Hey people! Last time I wrote here, which was a “Bibiel’s Brain-Pick”, I mentioned that my blogging app kept crashing on me every few minutes as I wrote. That is the main reason why I didn’t write anything for a relatively long time. As far as I understand, those crashes had to do with a bug in the macOS version I was running, which bug Apple has apparently fixed in the latest MacOS update, so now that I’ve updated to it, we shall see whether I can publish this thing crashlessly. I decided to…

Today I gave a short talk at a teach-in on the politics of data centres. The teach-in was part of the Stop Dirty Data Centres European Days of Action on 6 and 7 November, when local groups across Europe protested and called for a moratorium on large data centres. The teach-in took place during a support demonstration organised by Fossiel Vrij at the Plimsollweg in Amsterdam Sloterdijk. That’s the site where Pure DC is building a hyperscale data centre for Microsoft, despite the city’s ban on…

🍁 Last embers of fall. The final leaves on the trees haven’t fallen just yet, but it’s getting close. 1 more week and it’s done visually. Bittersweet one this year but actually looking forward to November and December with all the madness that comes with these months

The sky looks tired this morning.Just like me. The reflection in the mirror has aged since this time last year. Then again, everything has aged since this time last year. I am reminded of a joke from a famous comedian. Unfortunately, his name escapes me. However, the joke still remains. But I promise to find him and advise you of his name at the end of this entry.The comedian was asked by someone, “Would you like to see a picture of me when I was younger?”The comedian answered, “every picture…

My sticky notes from End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: On the three-component mechanism of our enemy: [Fascism is] an alliance of three very different groups, each racing towards a different but related apocalyptic dream .. the religious end timers, the tech end timers, and the ethno-nationalist end timers. These three bunkered visions ... [are] bound together by their common abandonment of the very possibility of a stable future. Fascism is always a warped response to real…

There, I said it. I know most (all?) witches love Halloween because duh, it's a celebration of all things witchy and scary, but I feel no connection to it at all. I grew up in Italy, and Halloween wasn't really a thing there back then. The first and only time I went trick-or-treating I was 12, and it was a very stressful experience because some of my classmates started to spray goo on the cars parked in the street and I thought it was a terrible crime. I don't even remember what I was dressed…

It’s Friday, so it’s time for the Book Blogger Hop again, hosted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer. I’ve made my own image from a stock photo (credit: Anna Shvets) to avoid adding images created via generative AI to my blog. Feel free to use it too if you would like! This week’s prompt is a what-if: Imagine you owned a bookstore—what would it feel like? Oof, probably quite stressful! Managing stock, dealing with customers, handling rent and taxes and paying any employees… yeah, I can’t help it,…

I am early for my appointment, which is not unusual, and I am ushered somewhere I did not expect to go: a dedicated area just to the side of urgent care. Four of us are led in and seated on beds behind curtains. It has the faint air of a holding pen, though a clean and courteous one.A nurse checks my ID bracelet and places a stapled sheaf of papers on the desk-like trolley in front of me. My name is at the top. Naturally, I begin to read. It is a summary of my health history and the most recent…

Beyond the mountains that contain the Doom-Gate, the plains and forests were long considered uninhabitable, awash with poison and radiation, but life, as it so often does, finds a way. The wyrms, dragons, wyverns, and other beasts that appeared with the opening of the Doom-Gate made their lairs in these poison wastes, though their offspring were changed, warped by the energies of the Poison Wastes into new forms adapted to this world. The drakes of the Poison Wastes are the offspring of those…

Stressing in the lead-up to my birthday, more mystery novels, catching up on tv, DOS 2, Fate GO, a music project, and a fanfic project. I've spent a lot of the past week stressing. I guess I really am my parents' child because going to work is an excuse not to think about life problems. I've had four shifts now on the floor and one on cash, three day shifts and two night shifts. One of the shifts was nine hours long so I'm really testing my limits again with this. But I'm also getting the hang…

If you think I'm touching this one with a ten-foot-pole... Not. Saying. a WORD. Let's try something a little less potentially controversial, k? Like some nice, pastel yellow, powdered holes.Wait.What? Marketing Guy #1: "I dunno, is there some way we can make donut holes sound both unappetizing and vaguely pornographic?"Marketing Guy #2: Oh! And oddly specific! I don't want to spoil any plot points on a thirty year old movie or anything, guys, but that's a father and daughter on this misspelled…

Comic: “Dementia Donnie” by Ruben Bolling (@rubenbolling@mastodon.social) “Featuring the current Donald Trump, but in the universe in which his father bequeathed his estate to the Ku Klux Klan instead of his son.” www.gocomics.com/tomthedan…

I would not have put a budgeting app at the top of a list of playful iPhone software. MoneyCoach’s Duo wallet is a good reason to reconsider that. A phone that folds becomes a wallet that opens, with accounts represented as cards inside. The physical action and the interface belong together.That is the part of the iPhone Duo I want developers to explore. There was a charm to early iPhone software that made the thing on screen feel like a familiar object. MoneyCoach applies that willingness to…

