It's really just a picture. Every handheld here has an IPS backlit screen (with the brightness set to the minimum), except for the DMG Game Boy, which has been with me since the 90s and I want to keep it all original. The Neo Geo Pocket Color is the one that surprised me the most — it's so comfortable to hold, and the "analog d-pad" is so clicky and satisfying. The Game Boy Color was an impulse buy, since it was cheap and already had the new screen, and the customized shell looked cool too. And…

Read the full post at - A Last Time For Everything by Evan Porter First off – Evan Porter, the author, is a good friend of mine who I’ve known for years. I also reviewed his debut novel, Dad Camp, which was awesome and pairs well with this one. I would say this is a disclosure of bias…except that it is absolutely not. Why? Well, since I’ve known Evan for so long (and worked with him on various projects), I can actually say that he puts in the work, time, and attention to make a novel that is…

"I don't want any fairy tale, I just want my brother." An older sister living in Portland, Oregon has her baby brother taken from her by crows while they are playing in the playground. She frantically follows them into a dangerous and secret magical wood which leads to a whole adventure to get him back. The scope and ambition of this film cannot be understated. It’s a beautiful stop-motion animation that is so technically proficient I cannot figure out how they possibly could have done some…

A scandal seems to have developed at the University of Galway concerning Tom Felle, an associate professor at said University’s Department of Journalism and Media who was Head of the Department until last year, and who has been described as “Dr Tom Felle” on the university’s website. Mr Felle – who is, ironically, an expert in disinformation and “fake news” – claimed to have a doctorate in journalism from City, University of London (now City St George’s), where he used to work as a senior…

Due to dicts preserving the order of key insertion, they’re another example of objects that may have == True but with other methods yielding different values: >>> x = dict(a=1, b=2) >>> y = dict(b=2, a=1) >>> x == y True >>> list(x) ['a', 'b'] >>> list(y) ['b', 'a'] How does Python implement remembering key insertion order? Raymond Hettinger’s 2017 talk Modern Python Dictionaries A confluence of a dozen great ideas talks about how the ordering is a side effect of other optimizations. Slides.…

Now, let's enjoy some quality time watching cartoons produced by the Fleischer studio!Arguably, this blog's favorite animated cartoon produced by the studio where all the Fleischer animators worked, Famous Studios, with honorable mentions to the musical WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO RIO and the hilarious SHAPE AHOY (1945), Popeye in THE HUNGRY GOAT

And it was true: with a book, you could go back in time and hear a dead person talking to you in their own voice. People long gone came alive again through the written words they had left behind. You might not agree with what they had to say, but you could see what they thought, learn how they felt, and maybe relate. Maybe, even, learn something new about yourself that you didn’t know before. Books could leave you a different person than you were before you read them. Through books you could…

Special offer: We are reducing the price of “The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing to $23 – that’s the price we charged in 2010 when we released our version of this important hand-tool book. This special offer lasts until Christmas Day. After that, the book will return to its normal price of $33 (still a very good deal on a U.S.-made hardcover book with a sewn binding). If you know someone who needs a little push into the hand-tool world, this is a great gift. “The Essential Woodworker”…

So, I deleted my digital garden. Or zettelkasten, or second brain, or collection of notes, whatever you want to call it. I deleted it. After my latest post about simplifying my life, I started thinking about how I got here again. Maintaining something I no longer really need but was worried about letting go of. Because what if I do need it? As I wrote a few years ago in The Rise of Digital Gardeners, I’ve been doing this ever since I was a kid. Back then, it was physical folders. Then Word…

[I don’t want a machine to fake a dog for me, either.] For over a decade, Matt Nelson has been delighting the world by rating dogs online. Now, the New York Times has a wonderful profile on him and his team, including Javier, the current CEO. Nelson and his fiancée, a therapist, adopted Javier, a street dog from Tijuana, from a rescue organization in L.A. “He was found in the trash, but not in, like, a bad way,” Nelson said. “He was just rummaging through the trash and loving it.” Nelson,…

Sam Henri Gold has made something wild: a full iPhone and iPod touch emulator for the Mac.

The last game I preordered was Mass Effect 2. That was released January of 2010. That was over sixteen years ago.Since then, I have not really been that tempted to put money down early on a game. That's because most modern AAA games suck and are also bad.But not Stage Tour. At least not by the looks of it.I learned of Stage Tour through Mastodon when my friend Jason Evangelho was tooting about it.I'll admit it. I haven't been following AAA gaming in quite some time. Mostly because, again, AAA…

Over the last few years, I have curated a few pieces of science fiction scholarship in my Exploration Log series that I’ve found memorable, historically important, and worth sharing.1 Today I have an interview with Max Dosser, author of the recent book Nostalgic Futures: The Reactionary Fantasies of Speculative Fiction Fandoms (2026). As his book centers on more recent history of science fiction, I’ve focused my discussion on his larger conceptual frameworks that are applicable to the pre-1985…

A quick refresher on the largest copyright recovery in history (for a lot more detail and context, see the post I wrote last year): In 2024, a group of authors filed a copyright infringement class action lawsuit against AI company Anthropic over its creation of an enormous library of digitized books to train its Claude chatbot. In addition to buying and scanning physical books, Anthropic also downloaded millions of works that had been illegally uploaded to pirate sites—all without permission…

I guess when you start out on your photography journey, you sometimes just need some luck. When I was in Bratislava last summer, I hadn’t had my camera for that long yet. Before arriving there, I had only used it a few times at events or on random walks through the city where I live. I can’t say I really knew what I was doing. I was just hoping for photographic moments to present themselves to me. And you know what? Sometimes they do. Sometimes the advice that you should always take your camera…

Two parallel tools can do forty seconds of work in twenty seconds. Before buying faster inference, separate model-call latency, tool waits and the cost of a validated change.

