Much has been said about the DHH keynote that he gave at RailsWorld. To me, it was the voice of a person in an existential crisis, but also a very jaded one. “Look how I don’t care anymore, and you should not care either” is not a great message when you are the headline speaker at the conference - let’s call it CareConf - that you have, yourself, lobbied for. The message from the supreme leader was clear: we vibe-rewrote HEY in a more performant way, it worked great, we neither need nor care…

Should tech labels depend on consensus or decree? On 29 September 2026 Donald Trump issued an executive order directing US federal agencies to use Super Intelligence in place of Artificial Intelligence, defining the new term to cover the same technologies as the old one and calling those who refused to comply “THE ENEMY”. Ten days later I spoke to tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker about the issues surrounding the attempted rebranding. Chris’s article for Fast Company is here……

This week Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book are hosting another of their clubs where we all read and write about books published in the same year. This time the chosen year is 1949, which seems to have been a particularly great year for literature – last week I posted a list of my previous 1949 reviews and there were eleven of them! I have some more reviews coming this week, starting with this one, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, which is also on my Classics Club…

I had never seen this movie, but I think I get why Kaufman has been considered a genius: the premises of the movies he wrote are phenomenal. This one in particular is pleasant too, but in general, the ideas in the ones I know are brilliant. I must watch all of them. Rating: 😃Hey, thanks for reading my blog via the RSS feed! Feel welcome to get in touch!

Desert Brat 2026-10-12

Power Cat 2026-10-12

I wash my hands of this Avatar. The Guardian has marooned the Avatar on the world of Pagan, which is dominated by four elemental titans, each with its own school of magic. The Avatar has learned that if he wants to escape, he's going to have to master the different magical systems: Necromancy, Tempestry, Theurgy, and Sorcery. He has managed to apprentice himself to the head (and perhaps only) Necromancer. He has sent me on a quest to learn Necromancy from his predecessors, now long-dead in the…

Patriarch of All He Surveys Burt Lancaster was at a Disadvantage in Whatever Version of The Leopard UnspooledCYB: The Leopard (1963)THE LEOPARD (1963) --- Made the mistake of watching the 2003 standard DVD release in mistaken belief there was no Blu-Ray, learning subsequent that Criterion upgraded to Blu later on. The Leopard is like so many European features hobbled by necessity of an English language version to properly sell stateside. That meant dubbing of everybody aboard, even star Burt…

Our friends over at Barnes and Noble are doing a 500 titles under $5.00 promotion this week. The Dreadful Duke is in the collection ($4.99, as usual), but so is a lot of Sarah Maas, the occasional Dean Koontz and tons of other faves. Give it a browse. Winter is coming and your TBR pile will thank you! On the blog this week, I am grateful for my boring, unexciting, low drama life. Really grateful. For reasons. Calling all writin’ buddies!!! On Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026, from 2-4 pm (Eastern) I will…

Many software engineers are righteously angry about AI. It’s understandable to be upset that the skills you built your professional identity around are getting automated away. But software engineers are the last people in the world who should be complaining about this. If you live by the sword, you will perish by the sword1. Software engineering has always automated industries From the very beginning, software engineering has been about automating other people’s work. Every single commercial…

Indiekit Beta 30Yesterday I was extremely excited to see the latest big update (Beta 30 & 31) to Indiekit, the Micropub server + client I use in conjunction with Hugo for this site. Lots of QoL updates and bugfixes. I want to thank Paul, Ricardo, and Anthony for making Indiekit better. Having upgraded a few times, I now know the routine to upgrade my server. When I first started I was very lost indeed… 😅 Here’s a quick rundown of how I did it (mainly for myself in case I forget in the future):…

Now every serious predator angler knows that the eve of a big pike expedition requires rigorous preparation. You must check your trace wire, sharpen your treble hooks, oil your multipliers, and, most importantly, line your stomach with enough heavy-duty carbohydrate to survive a December gale.Which is precisely why the rabble and I found ourselves at Caney’s Cider in Studley less than twenty-four hours before we were due on the water. A recommendation from blog reader and ex blogger Baz I'd…

Daily Drawing 1016

1927 horror. Dr Daniel Dreeme is working a remote valley in New England, and it becomes increasingly clear that the people are Strange.

https://bubbles.town/static/bubbles_1200x630.png While reading 6 Months of Bubbles by Gordon, I started wondering to myself how I'd change bubbles to make it easier to discover fresher and more niche content, while still providing the "best" posts for easy reading. Here's how Gordon put it: I want eclectic, quirky, different world-view posts to be featured. I want to see the strange little blog you’ve never heard of. I want to read about a hobby I’ve never heard of, or read a personal essay…

