Just because you feel attacked doesn’t mean someone is attacking you, sometimes that feeling is worth listening to. It may be telling you that something doesn’t fit with how you currently see the world. But a feeling is not a fact. This matters because much political discussion now begins and ends with personal reactions rather than examining the underlying structures. Take the hashtag #stupidindividualism. Many people read it as, “You’re stupid because you’re an individual.” That isn’t what it…
I’ve been off work on a true ‘staycation’ the last couple of weeks. Stayed in Bristol, mainly stayed at home. Relaxed. Even my blood sugar and blood pressure settled down. Tomorrow is 20 weeks since I first went into hospital. Which seems like forever ago but also like yesterday. I had a recent appointment with my lovely Diabetes Nurse and they were happy with my progress but also at pains to remind me that I need to stay vigilant – especially as they are no closer to working out what triggered…
“Please, let me stuff myself full with beauty, drink light for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner - never again take a Tuesday for granted.” - Julia FehrenbacherHello friends! We had a big storm Sunday night that I was not expecting, so my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders as I’m writing this. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix, though!Here are my photo choices for today:August 5, 2026It’s been a really good year for the mallards. So much water! I can see the white duck’s lineage is still…
Every gun nerd knows about the Franchi SPAS-11, LAW-12, and SPAS-12 SPS autoloading shotguns of the 1980s; I mean, they were something of a pop culture fad if nothing else. The SPAS-11 was an upgrade of the Franchi 500 meant for mil/LE sales Meanwhile, the Franchi SPAS-12 SPS is iconic. What you may not have known was the Franchi SPAS-15, which went box mag instead of tubular and was made (and imported) in much fewer numbers. If you are curious, Atlantic has some as C&R SBRs, but be warned,…
Here we see, some 70 years ago this month, two “all-gun” heavy cruisers, vessels which were once common just a decade before but a comparative rarity in August 1956, captured while showing their respective flags aboard. USS Toledo (CA 133) at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 4 August 1956, Walter E Frost photo, City of Vancouver Archives, AM1506-S3-3-: CVA 447-8602 Sverdlov-class light cruiser Ordzhonikidze during August 1956 at Copenhagen, Denmark. Note the flag of Admiral A.G. Golovko…
Lyres - The Grotto, New Haven, Connecticut, August 18, 1984RIP to Lyres frontman Jeff “Monoman” Conolly, who passed away last week. As his nickname tells us, this guy was indeed monomaniacal in his quest for garage rock perfection over the decades. Is “garage rock perfection” a possibility? I don’t know — but I do know that this tape of Lyres way back in 1984 in New Haven is a scorcher, overflowing with stabbing Vox Continental keys, snarled vocals and rip-snorting guitars. Perfect! Thanks to…
The Army is getting a newfound interest in jungle warfare. COL Keith W. Benedict and CPT Christian M. Hert have a great article in Line of Departure (How Panama’s Crucible is Yet Again Testing Soldiers’ Mettle) detailing how legendary jungle training has returned to former Fort Sherman, Panama– now a Panamanian aeronaval base, Cristóbal Colón– after more than two decades of hiatus. Before the doors closed in 1999 and the course moved to Hawaii, the Fort Sherman-based “Green Hell” Jungle…
Inevitably I’m asked, “Why devote a paper, much less an entire dissertation, to Plutowsky?” I have a two-part answer, the first of which is my personal connection to Plutowsky via his great niece, my fiancée, Loretta. Professionally I have this response: Plutowsky is one of hundreds of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American authors—indeed, one of tens of thousands of American artists in a variety of fields, including classical music, visual arts, theater, and dance—who in the face of…
You know, it's amazing how much less exciting Fridays become after you've retired. It's almost a letdown, thinking that another week has come and gone, another seven days that you won't get a chance to replay. Ah, just one of the things that runs through your mind when you realize that you are old. Let's look at some old television news instead.I don't know about you, but "The Sweet Scene of Death" doesn't sound much like the fragrance I'd most like to experience, but if you're writing about…
On a lot of days my pair programmer is not a person. It is Copilot finishing a method, or Cursor proposing a multi-file edit I still have to own. Back in April I covered how I use ChatGPT, Cursor, and Copilot on side projects . That was mostly about which tool I reach for. Here I want to talk about what that looks like when the code is .NET—C#, Blazor, Azure Functions—and I am working in VS Code or Cursor. I am not claiming a universal workflow. These are habits that have helped me in 2026. A…
An unconventional materials + product placement challenge gave us the best episode of Project Runway 22 so far. Long live Viva paper towels!
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 about whether you’re a writer: Do you see yourself more as an editor, a writer, or just a reader? Setting aside the work I do on this blog (which involves all three, heh), I’m mostly a reader, but I do write…
Greatly appreciate Pastor Doug's teaching on servant lordship here.
