There’s no way to deny it’s already autumn, even though it’s still 20 degrees. Interactions & Comments

While looking for a film to watch last Wednesday, I stumbled upon a film called “The Lift” on Prime. It’s a Spanish film about a couple fighting in an elevator, and each of them finds out that they’re stuck in a loop. Whenever the elevator reaches the ground floor, it automatically brings them back to the start of their conversation and to the 10th floor where they rode the elevator the first time. I didn’t finish the film as I wasn’t really interested in their lovers’ quarrel. Then my husband…

While looking for a film to watch last Wednesday, I stumbled upon a film called “The Lift” on Prime. It’s a Spanish film about a couple fighting in an elevator, and each of them finds out that they’re stuck in a loop. Whenever the elevator reaches the ground floor, it automatically brings them back to the start of their conversation and to the 10th floor where they rode the elevator the first time. I didn’t finish the film as I wasn’t really interested in their lovers’ quarrel. Then my husband…

We got back home from our trip to Budapest very late last night. I first visited Budapest about 12 years ago and it very quickly became one of my favorite European cities, and this trip cemented that fact for me. It is an absolutely lovely place and I definitely want to go back there some time in the future as there are still many places I have left to explore.I’m much too tired from traveling to write much today, so I’ll leave you with a few pictures I took during our trip.

This month, we are going to be taking a look at the vibrant and pioneering Vitagraph film studio. Among the first film studios in America, Vitagraph led the charge in animation, special effects, domestic comedy and more. Unfortunately, they are well-known among silent movie nerds but pretty obscure to the general public these days. The […]

image by Fred Lehmann (franzl34) free for use under Pixabay’s licence There is only one way in which 8.3 billion human beings, who have utterly terraformed the planet to make us all completely dependent on the massively complex interdependent systems we have constructed — fragile, high-maintenance systems which include technologies capable of exterminating all life on Earth very quickly, can possibly function: We all must do what we’re told. This is not a consequence of some evil conspiracy.…

Back in the golden era of Chowhound, when it was cranking with great tips, and thousands of experts stood ready to generously answer any question, I would occasionally take a moment to feel satisfaction. This monster was the ultimate answer machine, more useful than any food info trove previously imagined. But those moments were short-lived, because I had friends who knew how good Chowhound was, and how much work it took, and how little juice I had left over, who'd email me to ask "Hey, Jim,…

I've gotten back to playing 5-a-side once a week recently. It's been a little while as we moved a little bit too far away from the previous group I played with and I had never really gotten back into the rhythm of it after I tore my calf muscle. It is funny how many injuries you can pick up in a friendly game. I wouldn't say anyone is particularly rough in this group but I've got a fair kick from a studded boot on my ankle, bruised my arm saving a ball and - worst of all - took a rebound to the…

New record temperatures in the Pacific Ocean related to El Niño.

Finished reading: Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza 📚 A lot of (pseudo?)science to reach a fairly benign outcome encouraging one to meditate.

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 47-48: With the German military successes in Europe since the spring of 1940, the call for solidifying Japan’s ties with Germany resurfaced. Still believing that a fascist alliance would be a mistake, Navy Minister Yoshida Zengo, in the autumn of 1940, opposed the signing of an Axis pact with such vehemence that a heart condition (but some also speculate a failed suicide attempt) landed him in the hospital, forcing him to…

There are many ordinary moments when I made major breakthroughs in my writing. For example, early into my career, I tried turning my ideas and research directly into articles. Eventually, as I tried moving on towards books, I found my brain just couldn’t handle so much information. I resisted this for a while (mostly because I felt impatient), and eventually came to accept it. I learned about taking notes on index cards through Ryan Holiday’s and Robert Greene’s methods. Not knowing how exactly…

This update covers Sunday 09-27-26 through Saturday 10-03-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 Recoveries, developments, and countdowns. And also, autumn. 📕 A couple of health concerns took up most of this week, along with L.’s job countdown. 📜 My blog makeover may be finished? ❤️‍🩹 I felt ill after the Side Project party on Sat 09-26, though it wasn’t entirely the fault of the drinks. Those didn’t help, of course. I likely caught something of a flu that day, as my body temperature fluctuated…

Back to August. All of these were part of the Super Saturday Movie Club, whose monthly theme this time was "Todd Solondz Movies", comprising movies #38 to #41. Sep 5 - Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)I will say it only once because otherwise I'd have to say it for every movie on this list, and that is that they look very conventional and television-like. There are flares of good shots here and there but I remain unconvinced that he has the eye of a genius and just happens to enjoy making the…

Always waiting. An existential snare pulled tight around the neck of humanity. Like a wolf that wanders into a farmer’s trap, we snarl and thrash about in futility until he comes around to put a bullet in our head. Waiting for the weather to change, for an opportunity to arise, for things to get better—for that nebulous time in the future when you can finally do what you want to do. It will have all been worth it, just not now. Not yet. There is no future. It isn’t real. Hope is a comfortable…

✏️ #inktober day 3. Enjoying pizza for dinner. #inktober2026

In case you’re as clueless as we were when we suddenly found ourselves standing in front of this enormous thing, wondering what on earth it was: a graduation tower is basically a huge wooden structure filled with bundles of branches. Salt water trickles down through them, evaporating in the wind and making the air around it slightly salty, a bit like being by the sea. I’d never heard of or seen anything like it before, and it really was a sight to behold. Definitely one of the highlights of our…

This netting is designed, not so much to catch the wind, as to not get blown away by it. It was surrounding a project to build a new water tank for agricultural use, to replace the Kohala Ditch, which no longer holds water.

