Gil Cohen and Amir Shpilka asked me to spread the word through my blog about the celebration for Ran Raz 60th birthday. RR60 @ Tel Aviv University – December 27-29, 2026 This conference (click for the site) brings together researchers working on central questions in computational complexity. The program will focus on several interconnected themes, including lower bounds, the role of randomness in computation, space-bounded computation, and quantum computation — areas in which Ran Raz has made…

Bud GayI'm A Long Gone Daddy(Hank Williams, Fred Rose Music, BMI)Nashville Records CD-1003Early seventiesRecord listed at RCS (no location) *This Nashville label (indeed located in Nashville, Tennessee) had few releases in the early seventies (including two singles by Bob Folsom and one by Bob Rash). Charlie Dick, the widower of country legend Patsy Cline, was it's owner, perhaps with the idea of giving a new life to the old Starday's subsidiary, still releasing albums, but no more singles. But…

"Book Scouts of the Galactic Rim" is a 2007 science fiction short story by Jason Sanford. It is about a man who collects first edition science fiction novels, and the two amazing people he meets along the way. Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell: "Book Scouts of the Galactic Rim" follows Bartholomew Higgins as he scours the country for first edition science fiction books. The story begins as he loses a valuable book in a "gasoline" accident, and then goes on to detail his relationship with…

I was listening to Federico Viticci on MacStories Unwind+ when he said something that’s stayed with me: It’s creativity that moves humanity forwards. I’ve been thinking about how little room we sometimes give that idea in the way we talk about work. We talk a lot about getting things done, and we’re getting increasingly good at shortening the distance between having an idea and shipping it. I like being able to make things faster. I’ve got plenty of things I’d like to make. But I also want time…

Time for another bi-monthly update on the work that Clojurists Together are funding this year - my maintenance of nREPL, CIDER and friends. You can find the previous one here. For a change, most of my focus in September and October was on nREPL itself, not on CIDER. The big themes were the nREPL protocol spec and how well the servers and clients out there actually stick to it. For years building an nREPL server or client that plays well with the rest of the ecosystem came down to trial and…

Tenzing (2026) • View trailerFour stars (out of five); rated PG, for dramatic intensityAvailable via: Apple TV+By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.8.26 Recent history has been much kinder to Tenzing Norgay, than in the immediate aftermath of his shared summit of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary, on May 29, 1953. With Everest's summit in sight, Tenzing Norgay (Genden Phuntsok, far left) and hiscomrades — from left, Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), John Hunt (Willem Dafoe)…

The MuseI was blessed this morning. My daughter had a long night; I am not sure when she finally slept —she has her dad's night owl genes— and still sleeps. I waited for her to come to me to snuggle as every morning at 6:30 am, but she slept. As I wait, a little Muse came to me. I thought the story was silly, but she said —don't judge the idea, just write! I woke up, poured my coffee, and began; it is magical. I'm looking forward to continuing it later. I should do the IndieWeb Carnivals…

Heading north to play Switched On Whitby this weekend as part of an absolutely killer line-up including old friends The 12 Hour Foundation, Everyday Dust and loads more, all presided over by the Mighty Bob Fischer! First time back in the neighbourhood since The New Obsolescents did our SECOND EVER gig at the same venue a few years back. Debuting a brand new Howlround live show which is still in the experimental phase, which should make for an entertainingly wonky performance, but excited to…

ermmmmmmm. this is my first time basically watching everyone (i think?? somehow i think i've seen them before1). anyways. hmmm. thoughts below (also i don't tend to really care about reunions so! doing this now) vicki ehhhh vicki... she really gave me nothing i cannot lie... especially since she's the og of oc i was like okay... 20th season let's see! but she's just miserable, so set in her ways that's it's just like get her off my screen man. and no real charm to it either! i think you could…

Knowvember is an idea from Robert Birming to let others know more about yourself. This is my entry. Right after posting I noted Robert spelled it "Knowember", but I'm leaving it as it is 😬. A photo Name or nickname My full name is Guillermo Axel Valdez Güereña (long-ass Hispanic names with symbols on top of the letters, right?), but I usually go by Axel Valdez. Axel is so distinctive in my environment, especially for my generation, that I'm in the minority of Mexicans who don't have a nickname.…

* Looking at perhaps the most basic of constitutional questions * Later today I am talking to some students, and this seems a good opportunity to ask perhaps the most basic of constitutional questions about what happened in the United States this week. Did the mid-term elections show that the United States constitution is working or not working? * On the face of it the election results show a properly functioning polity (or political system). The results went against the party in power – a…

At the very end of last September, I received the keys to my new apartment, the first apartment I’ve ever really lived in by myself, and since then, it’s been a bit of a slow process in getting things into a state where I can actually feel like I’m comfortable and, well, in a liveable space. I have been abusing the generosity of my friends the past few weekends to get things moved over and first and foremost: thank you to those who helped get my piles of crap (of which there admittedly were not…

Claude Code modele oturum açtığınız e-posta adresini veriyor, sonra 'bunu header'a koyma' diyordu. 107757'yi doğruladım ve fix'i yazarken kapsam açığını buldum.

Claude Code handed the model your signed-in email and told it not to put that address in a request header. I verified issue 107757 and read the privacy mod that was meant to stop it.

