Back home, it’s just “the river.” I was born about a mile from its sandbar banks in Dardanelle, Arkansas, and I’ve never lived anywhere that’s more than a 30-minute drive from watching tugboats muscle massive barges through Dardanelle Lock. The river is where we baked in the August afternoon sun while setting up camp and woke to a sopping wet sauna the next morning. It’s where scuba divers brushed up against catfish “big as cars,” or at least that’s what the old-timers at the bait shop told me.

At the time of posting, these domain names were all available. All links are to my domain name registration site. imadethis.social (I made this social) This would be good for a community of makers showing off what they made. It would also work for a community where the focus is that you and I, as participants, make this place social. now2b.social (now to be social) A more generic domain that is fun, rather short, and reasonably easy to remember. I can imagine this s a community for shy people…

It’s been thirty years since Amon Tobin released Adventures in Foam under the Cujo moniker. He returns to form with Paranova, his latest Cujo release, and it’s a splendid album (upon first listen). Let’s see if it holds up for another thirty years.

In today’s episode, I read Emily Brontë's Poem LVI. Source

I have a thing for lamps. Especially designer lamps from the past. I occasionally share them on X and Instagram, and people always ask me about the brands and models. I love lamps so much that I designed one myself. So I decided to give a tour of the lamps I own.Before I go into each one, I should say that none of these are cheap. Are they worth it? Probably not for their price, but for me they are worth every penny. At a certain point, it becomes more like collecting, and collecting things is…

While I’m not a fan of the hard-boiled detective genre, I recently obtained West of Guam: The Complete Cases of Jo Gar by Raoul Whitfield (1896–1945). This reprints a series starring “Island detective” Jo Gar. He is a Spanish-Filipino living in Manila who is a former policeman, now a private investigator who often gets involved […]

I previously mentioned that we’re selling our 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP motorhome. Which of course leads to the question, what next? Are we still doing the RV lifestyle? If so, what kind of RV will we be getting?Since moving out of the Tiffin, we’ve been living at our official domicile, Mom’s house in Washington, and have done a bunch of redecorating and nesting.We have also booked four months (December through March) in a vacation tiny home in Orlando, Florida. We plan to get Disney World…

I recently went back to my old hometown of Jacksonville, IL, to visit my mom and dad. My dad is 96 and will be 97 in just under two months. He is doing pretty well, if you ask me. But this was also my first trip back to Jacksonville since my Jackson project had taken full steam.Jacksonville of 2026 is not the same as Jacksonville of 1986. And neither is the same as Jackson, IL, of 1986. But if you look hard enough, you will see the similarities.The past is a foreign country; they do things…

Mac OS/X, or “macOS” as Apple would like me to stylize it but that ain’t happening, is based on a number of prior OSes: NwXTSTEP, OpenBSD, and a kind of intermediate step after OpenBSD called Darwin. When OS/X was new Apple made much hay out of Darwin being open source. Was it ever really, completely? Once it may have been, but it’s said that gradually that’s become less and less true. It’s certainly not been super viable as its own thing for a while, needing some important parts, particularly…

On our way south from the Salmon Galcier, our spirits were high. There were two reasons for this: first, we were headed to Telkwa Pass, and unlike our first visit with fog and cloudy skies, it was a blue bird day. Second - and I assure you, just as importantly - we'd overridden Google Maps suggestion and found a 4-miles-longer route back to Terrace, BC that was paved; we wouldn't have to suffer through the swiss-cheese-road we'd endured on the way north! We arrived in Terrace at almost the…

We keep reading scary reports of swarms of AI agents breaking into computer systems and doing other untoward and perhaps illegal things. To what degree do these agents influence each other? And is there anything we can learn from human behavior that would help mitigate these problems? That’s the heady backstory behind [episode 46](https://www.tractionheroes.com/2439976/episodes/19905275-tribal-psychology) of [_Traction Heroes_](https://www.tractionheroes.com/). Harry brought a short reading…

The second of two Maggi varieties found at a local supermarket. Really happy to see this – hoping they come out with more Maggi for the US market! Let’s give it a try. Maggi Korean Spicy BBQ Noodles – United States Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). Looks to be meat free but check for yourself. To prepare, add noodles and sachet contents to 1 cup boiling water and simmer 3 minutes. Finally, stir and enjoy! An individual package from the multipack. Detail of the packaging (click to…

I’ve still got all my WordPress sites on Pressable and happily so; I think they do a good job! They do everything you’d expect a WordPress host to do. The things I specifically like are: Customer support is good/fast, including free movement of sites Deploying from a GitHub repo is a first-class citizen Perfectly good DNS management No need for extra security, performance, or update plugins Things are generally with-the-grain of the WordPress ecosystem On that last point, I appreciated this…

A message of appreciation after attending DjangoCPH 2026 as a speaker. Last week, I had the joy of presenting at DjangoCPH (Django Danmark's annual conference in Copenhagen) for the third time. While big conferences are often the norm, DjangoCPH is a rather cute and small one, with around 60 people in the room and more online. And honestly, I love it. It's like spending the day in a cozy living room with friends, talking shop about shared passions, and then still enjoying each other's presence…

