Wolfson, 8(L), 2026, Hand polished aluminum, aluminum spikes, digital UV substrate print on aluminum of an altered photograph of Felix…

A camera obscura photo from tonight’s special guest Deb Chachra: “In July 2023, I went to Naples to spend a week working with Wayne Chambliss, who was doing fieldwork for his practice-based doctoral project in human geography. We built a camera obscura in a bedroom of our Airbnb as practice for building one at the (gated and locked) entrance to Hell, which we went on to do later that week.”1There was a time when I would tell people I did not dream. If they did not believe me, I'd say okay maybe…

I did editing for the intro adventure of a project that's now live on Backerkit! It's a post-modern fantasy city setting inspired by Prague, full of cats, and the adventure is a complex story of a ship and its sailors/passengers across 4 different moments in its history. I spoke with Sparkle, the lead writer on the project, about Prague's influence on her work, the importance of diversity, and the experience of translation, both across languages and systems.The team is based in Czechia, so they…

After writing about being laid off in April, I went almost five months without paid work. As I wrote in that post, I started with some severance. After that, I learned how to participate in Colorado's unemployment insurance benefits system. Just before reaching that program's limits, I was offered a position at Colorado State University, and I accepted. Colorado recorded 2,400 people hired in September 2026, and I was one of them. Surprisingly, I found the job posting on the Larimer County…

Daniel Tilles at Notes From Poland: A sign installed to warn the public about damage caused by beavers has been destroyed by the beavers themselves, according to the Polish foresters who erected it. The incident was reported in a post on social media by the forestry district of Lubliniec in southern Poland, which shared photos of the sign, which read “Warning! Damage caused by beavers”. The wooden post it was displayed on had been destroyed in an apparent beaver attack. The hubris of the sign…

Avenue of the Americas – New York, New York We have moved from Tribeca, located in Lower Manhattan, to Midtown. Avenue of the Americas, also known as Sixth Avenue, is home to an impressive row of modernist office buildings around 50th Street, extending south for several blocks. While these boxy towers might not be architecturally exciting these days, I’m impressed with these buildings for another reason. Scale. Built between the late 1950s and the 1970s, there are five of these towers in…

7 fall soups to keep the chill off because nobody wants to sit by the fire with a big bowl of salad. I know you're thinking this is going to be a super-boring post about soup, because how interesting can soup be? But you'd be wrong in thinking that. Very, very wrong. Soup, as it turns...Read More

This can sound stupid, but I’ve only recently learned how to insert PDF files on a web page; see, I’m from the generation that suffered the dreaded Adobe Acrobat thing, and also ActiveX controls, and if you don’t know what these are, well, ask your grandpa but don’t make him cry too much. So say you have a PDF you’d like to insert on a page; here’s the HTML you need: <embed src="https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/pdf/issue-083-php.pdf" width="100%" height="900px" > And the result, unsurprisingly,…

As a software engineer, LLM-use is non-negotiable at work. When I wrote 🌰 loot boxes, casinos, and work chat, Slack was the “Instagram for work”: the loot box of notifications winning against the Type-2-fun of deep, single-minded focus. LLM agents exasperbate the loot box effect: I must refresh to find out if it finished early or got stuck midway through The agent is doing the building. The building is what matters. Unblock the agent ASAP. The agent has produced 3000 words and 12 PRs. It would…

This is an ongoing project that will get continuously updated whenever I have made some progress. Check in once in a while for updates! You probably have a lot of questions. Let’s begin. …why? It all started back in 2021. A guy from Australia that did videos about restoring and upgrading old iPods set up a car channel, and that was when I got introduced to the glorious Fiat 126. These videos really do feel like a few ol’ mates fixing a car together, and that got me hooked. You can get a more…

The Traitors: New Blood episode 6 was, thankfully, a full episode, though what exactly the players were doing throughout it remains a mystery.

So I’ve made it through the week with one pick. If you’re not a musician, you don’t know how hard this is to do. It’s taken an extreme amount of concentration on my part, but I’ve done it. But gig is tomorrow, and it is literally the only pick I have like it. I’m bringing a backup just in case, but this is a challenge I’ve never done before, and so far it’s working. What’s the point, you ask? There is no point, just like life. I just wanna see if I can do it because every time I play bass or…

Well, shit. I just learned that the white and red cross in the Maryland flag was actually adopted by Confederate sympathizers in the state during the Civil War (I still, after 20 years, have to remind myself that I’m south of the Mason-Dixon Line) and legislation was passed banning its display on grounds of treason. 15 years after the war, during a 150-year celebration of the state’s founding, it was combined into a design with the heraldic banner of Lord Calvert, which had been adopted by the…

As I alluded to in my previous post, I've got a new job. I'm a research associate at Colorado State University, working at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). For the first time in over 20 years, I'm working for a local organization, the biggest local institution, in fact. Riding my bike to the office, learning to pack a lunch, all the things. I'm helping several research projects use satellite imagery to derive global cloud properties in near real-time. Yesterday I…