The warm air is fading from the wind the same as the memories from last year grow more distant, just like how the Earth moves away from the sun when winter comes around.New York City is about to see another season and I am about to undergo another change.I know. The world is a cyclical place. We have four seasons. We have our bouts. We have our moments of joy and pain. We have days in the sun, moments when it rains, and times when it snows.We have mornings when the ground thaws during the first…

I hope you didn't get your fill of MPorcius fave Edmond Hamilton last time when we read his 1929 epic of a genocidal trip to the Earth's hollow center, "The Hidden World," because today we have three stories from Weird Tales by the Ohio-born child prodigy and husband of Leigh Brackett, a man smart enough to graduate high school at 14 and drop out of college at 17--dummies like me wait until their twenties and grad school to escape the receiving end of academia.I'm reading all these stories in…

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 22-23: The deglamorization of city life signified the resounding triumph of a publicity campaign to promote nationwide austerity—prompted by the prolongation of Japanese military engagement in China—that started in the summer of 1940. Fifteen hundred signs bearing slogans such as “A True Japanese Cannot Afford to Be Indulgent” and “Luxury Is the Enemy” (Zeitaku wa Tekida) were put up all over Tokyo (though the insertion of…

It's Inktober again which means I'm drawing one thing a day, in ink, from the official[1] prompt list. I'm tagging my posts with #Inktober and #Inktober2026 — these tag pages are flagged to render the images in a gallery instead of the usual notes pages. My first drawing is up as of this morning. As much as I love Jeff the dinosaur from last year[2] it's too easy to fall back on "Jeff does/interacts with whatever the prompt is" so this year will be mostly Jeff-free. Last year my drawings were…

The Emperor of Iran, Khosrow I (531 - 579) was not just a leader who wanted to go to war with the Byzantines. He wanted to advance his people and culture in all ways, not just militarily.Yesterday we told the story of the creation of chess and then backgammon as part of a challenge between India and Iran. There was another "cultural exchange" between the two worth mentioning (and was touched on here a few years ago).The Panchatantra is an ancient Sanskrit collection of animal fables, written…

DecayOut 25th September on Relapse Records Hellfest 2010 was a pretty special festival. John Garcia got 75% of the band back together as Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri took the stage for a few numbers during his Kyuss classics set. Immortal, Asphyx, and Carcass were all in their post revival pomp, affording a younger generation a glimpse of early 90s extreme metal arcadia in the live setting. And, following their breakup in 2002, Godflesh were booked to play their first reunion show, only to…

I turn 59 years old today, which marks the end of my 59th year since birth. Wait, what? you say? Well, the way we count human years, a birthday marks the end of a year, not the beginning. Age 1, for instance, means you were born a year ago. Yep, how we count the years is strange. On to year 60!

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67) was honored in her homeport of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam with a formal decommissioning ceremony yesterday, marking 34 years of continued service at sea and a revered naval legacy. U.S. Navy Chief Interior Communications Electrician Deja Washington, assigned to the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67), left and led the crew in disembarking Shiloh for the final time at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam,…

The October issue of Foofaraw Zine is here! Download below or read in our purpose built ebook reader. Of course, all stories will be published for free on the web throughout the month, but paid supporters receive a PDF/EPUB with all of the month's stories at the beginning of the month, along with a few other goodies. And Patrons get stuff in print! Or you can pick up a copy of this and more from our webstore or visit our friends at Weightless Books and pick up mags from other publishers as…

With a $20 billion outlay of taxpayer dollars this week, the Navy is getting two flattops, kinda. This week, the service issued a big-fat Refueling and Complex Overhaul award to HII in Newport News for USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). The eighth Nimitz-class aircraft carrier was built at Newport News over 54 months, from November 1993 to June 1998, for $4.5B at the time. Her RCOH, which will give her another 25-30 years of life, is expected to run (at least) 48 months until November 2031 and cost…

I always loved this July 1974 National Geographic image by David Alan Harvey of Sheila E. Denison, one of the first early coed Officer Candidate School class members at USCG TRACEN Yorktown, cleaning her M1 Garand while touching up her hair. The 10.5-pound wooden-stocked Garand, officially the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1, was used by every class at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey, for half a century, only replaced by the M16/M4 in the early 2000s. However, for those…

The Ancillary Review of Books publishes reviews and essays with an emphasis on utopian impulses and systemic injustices. ARB seeks to build a community of radical thinkers writing about amazing, speculative, global writing. If you are interested in writing for ARB, please check out our Procedures & Style Guide, and pitch us using the form below! For reviews, here are some titles coming out in January that we’d be interested in covering: Fiction Exit by Ezzedine C. Fishere, translated by…

Frederick Sandys, Cassandra, c. 1863–1864. Ulster Museum, Belfast. The story of Cassandra's curse has several versions. The most widespread says that Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy and that, when she rejected him, he cursed her so that no one would believe her. This explains the expression “Cassandra prophecy,” used for a prophecy that will come true but that no one believes when it is uttered. A late version of the ancient tradition, preserved in a commentary on the Aeneid known as…

Bricks and mortar might make a house. But its the laughter of children that make a home. — An Old Irish Proverb

Back in the early 2000s, EA had a series of games unde their EA BIG label. These were over-the-top arcade style sports game that were hip, edgy, and fun. Some of the titles included: NBA Street, FIFA Street, SSX Tricky, and Def Jam Vendetta. They were no doubt inspired by the Midway Sports titles like NHL Hitz and NBA Jam, and both companies did a fantastic job at putting out some easy to play, difficult to master sports titles. While Midway had NFL Blitz, EA created NFL Street. (Bet you didn't…

