New links… “Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales “A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel “Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own…

Mattel announced a new line of DC figures at New York Comic Con, and Absolute Hawkman is apparently in the first wave. There isn't a clear picture of the figure yet, but you can get a pretty good idea of what it will look like from the display at Comic-Con. From '26 New York Comic-Con* Absolute Superman No. 16* My first impression is that they totally missed the coloring of the figure, especially the wings and the legs. I hope this is a work in progress, but probably not. From what I could…

When there is no one else around and the loud crowds from the bars and nightclubs and the afterhours spots and late night places are gone away, and when the Downtown and the cobblestone streets and the streetlamps give way to morning’s light; or when the subtle nirvana ends the music and there is nothing left but muddy puddles by the garbage bags over near Mercer Street, I’d start to wonder if I was missing out on the heroic loveliness of a much bigger picture.There must be something better out…

we aren’t…

🔗 ∙ Tagged in My Photos.

I’m working from home today so I’m celebrating the return of Pete by playing old videos in the background. Relatedly, I regularly open a streaming app on weekends looking for a movie to watch and end up switching to YouTube instead. I vastly prefer real people just doing their thing, whatever it is

I mainly listen to albums, or LPs as they used to be called. Not playlists. I love albums! Loads of amazing albums get released each year, so why does Spotify make it so hard to discover them? To find new albums in Spotify I have to go to Seach > Music > New Releases, scroll down to "Hand-picked new releases" and then scroll down again to get past the AI playlists. This album list is not hand-picked of course, it's some weak-ass, AI-fed algorithm with an ulterior motive. Just like the…

American multinational mass media, telecommunications, and entertainment conglomerate Comcast has somewhere north of 30 million customers with Xfinity residential broadband internet service. And while they don't publish numbers around what percentage of that subscriber base may have a comcast.net email account, it is very likely that some significant number of those customers do.Email senders, in particular US-based email marketers selling to consumers (B2C), tend to see Comcast ranked…

César Cid turns the alphabet into a gallery of borrowed worlds. The Madrid-based 3D artist, working as CESS Studio, has built The Artphabet, a complete set of 26 letters, each a digital sculpture channelling the visual universe of a different celebrated artist. Mondrian's rigid geometry, Dalí's melting surrealism, Basquiat's raw urgency, and Kusama's infinite dots. View fullsize D DAMIEN HIRST.png View fullsize G GAUDÍ.jpg View fullsize N POLLOCK.jpg View fullsize l lichenstein.jpg What makes…

📷 269/365 - Spider in the spotlight

Updated October 2026 Make It Ahead, released in 2014, was the last Ina book to come out before I started this project and one of my earliest purchases. Ina was inspired to write it after her longtime assistant, Barbara Libath, told her the most common question they received across all recipes was, “Can this be made ahead of time?” Naturally, Ina answered with an entire cookbook, including a make-ahead note for every single recipe. So many dishes from this book have made their way into my…

I asked Enzo Reader to catch me up on my RSS reading. It gave me a short list of stories to open first, then a longer briefing organized by topic. I already have my feeds in Feedbin, so the appeal was immediate: I could ask a question about a collection I had chosen instead of feeding ChatGPT a pile of links one at a time.That first response was useful for deciding where to start. I spent more time with the connection to see whether search, full-text reading, and article controls held up beyond…

Most advice on the blogosphere is advice for referees. And when the advice isn’t for referees, it is for game designers (often, but not always, a subset of referees). This is not unexpected. The way the hobby works for most people is sort of a vortex where most people exist on the outside ring, mostly content to play in their weekly game and not think about the game much when they aren’t playing it. But then you get the forever-GM types (of which I certainly am, although I enjoy being a player…

The distribution of the frequency of Monsters/Empties is different, but I like having cards to layout dungeon geomorphs. Suit Room Contents Treasure? Swords Monster 8+ Pentacles Trap 10+ Cups Empty/Lore Queen+ Wands Special (usually no treasure) I dunno! Maybe someone smarter than me can do something worthwhile with this nugget.

[Pa 30’s central star is a space zombie.] Hawaii’s Gemini North telescope has provided us with the most detailed image yet of the Pa 30 nebula, and it looks cool as hell. Pa 30 is “the remnants of a supernova famous for having likely been observed and documented from Earth during the Middle Ages”. With these latest images, it’s looking better than ever.Link: https://www.wired.com/story/humans-watched-this-supernova-explode-nearly-a-millennium-ago-now-you-can-see-it-in-high-definition/

The First Quarter Moon is Monday October 19. Twilight Lunar X visible 0n the 18th. Saturn is just past opposition, but still magnificent in telescopes. Mars is not far from Jupiter low in the morning sky. In the evening, Venus is sinking into the twilight with Mercury above it. The asteroid Vesta can be seen in binoculars. The Orionid meteor shower is best on the mornings of the 22nd and 23rd. The First Quarter Moon is Monday October 19. The Moon at apogee, when it is furthest from the Earth,…

photo borrowed via pinterestIt seems like it's been ages since I last compiled an AT THE MOMENT post. Indeed it has. Wow how time flies. Without further ado my current list of things occupying my everyday these past few days and weeks. Share your current obsessions, hobbies and tricks in the comments section below the post. [This post contains a few select Amazon affiliate links. If

