A note up top: This is an essay about discerning a pattern of thinking. I link that pattern to expressions both trivial and enormous, horrific and mundane, historical and current day. I am explicitly not saying these things are equivalent in importance or effect; I am saying they share a pattern of thinking that enables them. Also, content warnings for discussions of religion, genocide, AI, and bigotry, not necessarily in that order. We lost an important understanding when we changed satan from…

My name is Robert, and I have hemorrhoids. It’s almost at that A.A. introduction level when hemorrhoids get mentioned (on the few occasions when someone even dares to speak about it). It still carries a lot of embarrassment and stigma, even though around 50% of us have it. Why is that? Maybe because it’s about a place where the sun doesn’t shine. Maybe that’s why people feel it’s a pain in the ass to talk about it. It’s a sore subject. Not speaking about it also leads to misunderstandings. More…

heya! every now and then, I'll see a post complaining about how narrow the focus of the small/indie web is. today, that was this post, by Yunzi, where they talk about non-tech topics being absent from the indie web... using kagi small web search results as an example. despite the name, kagi small web is in no way representative of the small web. they're an opinionated link aggregator pulling mainly from places like hacker news. yknow, that tech focused link aggregator run by a tech focused…

Ben Nadel looks at an issue that the HTMX "HX-Redirect" header has when you try to redirect users back to the same page in ColdFusion....

Weekly cleaning and home improvement series, with some thoughts in between. Late/lazy start today. My bedtime routine has disappeared. I'm getting into bed after 2:00. I've stopped listening to records before bed and I think the knee injury also gave me an excuse to not be on top of hygiene stuff. So I want to get back into that. Speaking of, my knee feels almost normal again! I am back at my desk and will go grocery shopping today. (Daniel's been doing all the shopping since the accident.)…

A boy takes a national intelligence test. His parents wait by the phone. Not a word is wasted in this very short story, and the twist at the very end will catch you off guard. A 3-minutes read. The Jordans never spoke of the exam, not until their son, Dick, was 12 years old. It was on his birthday that Mrs. Jordan first mentioned the subject in his presence, and the anxious manner of her speech caused her husband to answer sharply. “Forget about it,” he said. “He’ll do all right.” They were at…

from {LICORICE, LAUDANUM}read the e-zine HERE:https://heyzine.com/flip-book/d1e03263e2.html#page/1

The “day of the take” is the date during a taking of land by the government via eminent domain when the value of the property taken is set. If the day of the take is October 16, then the value paid to the land owner is based on how much that land was worth on October 16. Because eminent domain is so difficult and unpopular (for obvious reasons), often things are forced to happen at the last minute. It is not common for land to be under developed or entirely unkempt on the day of the take. As a…

Jimmy Millerprojectspostsadventtalksgithub Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard. - David McCullough. I can't think of a single more destructive idea for my own writing than the idea that writing is thinking. Well, other than "formal writing" and the five paragraph essay. In many ways, I saw writing as thinking as the antidote to the kind of writing I had been taught in school. And when I set down to write, I could feel its power. I gained new insights.…

tag(s): #yell-at-cloud #overblown-minor-annoyances I was going to write something like "silly", instead of the harsher "stupid", then remembered that this is a personal site and I don't need to hold back. Yay for having your own web space. [1] At work we use this product, a website with its corresponding phone app, to make desk reservations, since we use hoteling. Honestly, the site is pretty good. The best feature is how it can make recurring reservations on certain weekdays, and if the desk…

It definitely makes the size much smaller - we can all move faster with agents. The idea of a "pirate" and "architect" is interesting but boy are we going to burn a lot of tokens. Maybe that's ok for the speed gain?

Jimmy Millerprojectspostsadventtalksgithub Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard. - David McCullough. I can't think of a single more destructive idea for my own writing than the idea that writing is thinking. Well, other than "formal writing" and the five paragraph essay. In many ways, I saw writing as thinking as the antidote to the kind of writing I had been taught in school. And when I set down to write, I could feel its power. I gained new insights.…

Time is a flat circleThe [automatic machine/artificial intelligence] is not frightening because of any danger that it may achieve autonomous control over humanity... Its real danger is the quite different one that such machines, though helpless by themselves, may be used by a human being or a block of human beings to increase their control over the rest of the human race.Norbert Wiener, in "The Human Use of Human Beings", 1950

New tools for writing, coding, and design, and a lot more AI.

