I am uploading my slides to my public lecture “Math 2.0” that I gave yesterday evening at Caltech. (The talk was planned over a year ago, and was initially titled “Machine Assisted Proof” and scheduled to be given back in May. It was postponed to October, and with recent events the talk changed significantly, but the old title and abstract remains on the Caltech web page.) In this talk I lay out the historical “Math 1.0” state of mathematics, the current state induced by the excessive emphasis…

Selfie a day for a year, day 46: Oct 10, 2026 edition. I need to get a little more consistent with these selfie a day posts. Just another day waiting around in a car.

AI;DR – This blog post was written mostly by Claude Code, which also implemented the feature it describes. If you don’t want to read “AI slop”, stop reading now. When you copy components from one form and paste them into another, the Delphi IDE silently drops every event link. The pasted buttons have an empty OnClick, and the code of their event handlers stays behind in the old unit, so you go through the Object Inspector and the editor and put it all together again by hand. Feature request #75…

Album of the Week, October 10, 2026 Even in the moment, in the mid-1990s following the release of Us, it seemed like Peter Gabriel was all over the place while simultaneously being invisible. Interactive computer entertainment via the then-new medium of the CD-ROM? He was there, with XPlora 1: Peter Gabriel’s Secret World (reviews now differ: was it a computer game or an extended advertising campaign? Having played it back in the day, I can say with confidence: it was slow) and Eve. There were…

by Cora Buhlert A New Scourge In the past few years, drug use has been on the rise all over the western world and West Germany is no exception. It started with young people with long hair hanging out in public places like the steps outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in West Berlin and … Continue reading [October 10, 1971] Silly Nonsense and Great Fun: Wenn mein Schätzchen auf die Pauke haut (When my sweetheart gets loud) → The post [October 10, 1971] Silly Nonsense and Great Fun:…

I could do without the NYT sticker but otherwise I like the front cover design for Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker. Art direction/design by Tara Scarcello. Cora Zeng does not get angry. Not because Auntie Lois says anger is a sin, or because Delilah could never be bothered with such an emotion, or because Cora is sage enough to understand that it is a pointless, destructive feeling. Cora Zeng does not get angry because anger always melts through her fingers until it’s…

Screenshot Story #4 of 31: The Best Science Fiction of the Year 8, ed. by Neil Clarke Part of a series: Reading Science Fiction at 75. The first essay. “Give Me English,” by Ai Jiang, is a metaphor for understanding languages and what it means to become an immigrant. The story feels like science fiction because everyone in this future has a language database (Langbase) in their head, and words are the universal monetary unit. Poor people have to sell their words to pay rent, and some eventually…

The decision by Danish brewing giant Carlsberg to close the historic Marston’s brewery in Burton-on-Trent next summer, though long anticipated, still feels driven by profit and corporate greed. Carlsberg cited the familiar reason of a steep and sustained decline in cask ale consumption across the UK. Data shows that by the mid-2020s, cask ale volumes in Britain had more than halved in less than a decade, with consumption continuing to fall year on year. The multinational claimed this collapse…

I just moved our family's life board from Trello to Todoist. This type of migration would have been extremely difficult before LLMs, but it was made even easier by Grok Bot (a fantastic product).Here's what the board looked like going in:1500+ cards5 sections: Backlog, Coming Up, In Progress, Done and InformationCards in Information are long-lived, just for generally useful data like phone numbers and addresses.What did Grok Bot actually do?Grok Bot had to create a Todoist project with all the…

I'm working through my severe annoyance at Pokemon Champions blocking my phone, so I'm channeling my haterism outwards. To that end, and due to some particularly obnoxious posts in one of the public Discords I try to be active in, I'm going to take the opportunity to complain about a couple of the absolute worst things about Discord's interface. My victims of choice are the channel list (and Discord's use of space generally), and the block (or ignore) function. It needs to be said that these…

I loved the original, "Final Fantasy VII," when I played it decades ago on the first PlayStation console. When I heard they were remaking it as three(!) separate games, that sounded intriguing but also a bit like overkill. That said, when I did play the OG game, some of my favorite memories were the opening within the city of Midgar and much of the latter half of the game when a bunch of climactic story beats occur. I had heard that the first, "Remake," spent the entirety within Midgar and…

Since IMDb forced users to login to see user reviews, I think it is time for another platform to gain consensus on the quality of media.Potential Alternatives: Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd, The Movie Db (TMDB), NeoDB.Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.comThis might be the most well-known alternative to IMDb, frequently cited together with the former for general audiences. It is also corporate owned, in this case by Fandango. Evidently, it has been criticized for black and white reviews,…

Where We Left Off Part 19 was two and a half weeks of rebuilding nixos2 on new hardware after the old box started screaming at me. Big post, lots of gaps found, a punch list at the end. This one was supposed to be small. One update, one service, could be done before I ran to lunch. Could build a new ISO later. It ended up taking lunch and getting wrapped up later in the evening. The One Update I Actually Planned Gitea 28.0.0 landed at the end of September. It's a big release: they dropped the…