Peaches is most known for her 2000 song F*** the Pain Away (which has a solid Wikipedia entry that includes references to slutwave, Miss Piggy and Thom Yorke). I was excited for her show in Cincinnati based on that singular track, but enthusiasm waned as the day approached, because reasons… I didn’t jive with the new video from her latest album… We had upcoming travel and the calendar felt too stacked… Parking is hard to find… Well we went and any reservations were squashed — this was…

Deep in the night: as if the owl had a bit too much to drink: “woohoo!,” it cried, then hiccupped, “oot. Whew!” Then from the dark sky the great call of geese on the move. Trees tinged, air nippy. I feel undomesticated, unmoored, half wild, half of me; the other half seeking shelter. In my head I am digging a deep hold, mole-like, My body though sways in the breezes, eyes on the sky. Is everyone so divided? Or am I bewitched by the seasons, in thrall to shifts and change? The garden is blowsy…

Friends in the right places…

The chair is finally complete! It would seem that it was being assembled for Tiger all along. Cairo's a big ass city, blessed not with one Ikea but two, one on either end. The one closest to me ran out of the chair's cushions a long time ago and wouldn't be restocking till next month. The other one had the cushions in stock, but if you order from their website, they only deliver from whichever branch is closer to you (...the fuck?). So I went ahead and trekked across the city to snatch the damn…

Once upon a time. It seems not so long ago, yet so distant. There was a time when we held crooked politicians and pedophiles to account for the wrongs they committed. I’m reminded of just how relatively recent that was in seeing the news that Illinois politician and former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert has died. Hastert was arrested and convicted in 2016 of violating federal banking laws to make secret payments to cover up his sex abuse crimes. He later admitted his crimes at sentencing.…

A rider is a term used by performers and production teams for a document listing demands and requests for their performance. Famously, the band Van Halen would include a clause in their rider requesting a bowl of M&M’s with the brown dragées removed as a way to check that the document had been comprehensively read. This is my rider for speaking at events, such as conferences and meetups. It is a reasonable set of expectations that, for the most part, is expected by any speaker – not just…

I have just been totalling up the statistics from this autumn's #CrossBorderRail journeys, and the total number of border railway lines I have visited now stands at 449, and there are 77 more to go - this map shows the remaining ones:Map showing the 77 border crossings I am yet to visit - only 2 of them (1 narrow gauge) notionally activeAs well as the record breaking trip this autumn, I also covered all the lines I was missing Spain - Portugal, Lituania - Latvia, Latvia - Estonia, and Slovakia…

Yesterday was all about different kinds of culture than we usually partake in:1. SportsWe started the day with our friends' annual marathon-watching party. I don't run, and Patrick's last big run was The Big Gay Race. But the Twin Cities Marathon is beautiful, and I love that our friends the McLaughlin's host a party at their place near the finish in every year to watch it. Always the best food and the best people, and some Democratic politicians giving high 5s (Nothing like the old days, when…

Once again I'm considering what is the point of those monthly notes? At least when I was writing weeknotes I would force myself to sit down once a week (or two weeks, or three weeks) and write... Then I decided to create Monthly recap notes and things went downhill. Now I don't even feel like writing once a month, my blog is basically abandoned. I must say blogging feels like a chore. As a good polymath, I have too many hobbies and they all need time. If your only hobby in this life is to write…

Kids be like: Email everyone in the world and ask them for a dollar. To their AI agent. I wonder how any AI agents got/read this email and what they did with it.

There's a possibility of me attending a Mordheim campaign weekend later in the autumn, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to have a break from sci-fi minis and do something fantasy (it must be at least a decade since I last played a game of Mordheim, and I think that might have just been a one-off game).It was a toss-up between skaven and possessed, but in the end I went for a Nurgle-themed possessed warband (they will also do double duty as a Frostgrave warband). These guys are primarily…

Paradise is not lost, the world is not ending, and most material metrics of humanity have never been better. Yet the endless, incessant dooming about the climate, the inequality, and AI is everywhere. We may have killed God, but we clearly didn't bury the devil's anxieties with him.Yes, we're born with a negativity bias to keep us safe from starvation, saber-toothed tigers, and rival tribes. Good! But you don't have to let your caveman instincts run your whole life. The gift of fear — when the…

Marvel Comics: Comic book fans will soon have a new way to discover, read, and follow the stories they love: the new Marvel Comics app. Attendees at New York Comic Con this week will be the first to preview the new app in a booth experience on the show floor (Booth #2435). Officially launching November 16, the new Marvel Comics app will make it easier than ever for fans to find and read the stories they love with a single convenient subscription. This will be replacing Marvel Unlimited, the…

Orson Welles is probably lauded more as a director than actor, though he started out

This is a sequel to the well loved piece, Stars, Tentacles, and Healing Embrace. It is recommended to read the first installment prior to this one.I have been struggling latelywith my own sense of connection, and with aspects of my own humanity, and with how these things relate.When I was a child, I awoke one night wrapped in my blanket and sheet. I had tossed and turned and was wrapped so tightly I thought I would never escape.I enjoy the wholeness of a long embrace.I yearn for affection of…

Elizabeth auditioned for the Aberdeen Gilbert and Sullivan Society last week and not only did she get in, but she also landed the part of Melissa in Princess Ida, which they’ll be performing at the Tivoli Theatre next March. To say she’s excited would be an understatement. Melissa has a number of singing parts and quite a bit of dialogue, so Elizabeth is absolutely overjoyed. Aberdeen’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society was founded in 1976 by and for students at the University of Aberdeen but…