Nao Espoir Opening with looping drums and cut up vocal sounds, Espoir, from French artist Nao, primarily deals in vibes. Cool blue synth tones and springy synthetic bass create a sunny warmth before a female vocal instructionally deadpans a series of moves. The result is a buoyant piece of music — it’s getting lost down Mediterranean backstreets, holding hands with someone you care about, jumping into the pool, eye contact. Collage-like, Nao has made something evocative yet also abstract. In…

My first Art Cologne—by some considered the world’s oldest art fair dating back to 1967—was a fun trip! A lot less pretentious and a lot more museum-y than I expected. We had some interesting conversations with the gallerists and I was impressed how dedicatedly they introduced us to the artists and art they represent without checking whether we had the means to buy any of it. Because we really don’t! Although never have I tried harder to persuade my brain that 18,500 € is a completely…

Since 1990 when I started my art history degree, of all the paintings in the Western World, my absolute favourites have been Dutch works painted in the C17th. Instead of painting saints and monarchs, Dutch artists then preferred ordinary but dignified people: milkmaids, merchants, inn-keepers and loving families with children. Because the new Dutch Republic was a wealthy, merchant driven society rather than a Catholic monarchy, art moved out of huge cathedrals and into smaller middle-class…

Filling out Robert’s new prompt! I loved checking out everyone else's. A photoMy friend (and colleague) made a fun Heated Rivalry quote hat design - I’ve been excited to grab one ever since I put the design in production. ^ It was already a Hat Day for me because my hair was due for a wash, but now with a new favorite hat in rotation. The temperature ranged from 54~80 Fahrenheit on that day - I’m one of those people that likes to wear long layers even when it is warm outside ha ha ha... Name or…

Annie and the Old One by Miska Miles, illustrated by Peter Parnall, 1971. Annie is a Navajo girl who lives with her family in a traditional hogan. Her family keeps sheep, and Annie helps to tend them when she’s not at school. She also likes to listen to her grandmother’s stories. One evening Annie’s grandmother tells the family that, by the time the new rug that Annie’s mother is weaving is finished, she will “go to Mother Earth”, meaning that the grandmother knows she is going to die. She asks…

As I expected, Nick Fuentes is giddy that Republicans lost seats. He is happy to see Trump fail, as it raises his relative status and he can say, “I told you so.” Republicans were destroyed because Trump took us to war in Iran for Israel. A near-extinction level defeat was the only appropriate outcome and proportionate to the depth of the betrayal. Anything less would not have humbled the “Plan Trusters” or set a strong enough precedent. — Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) November 4, 2026…

i have insane dreams, and i love them. i also love telling people about them, in great detail, which most people hate. and my father really hated it. every time i said "i had this crazy dream last night" he would roll his eyes and say "oh no, here we go...". so in his honour, i will not tell my whole dream from the other night, only the part that matters: my father was alive, but he never appeared. i wanted to talk to him so i would walk into different rooms looking for him, and he was never…

This update covers Friday 10-30-26 through Friday 11-06-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). Summary of the week that was 📚 Welcome to the house of jacked-up sleep schedules! 📰 I am finally keeping track of the photos I post here. Read on for more info. Accomplishments from last week 🎨 I now have a photo archive that showcases most of the photos posted in this blog. It’s a work in progress, but it’s at a point where I feel comfortable showing it off. Here’s a direct link, though you can also find it…

Overnight, the political landscape of the United States changed. Democrats won control of both the US Senate and House in Tuesday’s midterms, and it’s only the fifth time since World War II that a party has flipped both chambers in a midterm. And the markets reacted with a $2 trillion loss, as a result. For there are fears that a Democratic Congress and the blue states will now crack down on genAI and data centres. A delicate balance has shifted. But still, the United States' and Israel’s war…

This post is part of the RPG Blog Carnival: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. As soon as I announced the carnival, I received two submissions, one in a comment of the original post, and one via discord. The former is Roll 4 Ruin: Classic Dungeon Generator by Nocturnal Peacock. It contains 184 illustrated dungeon elements to roll (think chambers, corridors, and similar), making it a lovely complement to AD&D DMG Appendix A. The second contribution was Keep on the Marches by my friend Ian E., a…

While simple, today I used this trick to write the code I wanted. Variable assignment of a function is a valid, communicative way to alias a function in JavaScript. const clearFilters = () => setFilters({}); // Use the same behavior when starting a new search. const startNewSearch = clearFilters; // These create the same result. clearFilters(); startNewSearch(); In this case, calling clearFilters didn’t fit with a click handler on a button labeled “Start New Search.” With this technique, was…

Part of the ongoing Big Tech's War on Users series. Back in March I said the whole Full Self-Driving saga was a post that writes itself. In May I said it deserved its own deep dive and that we'd get there eventually. Unlike the robotaxi. Overnight, Elon Musk handed me the hook. Sometime in the middle of the night going into Friday, Musk posted on X that Tesla will be winding down Cybertruck production at Giga Texas around the middle of next year "to make room for increased Cybercab production."…

Mildly disappointed the Cooldige, which has the original art of the theater being destroyed by Godzilla in the recent Godzilla vs Boston comic book hanging in its lobby, will not be playing the new movie. Everywhere else, though, it's Godzilla time, with Godzilla Minus Zero picking up two years after the end of Godzilla Minus One and seeing the giant monster return. It's notable for being the

For a while, UK AISI, Redwood Research and others have been concerned specifically with the possibility that AIs would sabotage safety research, and have invested in looking for signs that this may be happening. This was also a key element in AI 2027, and in many threat models of how the future goes badly. It is easy to understand why this form of misalignment could be uniquely dangerous. Differentially sabotaging safety research could preserve and expand misalignment through model generations…