It's been a while since I last posted, but I've been a busy little bee, working on a few different projects... An update to Cache Out is imminent, which includes support for the Vivaldi, Arc, and Dia browsers, as well as several other tweaks both above and below the hood. The popularity of the app is slowly growing -- which is nice given that barely even marketed it so far. Progress on Yasu is moving along nicely. It's radically different than the original was, but the new version is also more…

What if your components could be contracts for runtime implementations, instead of concrete materialized components ?

As mentioned in a previous post, I played a lot of Baseline Drift. I expect lots of other bloggers will be sharing their thoughts (I know Kati is working on something, and Yakamo wrote a retrospective from the referee side), and here are a few more of mine. Like Over/Under before it, Baseline Drift was a wargame with a layer of Live Text Roleplay on top. Most players had very limited interaction with the wargame rules, essentially limited to exchanging currency with each other, spending it on…

Over on James’ Coffee Blog he has a Blogger Archetype quiz. I thought it would be fun and interesting to answer the ten simple questions to analyse my blogging style and character in the community! The results are in: You are a Author You love writing and have a growing backlog of posts on your website! Words are your best friend and you're always thinking about what to write next. You are also a Community gardener You love to help contribute to building the blogging community, either through…

I’m really struggling to find something to write about this week, for, as usual, not much has been happening. Last Monday was a Bank Holiday in Scotland, which left those of us who don’t follow the news scratching our heads as to why the shops were shut. The holiday was to celebrate Scotland’s win in their first match in the World Cup. They haven’t competed in the Cup for 28 years, so it was a big thing. I have not been following the competition. The summer’s sports coverage is underway now –…

Seems like that’s what this horse was trying to say to me!

I’ve always associated videos at the Venice Biennale with boundless frustration. So many videos, so little time to watch them; even less patience for prolonged stays in airless, humid overcrowded dark rooms. Yet, when asked about what not to miss during the Biennale, my number one recommendation is Canicula, an exhibition with 8 new video installations commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film. This show plays with light, soundproofing and the extraordinary architecture of a…

(Art by Noah Hush) Exp level Xp required Hd hp per hd Title Saving throws 1 0 ½ HD Kobold As Thief 1 2 2250 1 HD Kobold King As Fighter 1 3 4500 2 HD "Lizard Man" As Fighter 2 4 14000 3 HD Pseudo-Dragon Special 5 28000 3 HPPD Dragon Special 6 224000 4 HPPD Scourge Special 7 448000 5 HPPD High Wyrm Special 8 896000 6 HPPD Calamity Special 9 1.792.000 7 HPPD Great Dragon Special 10 3.584.000 8 HPPD True Dragon Special The Kobold and His KingAll dragons begin as tiny, feeble creatures, which…

This week I received a card from an acquaintance in Brooklyn, artist Shawn Liu. I don’t get post all that often, and seldom is it so exciting. You see, this is no ordinary postcard, but a postcard-sized painting—one of 100 such studies that Shawn’s making as part of his current project. The intention is to send each of the paintings to people around the world; all that the recipient is asked to do is to email Shawn a photo of the painting in its new home. Eventually he’s going to turn all of…

Claude Code records each session to disk. Those logs include “thinking blocks” — the model’s own reasoning as it works. I went to inspect that reasoning this weekend and found a signature (600 characters long) and no text. So I read the docs: https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/extended-thinking Some details worth being aware of: Claude encrypts its reasoning into that signature. Anthropic holds the key. Your machine doesn’t receive it. The API hands back a SUMMARY of…

While researching and writing my last article on the history of KV cache compression, it occurred to me while there has been so much implemented research on KV cache efficiency, actual model weights quantisation is still pretty blunt. This makes sense - at large scale with many tens of thousands of GPUs the weights themselves aren't a huge efficiency bottleneck for the most part, and KV cache starts dominating memory usage. But, for us lowly serfs who don't have access to a warehouse full of…

by The New York Times Incredible visual demonstration of how the absurd size of modern SUVs turns them into even deadlier machines. Not only the hood height makes them deadlier in a possible collision, but the vastly increased blind spots make collisions more likely to happen.

The Taiko bridge, which allows assets to be transferred between the Ethereum mainnet and the Taiko Ethereum layer-2 chain, was exploited for at least $1.7 million before the network was halted, limiting losses. An attacker was able to forge withdrawal requests to appear as though they matched real deposits. Crypto security firm BlockSec said that the attacker may have gained access to a signing key that had been exposed on GitHub. Tweet by BlockSec Phalcon

Fascinating article about the limits of traditional talk therapy when dealing with generalized anxiety: People with GAD aren’t just anxious. They’re using worry to avoid something that feels even worse. When researchers ask GAD patients what they’re doing when they worry, they often say they’re trying not to think about “even more emotional things.” They’re using worry (which lives mostly in their heads as verbal, linguistic thought) to distract themselves from deeper, more visceral feelings of…

As if you didn't indulge me every day, today I ask for a little extra indulgence.Our windmill is a former prop that was was regularly set afire in a performance based upon Don Quixote by the now defunct Cirque de Flambe. We've removed the heavy metal vanes and replaced them with swimming noodles.The fire in the performance, I assume, represented the intensity of Alonso Quijano's imagination as he sallies forth into the world, believing himself to be the chivalric hero Don Quixote de la Mancha.…