November 6, 2026 Let’s take a brief moment to enjoy this painting, and our heroine’s color palette. This was a great choice of inspiration; she has so many accent colors that a really “navy-heavy” wardrobe doesn’t feel dark or sad: To me, this many tops just feels like a mountain of clothing! And then I walk into my closet, and realize that I own much more than this… something to think about from time to time: On the other hand, this modest collection of bottoms feels comfortably disciplined: I…

A short story—or perhaps an orphaned chapter in a non-existing book—with a premise inspired by misspelling the title of Joseph Weizenbaum's famous work (and one of my favourite books). This post is a part of a series called Scrambling Mind. Matthew walked hastily down the smooth-paved road, his headset gnawing irritatingly behind his ears and against his brows. Ten hours without taking it off, but he still had one more assignment. He couldn't afford to remove the clunky device even for his…

Back in September I promised a return visit to the beers of Zichovec, as they had been starting to appear in their stylish new livery. And I promised to include a lager. So here we are.The pleasure of Zichovec begins with picking up the can: that extra 60ml over the standard results in an immediate feeling of being treated. This can contains Devítka, a session lager of 9° Plato, or 3.6% ABV in our money. That's a tricky format in which to make a good beer, though the visuals here are excellent,…

Today's first scan is a beauty - a particularly nice look at the E.P. Ripley perched above the west tunnel out to the parking lot. Guests are leaving - good riddance to bad rubbish, am I right? Perhaps a few more are arriving, and I don't like them either (I'm crabby because I had a bad dream). The train is loading up with passengers, and soon the engineer will step on the clutch and put the locomotive into first gear (as we all know). Next stop: Frontierland Station! Booooooaaaaard! And here's…

Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle (2004)

Aaaaaand the Bookstagram influence continues! Having enjoyed my recent return to Dostoevsky‘s work (if enjoyed is the right word for “House of the Dead“…), I have kept a number of his unread works on the immediate TBR. Several of them are calling, but the one title which keeps turning up online is his novella “White Nights”. An early work, pre-Siberia, I did wonder how I would find it as part of me suspected that its popularity might be down to it being something of a lightweight romance.…

We talk about the importance of picking our battles. We talk less about what happens when we decide not to fight them.

Maybe you still struggle to write in Pulaar, or in your rinky-dink language. But here in the AI-connected, English-speaking world, we don't need to write anymore. In fact, I don't remember the last time I wrote English. I have one master agent that I talk to and tell what I need to get done. It breaks down the tasks and serves them to spawned agents that get the work done. I spend $3,000 a month on tokens. I use them mostly for: Research and search Summarization and transcription Writing (the…

Mark Oppenheimer, a lawyer in South Africa whom readers may know as the co-host of the popular Brain in a Vat philosophy podcast, is facing removal from his position as a member of the Council (the governing body) of the University of Cape Town (UCT) because of remarks he made while being interviewed on someone else’s podcast. An open letter defending Oppenheimer’s right to free speech is currently accepting signatures. On the UCT Council website, it’s noted that Oppenheimer “has appeared in…

The Forgotten Atlantic Pipeline: When Deptford Fed the Heart of an EmpireThe Deptford Foreign Cattle MarketThe Deptford Foreign Cattle Market, which operated from 1872 to 1913, was a sprawling 27-acre industrial complex that supplied up to half of London's freshly killed meat and served as the direct point of impact for the first true era of globalised agricultural trade.From the ashes of an iconic Tudor royal dockyard rose a state-of-the-art Victorian processing hub. It connected the…

Welcome to another Friday Update packed full of scale, type and prototype variety. I’ve just finished my first coffee of the day, but get yourself one and let’s take a look at what has been happening on the bench this week…Is there a better way to kick things off than a tractor? This Bachmann model has been weathered, obviously, and renumbered, less obviously… and had a nose end make over. The headcode displays were removed and polished clear. The car headlight was added from an RT models part,…

I recommend checking out Bruno's post about how the current moment in tech is, in fact, a conflict, a fight between groups of people, with sides. Choosing to use AI is a political act, and it is not possible to separate the technology from the cultural, economic, political, public health, or climatological context this technology occupies. You cannot casually participate in the advancement of this technology and come out truly clean. It is fundamental to not understand the current moment as…

Every new .NET release comes with the same practical question: which of the many new features are actually worth digging into for our day-to-day work? It’s a question I ask myself every November, and once again I’ll be trying to answer it out loud, in front of an audience. On November 18th I’ll be speaking at the .NET Conference Italia 2026 in Milan. My session, titled “.NET 11: don’t call it just an upgrade” (the original Italian title is “non chiamatelo un semplice upgrade”), opens the day…

Before you torch and pitchfork me, I'm aware most of this is simplified and doesn't go into edge cases, even though the internet is composed entirely of edge cases. Otherwise, I'd be writing a whole book. First, some terminology; A typical email will past through many different components on it's way to the recipient: 1. Sender's MUA [Via SMTP on port 465] 2. Sending MSA 3. Sending MTA [Via SMTP on port 25] 4. Receiving MTA 5. Receiving LDA and message store [Via IMAP] 7. Receiver's MUA (These…

We are now living in a different world. I mean, my bin day has been changed. I’m struck, though, by how good and bad news, even over such huge issues, don’t land the same way for me. I’m struck by how they don’t seem to be equally real. For instance, the only time in the last 15 years that I did not write to you on a Friday morning was in 2016 when the Brexit result was announced and I spent the day shaking. And if you now please flash forward to 2024, then even saying that year to you, I can…