Before we get to today’s topic, here’s a brief:WORLD CUP EPILOGUEMy wife, Michelle Kaufman, a professional sportswriter, covered the World Cup for the Miami Herald, and as a perk she was given a small piece of the actual sod on which the soccer matches were played in Miami.We decided to plant this piece of sod in our yard, where it has settled in nicely and is already giving the lawn a distinctive World Cup “feel,” as you will see in this completely candid and unrehearsed video:Ha ha! Get…
Bardas Loredan, fencer-at-law, contemplates retirement completely unaware of the various forces conspiring against him, specifically. Personally, even. Interesting book with overlapping viewpoints of various characters, some of which who are directly working against one another. Perimadeia, the city where most of the book takes place, has an absolutely fascinating system of law and lawyers. Lacks the shifty narrator I’ve come to associate with Parker books, but I still found it a very enjoyable…
Staybl - The browser that adjusts for tremors.
TL;DR: Part two of the Apple Account series. Backup apps that pull your iCloud data down to storage you control, email providers that speak IMAP/CalDAV/CardDAV so Apple's own apps keep working without iCloud, ways to buy and track software outside the App Store, and a password manager that isn't Keychain. My own five picks are at the end, along with why you should be testing a restore every quarter. Disaster Avoidance Apps Yesterday I laid out what happens when Apple closes your account: your…
I like my city builder games as much as the next guy. I’ve played them since SimCity 2000 and earlier this year wrote about TheoTown already. Last week I stumbled upon this guy jamessimo on YouTube who’s creating the city builder of his dreams: a game with no grid whatsoever, with parcels of land of arbitrary shapes and sizes. Traditionally these games have been strongly grid-based, even if Cities: Skylines popularized a method where your roads can curve freely, yet the buildings next to them…
I do not do any Phoneblogging. Zero. None. Zilch. The closest I get is reading my RSS reader and saving posts to a blog ideas list. As I get older, I just don't want to mess with my phone for in-depth things, and blogging, for me, qualifies as something in depth. I scroll Mastodon, I scroll my RSS reader, I get Home Assistant alerts, and I scroll Instagram reels for fun. That's pretty much the only things I use my phone for. Oh, I guess I use it to ask Rachelle questions when I'm grocery…
After the Trial by Combat affair in 1398 between Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray (which was supposed to be to the death), King Richard II exiled Mowbray for life and Henry for 10 years. They were each allowed a few weeks to put their affairs in order, and they were granted annuities to live on. Henry went to France.In 1399, Henry's father, John of Gaunt, died. Word came to Henry that Richard was not going to allow Gaunt's land to automatically go to Henry. Henry would have to request the…
PC I should probably be a bit embarrassed about admitting quite how long it’s taken me to complete the first of It Consumes‘ three stages. On its lowest difficulty. But I’ve had so much fun not managing it. There are perhaps a few too many games that make their primary feature darkness, but It Consumes makes this fascinating all over again, turning light into your most precious resource. The game takes place in a pitch-black arena, lit (at first) only by the slow pulses of red light emitted…
I don't need any of what I write here to survive after I leave this world. Nevertheless, I am not expecting but still happy that this blog platform may be staying around for quite a while, as promised by the platform creator: "Bear won't shut down. Period." (If you can afford it, and you also want to write in a public space, go subscribe and create a blog or two.) But, if you do want what you write to survive as long as possible after you die, here are some thoughts from Mike Harley on how to…
It’s strange how a competent biography that attempts to explain someone’s motivations and context can make them more sympathetic. Because, y’all, if Ann Lee was operating today, not one of us would think she’s worth listening to. Not that anyone is holding her up as a model, but you know what I mean
I wrote about hiking yesterday and mentioned “switchbacks.” On a steep hike, the trail almost never goes straight up. It zigzags — long diagonal legs cutting back and forth across the slope, taking you what feels like sideways when all you want is up. These are switchbacks, and there are two good reasons for them. The obvious one is that they make the climb bearable. Straight up a steep face is brutal on the legs and lungs; angling across the slope softens the grade to something a body can…
SID: So Joseph has done – well, just a whole lot of good work for us in the past. Whenever we’ve needed a witness or a third party for, I don’t know – a petition of grievance or alienation of affection — DEEANNA: And he’s reliable? JOE: I’m bonded, miss. SID: Joe is the most reliable human being on the planet, in our experience. All Eddie Mannix wants is to preserve the audience’s belief in DeeAnna Moran’s “innocence,” so that her pictures will continue to make money. All the pregnant and…
How do you tell users that the text they're about to read has been synthetically generated? It is polite to readers that you don't waste their time, it's also important that LLMs don't feed on their own regurgitated slurry lest they pollute their own development. I think there are a number of potential ways to do this0 and I'd be interested in your thoughts1. Let's go with some bad ideas first. What's your love language? Perhaps the simplest is to simply ascribe a unique language to AI. BCP 47…
A mourning dove calls from out of the fog, high-pitched and hesitant, as if just learning how to sing. A flower fly is licking my laptop where I rest my wrist.
[Picking up from this and this]I realize that my recommendations for Patrick Boyle videos tend to be a bit heavy-handed, but even by his standards, this one is essential for anyone trying to get a handle on the AI bubble and its increasingly likely ramifications. It is an extraordinarily pithy half hour, hitting a number of important topics. I really need to do at least one or two more posts on this.For today, let's focus on what may be the key point in the entire 2026 AI market discussion: the…
WS Merwin