I have been a fan of the Irish rock band U2 ever since they released their Joshua Tree album way back in 1987. Over the years, as I listened to their songs, I thought it would be fun to somehow incorporate some of their lyrics into a short story. I finally did that very thing in June of 2013 for Round 33 of our writing group. As an extra bit of fun, I not only included song lyrics but was also able to work in the title of every song as well! If you enjoy this time-travel story, then maybe go…

My mother has forgotten she wants to die. For as long as I can remember she has been, not exactly planning it, but asserting her right to control her manner of death. When our family gathered for an Easter lunch during my freshman year of college, I announced that I had received a full scholarship to study abroad. She announced that she was going to kill herself at 80. She would have been 48 then. She is 78 now. In the interim, packages have arrived in the mail every now and then from ‘living…

Not a bad day again. Sunny afternoon. Did outside T. Mopped it. Did both jets. Took electrodes out and cleaned them. Cleared silage lab out. Lot of stuff to burn. 1 ton coke.

How many blatant, outright warnings do we need!?!

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Current stage of pregnancy: week 21 GA; week 19 FA; 30 (!) cigarettes since the beginning of pregnancy. Last cigarette was 29 days ago. I can't believe we're hitting the 21 weeks mark. I started feeling kicks in my lower abdomen a few days ago, I feel so relieved. Now it feels real, real. The kicks and flutters happen usually in the evening but I'm getting more and more during the day too. I was surprised at how low it was, I thought I should feel my first kicks around the belly button but the…

Dusk is falling. As it has been all day. Overhead hangs one of those grey snow skies that seems to descend ever further. In the misty atmosphere, the forest is no more than a collection of leafless trunks and branches that point aghast in all directions. It refuses to get dark, though the light seems to be departing constantly. A man staggers onward. In the tangle of trunks, there is barely a path to follow. Sometimes his hand swings out because he loses his balance and almost falls. Sometimes…

Will this be the year I buy myself a second or even third pair of workout clothes? Will it finally put an end to the constant juggling of my laundry schedule and workout plans? Stay tuned to find out! I’m still practicing being a good traveler, and while actually being on vacation has gotten easier for me, booking one is still a nightmare. I’m in the very privileged position of being with someone who somehow enjoys planning trips, but a balanced relationship probably requires me to take the…

Notes from riding a 200 km brevet. The petrol station worker takes two steps out the door and lights a cigarette when he sees me coming on my road bike. I can see him sigh as I clearly disturb his hundred-percent-illegal break. This is the downside of having German as a third language; I can't properly scold him for how dangerous it is to smoke at a petrol station. And also - I'm not in the mood. I am on the clock, riding a 200 km brevet, and this middle-of-nowhere petrol station is my…

October 12, 2026 She’s a statistics expert, and she works with BIRD data – what a great combination of technology and nature! Her inspiration for her personal style is this dapper creature: Going into full-tilt autumn, our heroine felt that she was relatively well prepared for most of what life had to offer: I have to share this with you: in the year of my birth, 1960, the average woman’s wardrobe (in the US) was 42 garments. That would be the wardrobe above plus two. And when I really try to…

They're a gregarious lot at Budapest's Mad Scientist. Today's three beers are all collaborations with various other parties.Mad in Black is that unusual creature, a black pilsner, and has been brewed for the Fekete Zaj music festival. Traditional dark lager styles exist, but the brewery has chosen not to apply them here. In the glass, it's not really black, more of a chocolate brown. It looks a bit muddy and unsavoury with that. The aroma is mostly plainly crisp, like an ordinary pilsner, but…

Allegedly, it's a harmless question. Can XYZ send you notifications? Allow, allow! Of course you can, app for my vacuum cleaning robot from China. You deserve a piece of my attention. It's now split between you and 30 other apps (slash companies) that all deserve to inform me whenever they seem fit. What can go wrong? First, there is the cue. The cue triggers your brain to initiate a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward. Our prehistoric ancestors were paying attention to…

I was working away at my laptop Friday afternoon when the front doorbell rang. It was a guy asking me if I was missing a tortoise. I was not, but I was curious, so I went to go see what was up. The situation in a nutshell: a decent-sized male Sulcata or African spurred tortoise, Centrochelys sulcata, had gotten loose from somewhere. The guy who rang my doorbell had seen it crossing the street in front of my house, which is reasonably busy in the late afternoon on a Friday. He didn’t want the…

Here are two swell slide scans from September, 1962! Let's begin with this great view of the Bertha Mae Keelboat gliding along the River with a full compliment of passengers. I wonder, if they brought back Keelboats (It'll never happen of course), would they be popular with guests today? The ride looks like a pleasant way to spend 10 minutes (or so).Over on Tom Sawyer Island, we're up on the upper walkway in Fort Wilderness, the "civilized" outpost of the Frontier. Folks are milling around the…

The Sandlot (1993)