Learn how to use lazy imports to speed up the startup time of your Python applications. Python 3.15 introduced explicit lazy imports. An explicit lazy import is an import statement that starts with the keyword lazy: import json lazy import math lazy from pathlib import Path The module json is imported normally, but math and Path are imported lazily. If an import is lazy, the module will only be loaded when it is needed instead of being loaded immediately when Python encounters the import…

As someone who has, over the years, found himself deep in the Google ecosystem of hardware and services, I had been curious about the Googlebook concept for a while — whether it would be basically a fancy Chromebook, or if it would offer something more, and more useful, than that line of affordable but mostly limited laptops. When the Googlebook models for were announced in September, I decided to go ahead and pre-order one: The Acer Googlebook 14. It turns out, however, that apparently lots of…

I don’t feel happy I hate being alive Everything I do is just prolonging my suffering I don’t know how to reach out without feeling like I’ll make things worse I feel like I’m constantly gasping and fighting to take a breath I just want to curl into a ball and disappear but I keep trying to meet with friends to maintain the relationship because I know that if I don’t the relationships will just fall apart and I’ll be left even more alone But it’s so fucking exhausting, I’m struggling to put on…

Updated October 2026 Foolproof. It’s the one word that best explains why I decided to cook my way through Ina Garten’s recipes in the first place. No matter how little experience I had in the kitchen, her recipes never made me feel like I was on my own. As Ina writes in the introduction, “Why go to all that trouble [of cooking] only to find that the result is ho-hum or, worse, that the recipe doesn’t work at all?” And with her eighth book, she delivers exactly what the title promises: more…

When the trip to a conference involves missing your flight and then your hotel, you'll always have a little trepidation about the return. Thankfully, my flight back to Colorado was much less eventful. Sure, I forgot my headphones in the hotel lobby, and got epically drenched by a sunshower that followed me shadow-close for ten miuntes. The phone charge situation was also an exercise in realizing how phone-dependent city life can be1. But other than a numinous and frankly yearn-worthy encounter…

Brevity comes easy this year iPhone 18 Pro. A few weeks after this article’s publication, a much more exciting iPhone will go on sale: iPhone Duo, the hotly anticipated foldable iPhone that leaves room for many more words and photographs. But its flagship sibling, iPhone 18 Pro, deserves at least a few notes. There’s not much to discuss here, but the little there is makes iPhone 18 Pro the default iPhone to buy heading into the busy holiday season. I’m keeping this review short — much shorter…

Change: Buttercup Festival 3-402

Blue holes open and close in the clouds. Gray squirrels continue to sound the alarm for a long-gone hawk as the tulip sapling in my yard dances in the wind.

I swear it feels like this life is scripted sometimes. A paint-by-numbers midlife crisis. A slowly decaying Rube Goldberg machine. I turn 41 in two months, and I’ve suddenly developed an interest in photography. It’s a thing, apparently. Nostalgia, a creeping awareness of mortality, and a desire to preserve ordinary moments. The tangible aspect of 35mm film. So, here I am in the dark, a belly full of Cafe Bustelo, looking up where to buy an Olympus 35 RC. I haven’t the slightest clue how to…

My friend Natalie Corley (who has a nice new book out, more later) found me this amazing backyard miniature circus! 8 x 10 glossy with a “Thompson” logo lower right. I’m kinda slack jawed. Was this a temporary exhibition or permanent? Did they rush the figures into the tents when it rained? There is even a little ticket booth. Natalie Curley is a crackerjack vintage photography dealer who has published a new book exploring the relationship between humans and their pets shown below, like all her…

This was my birthday week 🥳. I learnt Soumyadeep (my childhood friend) had been planning the Sakleshpur-Udupi-Mangalore birthday trip since 6 months ago!! On the D-day, he pretended to not know anything for the whole day, and at the exact stroke of the clock, he jumped right in front of me like Baburao does in Phir Hera Pheri for pizza delivery, but instead of demanding something, buddy shouted SURPRISE! I am super grateful to have such gem of a friend 😭. Life Stretching I am truly annoyed by…

It has come and gone, but one of my favorite seasons of the year is the stinky season of kinmokusei. There was a bit of a false start to it. It had started to bloom around us and then a typhoon came through and knocked out all the smell. We were quite disappointed that it barely lasted a week. We had gone out for an evening walk to go and find the lovely stinky flowers. And there’s a lot of them near our apartment. But the typhoon came in and seemed all done. Tokyo also had an incredibly long…

This week, we are presenting the Barista paper at ASE'2026, and by 'we', I mean Catarina Gamboa, who is leading this work. When trying to adopt LiquidJava, an annotation-based language that adds refinements to types, in your Java project, you will have to write the annotations for any library that you use, including the Java Standard Library. This is just a huge amount of work for your simple application. This issue is shared by LiquidHaskell, Frama-C's ACML and Java Modeling Language. Roughly…

A walk through some of the intriguing history of Clapham in South London. From the WW2 tunnels, to Clapham Common and the Old Town. An area rich with London history, we also visit the church associated with the Clapham Sect, a Roman altar stone, the place where Samuel Pepys lived in his final years, some great blue plaques, the area that became an artists’ community in Rectory Gardens. We also look for Cromwell Lodge, go to a radical bookshop and ask, ‘Who was The Man on the Clapham Omnibus?’.…

Raiding had ended and Lady of Rain’s forest and People had peace. Soon, sorrow arrived unexpectedly. Disease struck down her People. Many were fatigued with unending thirst. The Wasting Slumber was here. Those first afflicted were the people tasked with raider corpse removal. From them it did spread to their families and other people they met. The Wasting Slumber was carried by those going to the farms and mines. Lady of Rain wept grieving alongside her People as they perished. The Child God…

★★★★: An awesome metroidbrania with some challenging platforming and a great time loop mechanic. Read more in my full review! FYI: My reviews are scored out of 4. Also, thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed and supporting the indie web!

