Yesterday, my slippers snapped.‘Slippers’, in Taiwanese English, are better known as ‘sandals’, ‘sliders’, or ‘slides’ in other countries.(Confusingly in Taiwan, indoor slippers are also just called ‘slippers’. But despite routinely removing my shoes when entering homes, hotel rooms, and some other businesses in Taiwan, I rarely encounter indoor slippers. Which is a good thing, because they rarely fit my US size 13 feet.)So back to yesterday: at 10:30am, while walking outside in my socks and…

The first post in this series introduced Frml, a little procedural language I created so that I could learn how program verification works. The second explained how Frml checks simple scalar code; this one explains how it checks programs with multiple functions. As a reminder, the scalar prover owns the engine and leaves two hooks for higher levels: def verify_function(self, fn): state = State() for p in fn.params: state.vars[p.name] = self._fresh_scalar(p.type, p.name) self._assume_spec(fn,…

In 1981 I saw Van Halen at The Checkerdome in St Louis, decent seat, for $8.50. In 1984 I saw Rush at The Arena (the renamed Checkerdome) in St. Louis, decent seat, for $12.50. On October 5, 2026 I saw Rush at Ball Arena in Denver, decent seat, for $375. Wow. Looking at my concert tickets from 1981 to 2026, The prices from 1981 until just about 1994 the prices started to escalate, not a lot, but some. I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd in 991, front row, for $25 and thought that was very reasonable. Then I…

Welcome to Open Wire, our bi-monthly Woodworking Q&A session. Until 5 p.m. today, you can post your questions in the comment section below, then Chris and I, along with your fellow readers if they wish, will answer. I’m writing this post about a week ahead of time, but it’s fairly safe to assume that as you read this, Chris is working on a chair in between his answers, and I’m unpacking from one teaching trip and getting ready for the next one (as is Chris – we’ll both be at the London…

When we ask the question "Does TV Go Too Far," keep in mind that we're looking at this from the perspective of 1973, Today, society has become so libertine that I'm not sure you can go too far on TV (or anywhere else for that matter), but despite Watergate, Vietnam, inflation, drugs, and disco, the 1970s are a more innocent time, and so we ask the question. The poll, commissioned by TV Guide and conducted by Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, NJ and documented by Neil Hickey, tells us…

Coarsely ground, flecked with aromatic wild fennel seed, peppercorns and red pepper flakes, my all-time favorite sausage is still one of the very first I was taught to make. The recipe was passed to me from my friend chef Andy Lilja. It was passed to Andy from Filipo Caffari, a master butcher from Rome, while... Read More The post Classic Italian Fennel Sausage appeared first on Forager | Chef .

The Wailing 2016, Na Hong-jin My rating: I like it There is so much in this movie that is great, and it’s a rare horror movie where the second half is better than the first. The scenes with supernatural elements were superb to watch and the horror is really there. Too bad the tonal whiplash in some of its scenes, where it goes super silly and almost slapstick, didn’t go well with me. And since none of the characters bear any semblance of likability, I didn’t really care what happened to them in…

On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle, published 2020 (translation by Barbara J. Haveland published 2024), science fiction, 105 pages. I’m not sure what I think. I do love time loops. The mechanics here were interesting, too, and the overall take felt fresh. And yet, in spite of having read Proust and thus being able to read books in which not much happens, and in spite of reading more for voice and character than for plot these days, I don’t feel at all compelled to pick up the next…

If you are anything like me, your desk is probably a bit of a disaster zone, cluttered with random stuff, notebooks, and spare screens that beep, blink, or stare back at you with varying degrees of digital intelligence. For a long time now, my desk tablet has been running the official Home Assistant app just to give me a static, uninspired window into my home automation setup. It worked, sure… Source

“LastBar is a map of where mobile phones have signal and where they do not, made by the phones of the people who use it. When you are stuck with no bars, it gives you the distance and the direction to the nearest place where your phone will work, and to the nearest water and shelter. It needs no connection to do so.” This is an interesting South African app that is intended specifically for those who venture into areas where there is no cellphone signal coverage. This app will point you in the…

A short circular walk - with a pleasant beach, an ugly pier, and an unusual statue. Continue reading →

[1976]The power pop party rages on.Catchy bit of garage-y Beatlemania... undeniable. Hangin On The Telephone - The Nerves [1976]Sorry but it's just impossible to go past quite possibly the most addictive two minutes of guitar pop that fucking rocks ever put to wax. The anguish and desperation of teenage lust is palpable.Singer/Guitarist Jack Lee wrote the greatest power-pop song of all time, then Blondie brilliantly covered it. However The nerves devastatingly delicious version of this tale of…

I'll be radically honest here - I never really got the idea of "Test Driven Development". I'm much more of a "telnet into production and damn the consequences" kind of guy. Look, it's much more fun and my cardiologist recommends severe shocks every now and again. The essence of unit testing is pretty simple: Feed a function some data See how it responds Send it good data and if it returns "true" the test passes. Send it bad data and make sure it returns false. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. As part…

"A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it." - Aristotle, Poetics Via Valeria Luiselli from her talk in Rhinebeck

