In the beginning, the Oracle was just a computer program. Synthesised and distilled from all available words; the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of humanity. It was initially seen as a simple word generator; a calculator for words, as some would call it. But as it grew in capabilities, devouring enormous amounts of information, many of us soon saw the result as something more. The machine seemed to have internalised a complete model of the world, having insights that no single human could…

Every couple of days, I’ll drink a hojicha latte at a coffee shop I like. It’s delicious and gives me a perfect energy lift. I intentionally make sure it doesn’t happen every day, because I don’t want to rely on caffeine to get work done. I drink one beer very occasionally, perhaps once a season. Sometimes, if I’m with friends, I may have a couple more. Similarly, I want to create the conditions for me to drink only when I’m celebrating, not to cope with a difficult moment. In a world that…

The contrast between the well-educated “Right” and the “dirtbag”/prole Right is interesting. Fuentes is one of those guys like BAP where the man himself can be interesting and correct on certain points. But when you encounter their larger fan base, it's often quite different, the fan base isn't necessarily picking up what the big guy is laying down. https://t.co/5v5c44DERD — VB Knives (@Empty_America) October 1, 2026 Fuentes built a huge audience/brand catering to the latter. Conversely, BAP…

I recently saw an ad for this series in the back of another Viz book, which referred to the protagonists as "sports-crossed lovers", and that was enough of a hook to grab me. He's a high school badminton player, and she's on the basketball team: Can they make it work? Sure, I'll check that out to see for myself!The male lead is junior high student Taiki Inomata. That's him on the right, with the badminton racket over his shoulder. He's quite devoted to the sport, and works super-hard at it,…

We may end up with a full “hidden economy”: People working on their own passion projects, building things for their own sake, and for recognition from their peers. Work done without real compensation, to express personal ideas, moods, and visions, with personal lines drawn on when AI usage is acceptable, and when it isn’t. This bifurcation would affect everyone. For every single hobby activity in your life you’ll have to make a decision: Do you care about the “outcome”, or do you care about…

Dave McKean’s covers for Miracleman #17-22 (Eclipse, 1990-91) feature physical elements held taut by string. ▲ Miracleman #17 (Eclipse, June 1990), cover by Dave McKean ▲ Miracleman #18 (Eclipse, August 1990), cover by Dave McKean ▲ Miracleman #19 (Eclipse, November 1990), cover by Dave McKean ▲ Miracleman #20 (Eclipse, March 1991), cover by Dave McKean ▲ Miracleman #21 (Eclipse, July 1991), cover by Dave McKean ▲ Miracleman #22 (Eclipse, August 1991), cover by Dave McKean

Every single time I’m brave enough to go outside and draw or paint in public, something happens that lifts my mood. It’s not that I particularly yearn for contact with strangers, but whenever it happens, I end up feeling a little more connected to my surroundings. I ended up talking to that woman and her husband for half an hour. At first, I thought they were tourists because that part of the city is mostly inhabited by them, but they had actually just bought a new camera and gone there to try…

An overview of my financial situation since getting a job and moving into a new place, and where that leaves me. Financially, now that I've finished my seven month stint of work I'm doing alright, but not quite in the place I'd like to be. My expenses in March, when I started this job and my roommate moved out, and May, when I moved into my new place, were quite high. However the majority of that was me paying the last month's rent out of the deposit my roommate had given me when he moved in,…

I’ve seen a lot of people on Reddit discovering fountain pens by way of Amazon, Temu and other low-cost options with a focus on the Chinese pen makers. So today I want take time to compare the nib sizes on the Jinhao 82 — a “dupe” for a Sailor ProGear Slim or similar in terms of overall design aesthetics. Things the Jinhao 82s are: Very affordable, approx. $10USD or less through most channels Available in an array of barrel colors Standard international converters included, not proprietary…

Introducing the NerdPress Guided Agent Connector, a new service from NerdPress that connects your AI agent to your WordPress site with our guidance built in. I wrote about it on our blog.

Hello kindred spirits, and welcome to the MaudCast, the podcast of the L.M. Montgomery Institute, broadcasting from the beautiful campus of the University of Prince Edward Island. And here we are with another great episode! In S03E03, we’re chasing hidden … Continue reading →

Is Google back? They claim that they are back. Gemini 4 Argon is rolling out, with competitive frontier-level benchmarks, at $2/$10. What we don’t have is access to the model, because Google Fails Marketing Forever. So it is far too early to say what we have here. When I know more, so will you. OpenAI was forced to pull what would have been GPT-6.1 Astra due to alignment failures. They did offer us GPT-6.1 Sol, which is pitched as approaching Astra quality at the much lower price of $2/$10, the…

I apologize in advance for being derisive in this post. But Lordy, do folks deserve a shake now and again. Not a day goes by that I don’t see complaints about Apple Intelligence taking up storage space on iPhones, Macs, or iPads. Some of it from so-called leading Apple blogs and websites. It begs the question, were people just not paying attention? Apple’s entire pitch for Apple Intelligence is that most of it happens on your device, and is thus supposedly more secure than relying on other AI…

今天下雨，邻居的猫s没有来我家门口巡逻。 我差点以为我门口的监控坏了，居然一整天都没没有报警。 平时每天都提示猫来了好几次。 来就来呗，你们可不可以又💩又尿的。 4 minutes ago |