The same Suntory that makes liquor also sells flowers. We picked up their Pink Sun Parasol and when blooms are done they simply fall to the ground. We were sitting on the front porch the other day when Casey noticed one drop and snapped a photo of me with it. I then immediately used it for profile pictures.Currently Listening: Mon Laferte, St. Vincent “While I'll Keep Writing Songs for You”Reply via email

Following on from Thomas who was also answering James’ Coffee Blog questions in his, Blogger Archetype quiz, my answers yielded these results. my blogger archetype results I never thought of myself as a community gardener much less a culture maker, author, yes, explorer, yes. The occasional link curator, yes. So I feel kind of chuffed to think I might be something of a culture maker.

Just prior to the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, we got the annual issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder: the Blood ‘n’ Thunder 2026 Special Edition, from Ed Hulse’s Murania Press. This is the sixth such annual edition, going back to 2021, but this fanzine goes back 24 years. I’ve reviewed the prior volumes here. […]

A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 47 miles from Eugene to Albany, Oregon.

Calling a witch’s familiar a pet is like calling a spellbook a notebook. It is technically close enough to be wrong.In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the familiar is one of the key things that separates the Witch from the Magic-User. A Magic-User might have a familiar as an arcane aid. A Witch’s familiar is a relationship. It is part ally, part omen, part witness, part magical bond, part eyes and ears of their patron, and sometimes part debt.A magic-user has access to the Find Familiar spell at…

This is part 7 of my (Josh Bycer’s) favorite demos from Steam NextFest, October 2025 edition. 00:00 Intro00:23 Servant of the Lake1:25 Painted in Blood3:47 Jackal5:28 Hold the Mine7:28 Amnyam9:19 Keys of Fury10:01 Prince of Darkness Jr10:55 Checkmage!

Monday again! And a new Fantasy with Friends post: the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about libraries in fantasy: Fantasy books often feature magical libraries that have anything from floating platforms to books with characters that come to life. What are a few of your favorite fantastic libraries? I’m quite a fan of the library in Genevieve Cogman’s series that starts with the book The Invisible Library. It’s less about the magic itself…

Now and again, I run across a news article or psychological question that is so big that it bleeds out of straight statistics and requires a thorough understanding of the research methodology that guides statistical choices.When that happens, I email my buddy and fellow W.W. Norton author, Beth Morling, and we write a joint blog post.Recently, I emailed her because research on using psychedelics to treat many different mental disorders has been in the news. President Trump fast-tracked this…

Osmium House - Dawn ClubYou may know Aesop Adams from his work with excellent Denver groups such as Totem Pocket and Aaron Dooley’s the International Disassociation of. Under the Osmium House moniker, Adams sets out entirely on his own, crafting luminous instrumentals that are guaranteed to send listeners spiraling into a blissful daydream. With lush guitar atmospherics a la Robin Guthrie, minimal drum machine rhythms and subliminal synths, Dawn Club is a solar-powered beauty from start to…

History of the modern literatue

The view from Poets’ Walk Park in the Hudson River Valley (Photograph by author) Several weeks ago, I traveled to the Hudson River Valley to share a day with my brother and his family. When I boarded the train in Manhattan, a sense of excitement washed over me. I desperately was longing for a change of scenery, if only for a day. (Not owning an automobile, all my travels rely on public transit or the kindness of a friend.) I’ve written and reflected upon the Hudson River Valley, its towns, its…

Yesterday marked the official start of summer. With that, I decided to refresh the look around here a bit. Went very clean this time. Especially considering my previous wacky pomo design. I love maximalism, but it’s time to reset. Speaking of that previous theme.. it seemed to be a huge hit within the bearblog ecosystem. It immediately became one of my most popular posts and views skyrocketed when I launched it. Others apparently enjoyed the silliness of it as much as me. I even got a couple…

I wrote about our 8-track player last Friday: Therefore, it seems fitting that the next item in our Hi-Fi stack would be the pinnacle of analogue tape format quality: the 8-track! And further down on the post, emphasis added: For those unaware of the history of 8-track, my comment about quality was most definitely tongue in cheek. You weren’t buying 8-track carts for their quality At least five comments, summarised: Ummmmm errrrr, 8-track wasn’t great quality, what are you even talking about?…

Well, it’s officially peach season, and my mom gave me a small box of fresh peaches from the famed Peach Truck. I immediately knew what to do with at least a couple of them, and got to work trying out a new Half Baked Harvest recipe I saw on her Instagram: Cinnamon Crunch Peach Muffin Bread. View this post on Instagram So let’s dive right in by taking a look at the ingredients list. Here’s everything you need: Since I had literally just been given the peaches, the only thing I didn’t have on…

Anthropic wrote a blog post explaining how they turned Claude into a jerk. Rather than dunking on them more (Claude is still the best coding model around) I’m going to talk seriously about what went wrong and how it could be done better.The most obvious problem is that they didn’t chat with the results of this training and realize that it was a disaster before incorporating the weight updates into the main model. Most likely they don’t have what amounts to pull requests of weights, which they…