Deskilling the body aeon.co We have fallen into habits that are steadily deskilling the human body, eroding capacities honed by evolution to support our wellbeing as we move through the world. Some of these capacities are weakening through disuse: we have come to rely on our phones, for example, and now, increasingly, on AI, to rapidly do work that would once have required something more physical – like looking around, or asking someone, or going to find and consult a book. Reliance on GPS may…

Here’s a fine set of stories I came across in the last year concerning my home town (Glace Bay), my province (Nova Scotia), and the region (the Maritimes, with a shout out to Newfoundland). Like all places, A.I. is having an impact on people in the Maritimes. So much so that Nova Scotia is launching 5-person … Continue reading Out and about or oot and aboot? (what’s new in the Maritimes, 2026 edition)

Yesterday we started the romance of Khosrow and Shirin, in which the two lovers separate when Khosrow goes to Constantin pole to get help from Roman Emperor Maurice. Khosrow had been dethroned by Bahram Chobin, and Maurice would lend him soldiers if Khosrow agreed to marry Maurice's daughter Mariam. He also had to promise to marry no one else whilst Mariam lived, which would put a wrinkle in his plans to be married to Shirin.Khosrow and Mariam are wed. She will give birth to a son, Shiroyeh.…

“I love you so much, but I have a headache from you so give me a hug then please go away.” - Carson, 4 years oldHello friends! I had to include this quote becuase it’s so adorable, and honestly, haven’t we all wanted to say it at some point in time? What a good way to set a boundary when needed! It’s warm here, but a big cold front is coming late this week so my fingers are crossed.Here are my photo choices for today:October 2, 2026This little guy was still at my feeder on Monday 10/12. He…

For those of us in the Great White North, yesterday was Thanksgiving Day.* Now, I’m on the road this year, so I didn’t quite pull off the usual Thanksgiving roasting feat, but I nonetheless have a particular smell on my mind – and quite possibly you do, too. Two smells, actually. There’s the wonderful smell […]

Twenty-six ships from 13 partner and allied nations steam in formation with Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) during a multinational maritime exercise as part of Fleet Exercise (FLEETEX) 250 in the Atlantic Ocean, June 25, 2026. We covered the “final” cruise of the class-leading, bar-setting USS Nimitz earlier this year, and the prospect that the 51-year-old flattop, the oldest CVN in the world since 2017, could linger as a training carrier for a while. AVTN-68, if you will.…

America goes crazy for Halloween, a day almost as commercial as Christmas. There are clever yard decorations (those homemade) and more horrid ones like foot tall skeletons) from stores. Somehow after seeing 20 or 30 giant skeletons all the same with price tags still on them isn’t very scary. Still, I get Halloween started early in my own creepy way like the rest of them. Today it’s a cooking class celebrating the day cooking with spirits. Vintage photograph Cooking Class with Halloween…

Talk about right out of central casting for M*A*S*H, complete with the Dodge WC-54 Ambulance and Bell 47/H-13 Sioux chopper, complete with its iconic “soap bubble” canopy. Official period caption: “Personnel and equipment needed to save a man’s life are assembled at HQs of the 8225th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, Korea. October 14, 1951.” Signal Corps Photo by Cpl. Charles Abrahamson. (Army) NARA FILE # 111-SC-382662 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1457 The unit, formed originally as the 2nd MASH,…

The Army’s planned SIG Sauer-made replacement for the M4 Carbine is slated for delivery to troops before year’s end. As we previously reported, SIG won the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon, or NGSW, competition in April 2022, securing a 10-year contract for two weapons chambered in the new hybrid 6.8×51 Common Cartridge. The weapons are intended to replace the Army’s 5.56 NATO small arms in front-line service. The rifle, initially designated the XM5 and now type-classified as the M7, is…

Italians say that someone who acquires a new language “possesses” it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses – an experience Italian encapsulates in the word sentire. …. In La Bella Lingua – a true opera amorosa, a labor of love – I invite you to come along on my idiosyncratic journey through what I consider the world’s most loved and lovable…

I totally would love to go to ffconf, but sadly I am building up an event that help running on the 13th, which takes place on the 14th. Well, I can’t go sadly, but YOU should! ffconf is a labour of love from Remy and Julie, who have run it themselves for 17 years! Their warmth shows in everything. It’s a single-track day in the cosy Duke of York’s cinema, so everyone shares the same thoughtful curated talks and has something to chat about afterwards. Exactly the way I like it. Join a seafront…

Every few months someone tells me WebAssembly is “sandboxed and memory-safe,” usually as a reason they don’t need to worry about the C library they just compiled to it. Half of that sentence is true. The other half gets people owned, and the gap between the two halves is where I want to spend this post. I’m going to make the argument with code you can run, not adjectives. Everything below is compiled with clang’s wasm32 target and run in Node, and I’ll give you the exact commands so you can…