Historian Friederike Baer focuses our attention on the varied experiences of the German auxiliaries in the American Revolution. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians and accompanied by many civilians, including hundreds of women and children, they spent extended periods in locations as far-flung and varied as Canada and West Florida. Drawing on extensive research in…

The other day, I was leaving a personal training session. The trainer asked me when I was coming in next. Maybe Thursday or Sunday, I responded. I could book it at home. Let’s do it now, he told me. So with his nudging, I downloaded the app, logged in, and booked my next class on the spot. Thursday, he suggested. I agreed. (He had done the same thing the previous time, suggesting a sooner time slot.) I really appreciated this. In a time when distraction abounds, he helped preserve my willpower.…

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 23, § 273 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): There is no greater error than to believe that the last word spoken is always more correct, that everything written later is an improvement of what was written earlier and that every change represents progress. Kein größerer Irrthum, als zu glauben, daß das zuletzt gesprochene Wort stets das richtigere, jedes später Geschriebene eine Verbesserung des früher…

This update covers Sunday 10-04-26 through Saturday 10-10-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 A week of treading water. 📕 Both L. & I have had busier-than-normal work weeks, which in its own way has made the week fly by in a hurry. 📜 Looking ahead to future weeks of better activities and scenarios, especially for L. ❤️‍🩹 Nearly every day this week, I have made a point to walk either around our complex or in our neighborhood. L. & I have been using our massage chair which I bought last year…

Ohhhhhhhhh, clearly The Other Side. Such an obscure film, not even on IMDB! And I have it on my Google Drive 😛

Yet another entry in my ever-growing collection of weather-related comics. I’m pretty sure I drew a very similar one at the beginning of the year. If I keep this up for another ten years, I might eventually be able to make a little “walking through time” flipbook out of all of them.

By FARHA GUERRERO I am drawn to the epistolary form, and will confess, rather embarrassedly, that my correspondence can often be lengthy, perhaps excessive. I ‘text’ on my laptop using all ten digits. I often address recipients in emails with “Dear.” I may have grown up in a time when letter writing was already out of fashion. Although, I have fond memories of handwriting letters as an adolescent and during my first year of undergrad studies, using my electric typewriter, just as email was…

Twice a year, Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, lead a celebration of books published in a certain year they select way in advance. This is fun to participate in and especially to see what other bloggers have chosen to read. I have reviewed several that I think would be good options for others, although you’d better get cracking:Read more »

I made it to day 2 at the Calling 100 on Slippy! Wrote a little about it, too.

An uncle willing to kill your father might not be the best person in whom to put your faith. Vistahm and his brother Vinduyih killed Iranian Emperor Hormizd IV (they had reasons) and put his son on the throne as Khosrow II.They had helped Khosrow during a civil war against his enemy, Bahram Chobin, but eventually he had to order them executed to distance himself from their murder of his father. Vinduyih was caught up with and killed, but Vistahm found enough supporters—including supporters of…

After writing this article, I took a short break. Then, I continued my exploration.This time, I wanted to check the Recent Changes page. I wanted to see which fellow Wikidata users were online and what they were busy working on.Suddenly, I noticed another Wikidata user, a fellow countryman, adding a statement to a local TV series item. I immediately thanked them for the edit, then joined them in editing that particular item.Anyway, I really love the “thank” mechanism across Wikimedia projects.…

I’ve been interested in what happens to your online content after death for a long time. I recently asked some folks what they think about this topic. One conclusion is perhaps the correct one which is that it doesn’t matter. When you pass, your content stays online in one way or another via archives and/or, […]

When you are in a place where perception matters, act as if you are always under observation. Especially in organisations or environments where an opinion can shape your future, it is important to influence that opinion through deliberate mannerisms. “Be yourself” is poor advice because, for those who are often misunderstood in initial impressions, it can backfire in ways that harm them. You cannot be yourself in every context and every environment. Besides, what if you are mediocre? Assuming…

Bernard Lewis (1916-2018), Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), page number unknown (chapter 7): Heinrich von Sybel, the German historian, said a long time ago that students should arrive at the university knowing their centuries. I think that puts it well. If you say fourteenth century or seventeenth century, this should immediately evoke something in the mind of a reasonably cultivated man or woman. When you say seventeenth century, an…

• 4-star hike • 1 to 2 mile options • Easy | Gain 10 feet • York, ME | Maine . Wiggly Bridge at Barrell's Millpond. Fisherman’s Walk follows the York River inland from the harbor to a historic millpond dam and a small suspension bridge. First settled by Europeans in 1624, the town that became York grew into a prosperous seaport. Little sign of that trade remains today, though the harbor inlet stays busy with pleasure craft and seafront restaurants. The trail begins close to Harbor Beach and…

I saw this on Mastodon today (saved the image, lost the source), and it just brought me so much joy! Did you know that we live in a world where octopuses dream, otters have a favorite shell that they carry with them all their lives, cows have best friends, and bees have different “dialects” of dance depending on the region? Or that cats purr at a frequency that accelerates bone healing, the forest grows flowers first after a fire, and dolphins give each other names and respond to them, and…