Abstract detail of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) 401B locomotive—originally built in 1947— in the collection of the Red River Railroad Museum in Denison, Texas. The post Green Mover appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

New to me,* part of the #SanFrancisco Big Art Loop: Seed of Self by Kate Raudenbush, Golden Gate Park panhandle near Stanyan. Kinda tough to photograph; I dunno how to convince my clever clever smartphone not to freak out over the artwork's lights and got tired of hunting through the UI for manual controls. Someone who is good at pranks should steal that Kezar Stadium equine vine thing, plunk it down next to this "Seed of Self" and label the new agglomerated artwork "Steed of Self." *but its…

THEN... rock thrown at charging animal (defense) stick swung at predator (def.) sharp•ened stone thrown at prey animal (offense) sharp•ened stick flung at prey (off.) sharp stone affixed to end of stick with sinew (off. & def.) set fire to end of stick or branch [torch!] (o&d) much•longer stick or branch, found or fashioned [spear!] (o&d) propulsion: throw the sharp thing farther, faster [arrow!] (o&d) TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS LATER... bows & arrows crossbows (the faster arrows) axes, staves…

On Friday, I did a Reddit AMA with the r/WebScrapingInsider subreddit about the law of web scraping. You can see the entire discussion here. I posted an introduction to the AMA, which I am sharing here: __ Hi everyone, and thanks for joining this Reddit AMA on web scraping! I thought it would be helpful to start with some introductory remarks. First, and most importantly, a reminder about the ground rule. Nothing in this AMA constitutes legal advice. I will discuss some general legal…

I was walking along Market Street (pedestrianised) this morning when a man, walking briskly in the opposite direction, drew level with me and, as he passed, turned his head and, looking me firmly in the eye and grinning cheerily, exclaimed: 'Growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, eh? The best of times, weren't they, the best?' Slightly taken aback, I could but concur. 'They certainly were,' I declared. 'We were the lucky generation.' He had nothing to add, and was already on his merry way. It…

After Ukrainian forces struck several data centres belonging to Russian internet services giant Yandex, a couple of charts began circulating social media purportedly showing a decline in traffic from Russian bots. The narrative suggested — by people like political scientist Ian Bremmer, journalist Jamie Dupree, TPM’s Josh Marshall, and historian Timothy Snyder — is that these attacks silenced a noticeable number of automated troll accounts on X, particularly those promoting far-right talking…

Astrobot was my GOTY 2024. And given my love to LEGO, it wouldn’t surprise anyone, that as soon as I’ve seen the LEGO Astrobot announcement, I immediately knew I wanted one. And here it is. Or was. Unfortunately, it was sold out so fast, that even my fully paid order was cancelled by PlayStation after two weeks. That sucks. The set was never available to buy from Lego, it was a bonus to a Lego PlayStation purchase. As I’ve never had an original PlayStation when I was a kid, I don’t have any…

I’m not sure I agree that this is “the best way” to use icons on the web, but there is some clever stuff worth reading about in the article.

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Up until the 1960s, telephone calls were carried as analog signals. There was a great deal of frequency division multiplexing onto open wire, and sometimes coaxial cables, but in the post-war period buried multipair telephone cables began to dominate. While the network was surprisingly functional—long distance calls from coast to coast were still quite intelligible—there were fundamental limitations to analog carriers. The quality of the call would degrade with each step, a problem that was…

hello all! i've been focusing a lot of my time the last month or so on adding the non-blog parts of this site that have been languishing in non-updates for quite some time now. this is likely to be a bit unguided but i'll give a quick update on what's been going on recently! anime club! some friends and i organised a weekly anime watch party for the latest season and its an experience i highly, highly recommend. a couple weeks in we realised that we were consistently excited to see what…

I remember working in digital prepress decades ago that .eps files were just kinda weird, and I didn’t love it when I had to deal with them. Like, what even made this? Why? I assumed it was some kind of antiquated software or practice, and I’d just deal with it, and eventually the world would improve. But here we are in 2026, and EPS is still here. How I come across EPS files is that it’s the download format from stock art sites that deliver vector artwork. It actually sorta makes sense: Stock…

This year I’ve been doing adult ed classes on archaeology, after a lifetime’s fascination with old stuff: wanting to be a palaeontologist at the age of nine (like so many other nine-year-olds); studying Late British History at sixteen; wanting to take first-year history at uni, but missing out because it clashed with first-year maths; and soaking in the sights of Britain, to say nothing of the rest of the world, for half my life. The last few years of revisiting the Scottish highlands and…

... what a fabulous afternoon. Stuffed to capacity, well played Robert and band, we had an amazing reception, great conversations afterwards. More tomorrow (I'm so tired!)

Unplanned Ten Week HiatusI’m back! Well, technically I haven’t left my internet home; it’s just my weeknotes that went into intermission. It was likely triggered as a respite from Blaugust1 and also time spent on migrating my secondary site from WordPress to Quartz2. It feels like there has been a fair amount that happened in the last ten weeks. I have an inkling that the proverbial page in my life has turned—or perhaps even a new chapter has begun. The unrelenting heat and humidity has also…

Hi Old Deptford History, I was born in the old St. Alfages hospital in Greenwich in 1950.Apparently I was not thriving as I should as my Mum was terrified of the ward sister which caused problems with feeding me. My Dad decided to kidnap us both and we came home to the family residence at 39 St. Donatts Road, New Cross.39 St Donatts Road.I went to school at St. James's in the road of the same name, New Cross and later went to Addey and Stanhope grammar school (known by us as Study and No…