So. Generative AI. It’s 2026, and everyone has an opinion — especially in the programming community. So do I! The problem is that the technology is particularly divisive, and it’s bringing out the worst of… well, everyone. Whether you’re a die-hard convert, a staunch opposer, or something in-between, any opinion expressed online is bound to be piled on by members of the opposite religion. I have no desire to be piled upon. If we’re being brutally honest, dear reader, I also have no desire to…

Philadelphia, PA After visiting family in town and walking all around old city we needed a little boost. We found this place just off South Street. It's a cute little shop with a few tables inside and two out front. We both ordered a cold brew and I got a chocolate chip cookie. The cold brew is a little weak but still refreshing and has a good flavor.

Running Claude Code on a remote machine via ssh. Due to still-unresolved feelings of how-much-of-this-work-is-really-mine when using AI tools, I’m trying to make it as obvious as possible when I use them, and give away as much of the output as possible. I also like what I get out of the tools, but I don’t trust the tools themselves. As Apple is beginning to allude to (or… perhaps outright states) with their Updates to Full Disk Access in macOS article, AI tools with unbounded access on end user…

It's fair to say that if I didn't have my planner, my life would fall apart. This year, I've been organizing my life with a Cavallini Papers & Co. pocket-sized weekly planner, which I bought for about $11 at Barnes & Noble. Every single year, Hobonichi season comes around and nearly sweeps me up with their beautifully delicate designs and promises of a more organized (if not aesthetically pleasing) life, and every year I decide the cost isn't worth it. 2027 will be no different. But I only…

I have a test that I used to give my vertical salespeople: if I dropped you into an industry cocktail party, how long could you last before someone figured out you didn’t work in the industry?The A+ outcome was that, after 20 minutes of talking with (for example) a group of senior publishing executives, someone would ask, “So, Larry, what publisher do you work for?” Larry would reply, “Oh, I don’t work for a publisher. I work at a software company that serves the media industry.”That was the…

hello all my lovelies! to celebrate the turn of the month, we bring you a new lavender (aka "all things queer!") carnival, with a rather eggcellent topic to sink your teeth into. (do not take this as a directive to sink one's teeth into a raw egg, i repeat, do not–) anyway. the question for october's lavender carnival blog post: "who was your purple egg-crack character(s)?"beyond just the traditional defintion of "egg crack", this topic encompasses and could mean any fictional/non-fictional…

Things I did Finished a bunch of tickets so I can focus on the major projects we have going on at work. I’d much rather work on projects this time of year. Began an upgrade project to adjust how we run some backups. Found I’ve been using some outdated modules and time to upgrade a few things. Enjoyed the massive amounts of rain we got. Things I read I didn’t expect USB-C AA batteries to be this good, but here we are IndieWeb Fiction Carnival September 2026 - Moonlight Eavesdropping Does Not…

Unfortunately I had to miss the opening concert of the 2026/7 season by National Symphony Orchestra Ireland at the National Concert Hall, especially since it was Mahler’s epic Resurrection Symphony. That was three weeks ago and last night was the first time I managed to make it to a concert at the National Concert Hall this season. Earlier this week I was thinking that, although I’ve been walking to and from the NCH on Fridays quite frequently since I moved to Ireland almost 9 years ago, I’ve…

Album of the Week, October 3, 2026 The last studio album Sheila Chandra released on Real World was rather different than its predecessors. While Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices explored the intersections among British folk song and traditional South Asian ragas (among others), and The Zen Kiss added in themes of the lived experience of women across multiple cultures, ABoneCroneDrone strips away much of the experience, as well as language. What’s left is drone and pure melody. In some ways ABCD is…

Oh my god, the release of this game has always seemed to be some far off nebulous thing in the future and now I go into Early access with Ridiculous Space Battles NEXT MONTH. Argghhh. To put that into perspective, the last time I released a ‘new’ game was Democracy 4 and that was (checks steam…) January 2022. OVER FOUR YEARS. Oh my god what happened? Well the short answer is that this happened: I built a solar farm, and it took forever, and it was stressful, but its mine and I love it :D. But…

Friend Fabian writes to tell us about a German law allowing for a prisoner’s right to escape. Sure enough, Wikipedia explains: Escaping from prison isa criminal offense in countries such as the United States and Canada, and usually results in time being added to the inmate’s sentence … In Germany and a number of other countries, it is considered human nature to want to escape from a prison and it is considered as a violation of the right of freedom, so escape is not penalized in itself (in the…

People are people, and they will always disappoint you. Sooner or later, they will find a way to do so. There are no exceptions. You will be disappointed by your parents, your partners, your children, and almost everyone else you encounter in life. That disappointment will hurt. It will force you to reassess your understanding of the world. Every such experience will trigger a sense of hopelessness within you, making you question whether there is anyone out there with whom you can truly be…