Knowledge Futures ha sacado nueva web https://knowledgefutures-site.knowledge-futures-account.workers.dev/ y OMG de paso han inventado un protocolo para el acceso radical al conocimiento estructurado: https://www.underlay.org/Para mingitarse encima. Lo explican en https://www.knowledgefutures.org/updates/2026-09-29-knowledge-systems-built-for-purpose/

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed reading how the prediction markets are arresting people, how smart TV’s have been hovering up all data and how little push back Apple has received for live rewind? To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“ You are seeing aspects of this with the AI Doc now on Netflix, the open…

INDEX · 02 Relic Self-imposed constraint: Use only the letters of the word inside a 2-inch square to illustrate its meaning Hongdian Black Forest fountain pen, EF, black ink on 120 gsm paper

Had a great day in the shop along with feeling pretty good. I got 3 hours in the AM session and almost 3 hours in the PM. It has been a long time since that has happened. I only had two coughing fits but even then they weren't as long as they used to be. I snapped a bazillion pics too so I think I'll go with pics with captions and as little verbiage as is possible for me.tray dry fitted and original tote bottom repurposednope - stock isn't thick enough and too close to the anglesusing 1/8"…

There is a recurring argument about the #Fediverse that starts with a reasonable question of how can the Fediverse scale? So why, because, yes, it doesn’t yet have the same ease of use as mainstream social media. Infrastructure can be fragile. Servers can struggle when large numbers of people arrive at once. Developers need support and servers cost money. There are no universal performance guarantees, and there isn’t a single business model paying for the whole system. All of that is real. But…

Check out As in guillotine... for more. NOTE: Things are finally starting to stabilize after a chaotic summer bled into September, which ended on a high note with good news on a couple of fronts, including a new gig! More on that another time, but there’s a little hint in the Bonus section. _ONE In the Library Ebook Market, Can Librarians Learn to Just Say No? | Me! But if the recent tension over library ebook legislation has shown librarians anything, it is this: the major publishers have the…

When Paul Krugman wanted to talk with someone who understood the AI bubble, he called Paul Kedrosky, as did Derek Thompson. Though I'm much less of a fan of Thompson than of Krugman, the fact that a writer best known for pushing the techno-optimist influenced abundance agenda picked a tech critic known for appearing on Ed Zitron's podcast says a lot about Kedrosky's standing.Last week Zitron posted a discussion with Kedrosky entitled "The Hidden Recession Beneath The AI Bubble" which walked…

There are moments, according to my experience, when a patient needs to be told that the breakdown, a fear of which destroys his or her life, has already been. From Fear of Breakdown by D. W. Winnicott

✏️ It’s Inktober. Not sure if I can keep up with daily doodles, but I had fun making this one. Blood check-up, to see if it can show anything on my recent sickness and decline in running performance. Blood check-up. Pencil on Field Notes.

A group of us play a pickup soccer game together every weekend, with plenty of banter along the way. Recently, after one game, a casual conversation about the result spiraled into talk of tracking stats: who’s on which team, goals scored, win rates. That escalated further quickly, all the way to using an app for team assignments and stat tracking. Then the following weekend, we played with all of it in place. Everyone was excited going in. But the game itself was far more competitive than…

To be read in conjunction with the astrophiz podcast #243https://soundcloud.com/astrophiz/astrophiz-241-september-sky-guide-venus-antares-occultation Eastern horizon on the evening of Sunday, October 4 as seen from Adelaide at 20:47 ACDST, 90 minutes after sunset (click to embiggen). Saturn is the brightest object above the eastern horizon. Saturn is at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on the 4th and is visible the entire night. But is best for telescopic…

We are at midterm at Spartanburg Methodist College--which means it's Fall Break today and tomorrow. My spouse and I will have a day of working on different projects: he's putting polyurethane on the sanded hardwood floors in the fixer-upper house in S'burg, and I have various appointments today (dermatologist, hair, Zoom session with one of our onground intensive instructors).Yesterday my spouse and I went to S'burg in different cars, so I had some time alone at the Arden house. What did I do…

My relationship with Mastodon has been somewhat tumultuous over the years, until I eventually stepped down from Fosstodon around 18 months ago. I have to say, it was the right decision. I don't miss running Fosstodon one bit. But since then, I've found myself less and less engaged in the Fediverse. Mainly because there's so much outrage over there. It's so tiring. The majority of my timeline is fun, but the outraged minority have ruined for me. To the point where I don't want to be there, and…

On the math-fun mailing list, Dick Hess posted “a couple of curiosities”: A speaker at G4G16 noted that \(16^{16}\) ends in \(1616\).A friend sent me this: \(499^{499}\) ends in \(499499\). Are there any other cases including numbers with more digits? That does make me curious! I’ve kept that email in my inbox since March, hoping to have a go at finding more examples when I get some free time. Nobody else responded to the email, which is usually a sign that an answer is hard to find. At first…

Like with last year the start of the academic year is a time of chaos. Every year we prepare as much as possible to make things go as smoothly as possible. But, every year something always crops up. The main reassuring thing that I have started to reflect upon is that, even though things are problematic, despite all the work we put in, are always things outside of our control. Plus, if we weren't as prepared as we were, then the chaos would go from being a major annoyance to an absolute…