The SNCF Voyageurs new flagship train - the TGV-M (its manufacturer Alstom also calls it Avelia Horizon) - launched with passengers today, 6 November 2026. Commercial services with the new train start 9 November 2026.You can find video of the inaugural service on YouTube and Peertube, and photos on Flickr too. And there are better close ups of a test train too. All Creative Commons licensed for re-use.The TGV-M (with M meaning modular) takes the standard double deck TGV Duplex design in service…

Person reading a book in a window. (Photo by Syahidan via Pexels) Introduction So, I had a weird surprise last night when I looked at Bubbles1 for some new reading. (I try to read the top ten to twenty articles every day), only to find that my article RE: Why I Stopped ‘Creating Content’2 was back on the front page after 100+ days. I had noted recently that Bubbles seemed to be randomly having old articles pop back up on the front page. I was starting to think it was a bug, but I didn’t have…

I want to update on the various frets—and if you have updates on YOUR frets, I would like to hear them. HENRY SUCCESSFULLY VOTED. He said he was ferried from one elderly volunteer to the next, and he credits the “limitless patience” of a volunteer delightfully named Pearl, who was, in her youth, a student at the same college Henry currently attends, and in fact lived in the same dorm where he currently lives. She got him all set up, and Henry sent a photo of himself with the I Voted sticker.…

A cyclical process belonging only to us, unknown to ourselves Is there a singular moment where you become a person in transition from another? Consider stepping through a literal threshold into a metaphorical space: the doorframe from a chaotic world to a one of safety and peace, a vestibule delineating a richly oxygenated carefree air of life and into a toxic, chest-tightening environment, or perhaps simply one of dark into light. These spaces are familiar and the identity we assume while…

Knowember in the brainchild of Robert Birming. At first I thought it was a bit of a pointless exercise as it only asks fore 3 things from bloggers: A photo Name or nickname What your blog is mostly about I figured any regular readers will know all those things about me, so it's pointless, but then I read the list of people who have already taken part, some I know of already, others I don't, and in all cases I learned something new. So here's my entry to Knowember 2026 (I do think it's a silly…

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5 Stars - Brilliant, dryly satirical and very funny! The post The Sundial by Shirley Jackson appeared first on The Wallflower Digest.

Last month the iPhone Duo hit the streets and reviews hit the web. A product launch of the Duo's caliber is like unwrapping an N64 on Christmas morning: pure excitement. I waited outside my Apple Store Friday morning just to get my hands on the thing. The Duo makes a remarkable first impression. I didn't buy one or anything—too rich for my blood at the moment—but I left my twenty or so minutes with the device thoroughly impressed. I could see myself "maining" the phone. It doesn't hurt that I…

A glorious morning, the start of another glorious day. After a full night’s sleep, the pool beckoned. There were plenty of bathers wearing Airwaves armbands today, this time I managed to get ensconced between two Finns, an Austrian, a gaggle of Scots, and Simon, a graphic designer from Ireland. I asked him if he knew Annie Atkins, he said he had been talking to her only last week! One degree of

Daily Drawing 1041

I’ve published the incorrect facts in the fact of H. Jennings’s death at least twice, two different versions. Both have him alighting on a Greek island for a film recce. In one he falls from a cliff he’s climbing, in another he’s lining up a prospective shot when he steps backwards off a cliff, a […]

i regret myself, the person i kept putting aside.things weren’t easy. ten years later,they still aren’t.but time isn’t kinder, i’m not prettier.everything is misplaced. i want to travel a mile further,to when i love myself, when i dream myself pretty,a distance two steps away from me.there isn’t. it isn’t. my wrists can testify, so can the beer bottlesin my backyard. to learn to lie again, when my bonesare simply carried by still breathing,seems too hard a task, too hard a skill.and i’m lazy,…

Avoid “Brands actively engaged in the enshittification playbook. Licensing models, post-acquisition cost-cutting, brand equity being extracted.” /via Phil

We’ve come to that time of the year again, where folks begin to think about their holiday gift giving, and at least some of you think about books as the perfect gift. Well, they are! But would make them even more perfect is getting those books signed and personalized. Every year I join forces with Jay and Mary’s Book Center in Troy, Ohio, to sign and personalize books so that you’ll have them available to give to the people you love, including yourself. From today (Nov. 6) through Friday,…

The opposite of play isn't work, it's rote. ~Edward HallowellThis might sound like an odd thing for a teacher to write, but I sometimes get the idea that knowing stuff is the enemy of education. There is little gratification in it for me when I've envisioned how children will do something, then they proceed to do it in just the way I've imagined. Certainly, I could claim it as some evidence of experience on my side, but it also makes me worry that it's also evidence of rote on the children's…

When the Third Council of Braga was held in 675 (a century after the Second), the Visigothic king at the time tried to influence it.Wamba, whose name means "big paunch," became king in 672. There was an immediate double revolt to deal with. A rival for the kingship, Hilderic the governor of Nîmes in southern France, was suppressed by a general named Paul sent by Wamba.That general, however, convinced the men under him to renounce their loyalty to the king and support Paul himself instead. He…

Drew made me a new phone . The post New Phone appeared first on @Kevuhnn / 📸 / 📚 / 🇨🇦.

"Brands actively engaged in the enshittification playbook. Licensing models, post-acquisition cost-cutting, brand equity being extracted." /via Phil 🔗 https://things.pagecord.com/avoid