Framboise ou Chocolat What Works Well? What Works…Less Well? Opportunities What’s Adaptable? Six Years Hence: Where Are the Joneses? Part 3 Coming Attractions This week, our Free Culture Book Club watches Framboise ou Chocolat. To give this series some sense of organization, check out some basic facts without much in the way of context. For Clarity : You can best think of these posts like their titles suggest, as the seed of a discussion group (“book club”) to spark conversation about a Free…

THREE AUTHORS WHO’VE recently published books reflecting on different aspects of the history of anarcho-punk and the counterculture will deliver talks at the 2026 Manchester and Salford Anarchist Bookfair on 31 October. Rich Cross will be joined by former Poison Girls bassist Sue Cooper to reflect on This is a Message to Persons Unknown: The story of Poison Girls; Nick Soulsby will discuss his recent book Born of Struggle, Living in Hope: The Anarcho-Punk Lives of the Centro Iberico, 1971-1983;…

Bill Perkins, in Die with Zero, makes an observation I keep coming back to: past a basic threshold, optimizing health matters far more to your quality of life than optimizing money. When health is bad, money is hard to enjoy in any form. Can’t travel. Can’t move without pain. Can’t push yourself physically. When health stops, everything else stops with it. If life is really about collecting memories, health is the first input. I’ve heard people say they’ll sleep and rest once they get to some…

Keiran had won the match the other day, which, as far as I could make out, had immediately elevated him to the position of Professor of River Fishing, with a specialism in telling other people how to catch fish. He'd drawn this particular peg and apparently given the fish such a memorable feeding experience that they'd practically been climbing over one another to get at his maggots, which was all very encouraging, although I couldn't help wondering whether he'd actually caught them or merely…

Another book review while it’s fresh in my mind, this time Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse (Penguin, 2025). As is my wont, I’m going to spend more time talking about what I disagree with in the book than what I agree with, because I find it more generative. But let me begin with a quick summary of its merits, which are considerable. First of all, it’s just really great to see a young scholar with highfaluting academic credibility taking the idea of…

Notes on speaking at Rockstars Valley and Frontmania, and why conferences are starting to feel interesting again.

I’m feeling the edges of burnout creep in, and having gone through that before, I’m pulling the brakes on anything that is neither immediately useful nor satisfactory. To begin with, I’ve decided to take it a lot slower with piclaw. I’ve been a bit frustrated for a while about the overhead of maintaining it while pi upstream churns through three releases a week, but most importantly, maintaining it burns through credits I need for other things, so I’m calling it “stable” and moving to a monthly…

ByteFM: Radio für gute Musik.

By Ron MeischkerOrange Cat GamesCastles & CrusadesLevels 4-6 An ancient tomb. A fading bard. A new generation of heroes. The venerable adventurer, Targan the Bard, has learned about a long-forgotten ancient tomb and has chosen your adventuring party to explore it. He is only asking one thing in return… Are you ready to make history? This sixteen page adventure uses six pages to describe nine rooms in a linear tomb dungeon. Long italics second-person read-aloud. Linear. Long DM text. And,…

Hurrah, it’s the weekend again! And I have no plans (that’s a good thing). Books acquired this week I finally finally ended up going out for a ride on my bike this week, which means I made it to the library for the first time in a while! So here’s what I picked up on that adventure. I picked up The Beheading Game because someone tantalised me by saying they felt there are links to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in it, so I’m curious about that, despite it not being totally my…

A few years ago, I took a popular character strength test online. It was a good survey, based on solid psychology rather than corporate buzzwords. When the results popped up, my top five traits were laid out in clean type: Zest, Love of Learning, Kindness, Curiosity, and Gratitude. I felt a warm glow of pride. "Yes," I thought. "That sounds like me. Or at least the version of me I would like to be." Then I did what almost everyone does after finishing a test like that. I closed the tab, went…

A random two-story commercial building in Queens, with a big chimney for its boiler flue: Closer: It took amazingly little masonry detail – amazingly little effort – to make that chimney look good.

8709/21628The oddest thing about being 59 (apart from it being impossible that you're 59) is the awareness that you might die any second OR you might live another 30 or 40 years. It makes it very difficult to plan anything.Should I be winding stuff down now and getting my affairs in order? Or do I have to keep this thing running until 2067? Be nice to get some indication at least.I guess two cancers is a little bit of a clue as to which way it's going.

This week I stumbled across a story in the Bruxelles EU publication Rapporteur, arguing for a "rail revolution in Poland", illustrated using a Russian Railways RZD Sapsan train:I am pretty sure, politically, you do not want RZD as part of your revolution!Earlier this week the TRAN Committee of the European Parliament likewise had used a picture of a Sapsan train, although at least that one was corrected swiftly. And even leaflets and banners at trade fair Innotrans featured Russian trains.Does…

The Mastodon instance on which I’m almost the only active user has been offline with a 503 for about 16 hours now. Given that “Opening Ivory” is the first thing I do after unlocking my phone, even before thinking what it is that I actually unlocked the phone for, this is a rather distressing state of affairs. Reply by email

Using the new Allocators to move vm spill from the heap to the process stack