I read the original Dutch version, called De vrouw die de honden eten gaf. The English edition is translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent. I picked up this book because of World Editions' 'Read the World A to Z' series. I like the project and would love to eventually read all entries as they get published. When I saw that B would be for Belgium, I was excited to see what book they'd picked. But when I found out it would be this title, my heart dropped. I thought: really, this one, of all the…

Sorry I missed this anniversary.* Yesterday, the 30th of September, was International Translation Day. Lit Hub informs us that “The date was chosen by the United Nations [in 2017] to coincide with the feast of St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin (his version is now known as the Vulgate) and [he] is considered to be the patron saint of translators.” Saint Jerome translating away— (Ghirlandaio, 1480). Keep your eyes on the page please. That’s how errors creep in. In its resolution the…

Fifteen years ago I started a podcast called Developing Perspective. It was “never longer than 15 minutes” and chronicled my journey of becoming an indie app developer. I did that for around four years and then joined up with Marco Arment to do a show on the same topic called Under the Radar. We did that together for 10 years before bringing it to a close. At the time, I thought my podcasting had come to a natural end. While there was always news to discuss and craft to examine, I found that I…

The Soggy needed a good low-level programming environment with which to tinker on future hardware projects, and ideally it was one that I controlled myself, so I could include it on the onboard ROM without infringing copyright. It would be nice if it used a semi-popular programming language for embedded systems, and had an interactive development environment that I could run right on the machine. All that seems to mean I’m finally going to make my first Forth. The Soggy? Sega’s first home…

I am realising that I have met a lot of people in my life, but not all of them are still a part of it. It is easy for me to socialise with people, crack a few jokes and be kind to them. But opening up to people is an entirely different matter, especially when it comes to expressing my emotional side. I have managed to be candid with only a handful of people, and those are the ones who have stayed in my life. Yet, when I count the people I know and those I casually call my friends, the number is…

So Ramen Bae came out with three protein varieties recently, two are dry, and this one’s with soup. Sounds like an interesting one to try. Let’s give it a go! Ramen Bae Protein Ramen Beef Flavor Noodle Soup – United States Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). Looks to be meat free but check for yourself. To prepare, boil 2 1/3 cups water and add noodle and soup base. Cook 6~7 minutes. Add in oil. Finally, stir and enjoy! The six count box. Detail of the packaging (click to enlarge). An…

High Flying Winedownload The Bufferdownload Both composed by C. Appel and published by Chart-Gap Pub.Wine Records #09Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania1963* "Inflammable Dan" was the radio moniker of Charlie Apple, a popular radio disc jockey in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area (most notably on WPSL) during the 1960s. In 1963, Apple teamed up with a local Pittsburgh rock and roll band named The Igniters to record a novelty garage-rock single.Some info found at Wikibin, the Wikpedia trashbin : Charlie…

Dave Harrington / Jay Bellerose / Billy Mohler - Club Tee Gee, Los Angeles, California, August 3, 2026Have I mentioned how much I’ve been enjoying the debut album from Giraffe — The Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums? Let me mention that. The LA-based collective features some dynamite players: guitarist Dave Harrington, bassist Spencer Zahn, drummer Kosta Galanopoulos and keyboardist Robert Walter. This stuff is fully improvised but manages to find a perfect balance of freedom and melody; it’s…

Straight from work, I went to the hospital yesterday to visit with Grandma. She was literally in the hallway of the ER for almost two full days before they finally put her in some overflow room and then finally got her into a room last night. I'm sure that won't affect how much they charge her, right? Hallway stays and room stays have the same nightly rate, I'm sure. This entire medical system we have here in America is one big fucking joke. I must say, however, my dear grandfather was from one…

AnkylosaurusAnkylosaurus took “don’t mess with me” to a whole new level: body armour, a giant tail club, and absolutely no interest in becoming someone else’s lunch.This heavily armoured dinosaur lived in North America near the end of the Cretaceous. Bony plates protected its broad back, while a low-slung body kept its softer belly close to the ground. It spent its days eating vegetation and

He passed away peacefully, I’ll miss him.

Yesterday Kevin Ford and I gave a presentation (slides) at the LD4 conference about the use of BIBFRAME “bounded descriptions” at the Library of Congress (LC) and in the Blue Core project. BIBFRAME data is RDF that gets serialized in many different ways. One of the challenges of building tooling around BIBFRAME is that you don’t necessarily know if you have to follow your nose in the data (resolve URLs) to get some of the data or it will be present in whatever BIBFRAME data you have on hand.…

Gathering my thoughts on the use of LLMs for writing prose, and how I’ve changed my workflow following some feedback and reflection on my own writing.

I’m planning to open-source all my text and image generation skills that I’ve been working on, and was trying to do some checking around of others who have released similar things. ChatGPT gave me this provisional list below. I’m sure there are others: ShonP/kdp-book — A comprehensive pipeline that takes a book from initial concept through outlining, manuscript generation, editing, illustrations, cover design, EPUB/PDF production, metadata, and KDP preparation. alexeygrigorev/ai-book-generator…

Today marks 11 years since I moved into my cozy little home on wheels and hit the road. It was such a crazy time. I don't know why life has to be all-or-nothing. All I wanted was the happy medium - but apparently it was too much to ask for. Eleven years ago, in what felt like the blink of an eye, I bought a new van (even though I already had one), my job of 30 years was eliminated, my little birdie was leaving the nest, and I jumped into van life head first. The job ending wasn't easy and I…