A few last thoughts on the nine-album challenge, the friends who opened those doors, and this week’s playlist. If you’ve been on Notes this week, you might’ve noticed that the “9 albums that formed me” challenge is inescapable. (And if you’re not, and you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, congratulations!) I’m mindful that we’ve already spent a lot of oxygen and column inches on the topic, but if you’ll indulge me just a little bit more here, I want to make a couple of last points…

One thing I’m enjoying over at Bubbles is the non-tech blogs. Every other blog list I visit is usually mostly tech-related stuff, and then it’s usually developers. I’m a techie myself, and I don’t have anything against developers, but it’s nice to see more blogs about humans just being humans.

Sure, the Hegseth speech quickly became a Saturday Night Live cold open, but you have to salute the crew of Carrier Strike Group Three’s USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 9, who just completed 322 days deployed and earned a hard-won Presidential Unit Citation without an aircraft mishap. She steamed into San Diego on Friday looking good, thanks to a quick five-day touch-up by local yard personnel in Laem Chabang Port, Thailand, on the way home, while her crew got some…

Taxing wealth didn’t do Norway any harm. Timothy Snyder: War through weakness. Phillips O’Brien: Trump is free to be what he has always been. Andy Burnham has confirmed that Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum. Britain could rejoin the EU within a single Parliament. A three-year-old’s metastatic cancer disappeared after two doses of experimental therapy. Nine patients received a personalized kidney cancer vaccine; none had a recurrence. Lung function in London’s children has improved…

The ATF announced Friday that it has paused NFA restrictions and regulations on silencers (suppressors) and short-barreled firearms nationwide. In the aftermath of a Texas federal court ruling and sweeping legislative changes brought about in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the ATF has issued official guidance halting the enforcement of traditional National Firearms Act (NFA) transfer, registration, and tax-stamp requirements for short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, and…

Publishing “Cryptographic Right Answers” for developers is a tradition by now. Colin Percival started in 2009, Thomas Ptacek followed up in 2015, and then Latacora carried on in 2018 and 2024. It might feel too soon for an update, but so much has changed. The timeline of the post-quantum transition dramatically shifted in early 2026, and there is now consensus that it needs to complete by 2029. 2029! We have three years! The good news is that, despite what you might have heard, symmetric…

With today being today, you knew this was coming. I give you the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Columbus (CA-74) at New York Harbor for Columbus Day 1945. At first, you could almost mistake her for a slimmed-down Iowa-class battleship. That was easy to do with a ship that had a full-load displacement of some 17,000 tons, ran nearly 700 feet long, had a very similar 3+3+3 main gun layout, two funnels, and up to eight inches of armor. Note her abeam name stencil, applied for the event. NH…

I suppose tonight's World Series game is the highlight for sports fans, but as I mentioned on Saturday, you might find two movies worth your while: Kim Novak and Tony Curtis in The Third Girl on the Left, and Peter Ustinov in Viva Max! Still, I'm sure you'll be able to find your favorites; today's listings are from the Philadelphia-New York metro area. 2 WCBS (NYC) (CBS) MORNING 6:20 NEWS 6:30 SUNRISE SEMESTER The World of Islam 7:00 CBS NEWS—Rudd/Quinn 8:00 CAPTAIN KANGAROO 9:00 ANYTHING YOU…

2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission. This is for the period of Sept 28 – Oct 11. Stats for the Year Stories Finished: 3 Submissions Currently Out: 7 Submissions Total: 38 Rejections: 33 Acceptances: 0 Submissions and Responses I received two rejections this week, one for Beneath the House at Caen, and one for Taco Cat. I also gave up on two submissions: one to a publisher that only responds for…

Interesting hypothesis that the calibration from Apple might be different.

Ennis, Ireland Our bus tour to Cliffs of Moher and Limerick stopped here for lunch. I needed a pick-me-up and found this coffee shop open. It’s a nice space with plenty of seating, good branding, and just down the road from a 13th century friary. I ordered a mocha and it was too hot to drink. It first tasted like steamed milk only. I attempted to stir it up a bit as we walked around the town but it still wasn’t great. I threw it away after only a few sips.

Various parties concerned about the risks that artificial intelligence (AI) pose to humanity have called for a pause in its development. But such a call faces a difficult collective action problem. Can it be solved? I have been skeptical (and suggested an alternate type of approach to AI safety here). But a new report argues that a pause is indeed possible. Drafted by the Working Group on AI Pause Feasibility, an interdisciplinary group led by statistician William Fithian and philosopher Wesley…

im the type of person to quite enjoy forumsyes i know shocking the guy who pays for a domain for his silly site likes forumsand one thing i keep running into that i find so interesting is how tricky image hosting actually istext is incredibly easy to store and retrieve, but images can be millions of times denser for a single pngthe naive solution of just letting users upload opens the door to losing all of your storageand the number one security rule of Dont let people upload arbritrary files…