Note from (Z): Thanks to all the readers who sent in good wishes of good health! I'm close to 100% again, though I am still a little slower than normal, hence the late posting. Sometimes Bipartisanship Is Not All It's Cracked Up to Be Yesterday, the Senate managed to pass a substantive bill, and with a sizable bipartisan majority of 77-22. It is the Protect College Sports Act, (PCSA) which would, if its name is to be believed, protect college sports. And, as every reader knows, there has never…

When preparing vegetables, instead of putting the ends and peelings into the bin I put them into large yogurt pots that I have kept. I then keep these in the freezer. Once I have two pots completely full I use them to make vegetable stock, or chicken stock when I make a roast chicken. I’ll make that into its own recipe one day as I can’t do it in my slow cooker.

I keep telling my friends I'll write them my Play Order game for the sprawling game narrative that is Nikke, so here we are 4 hours later...GETTING STARTED...Right off the bat you'll be faced with a choice of Server and VO. If you want to be my friend or join my union make sure you play on the NA server. For VO I'd strongly recommend the EN dub, for a gaccha dub, this is (in my opinion) one of the best (even if there's some clear direction and translation hiccups on occasion, particularly in…

The light is falling upon the light grey stone floor, coming in seemingly from nowhere. No source, no origin, yet there is a direction. A shade is cast upon the kneeling man, falling towards the gate. It is almost impossible to see both the man and the entire gate at the same time. In order to see the man, you can only see a fraction of the gate. And by seeing the entire gate, the man becomes invisibly tiny. A rythmic thumping, the pulse, can be heard and felt from beyond the gate.

Science makes assumptions about the nature of the world and the nature of humanity. We are so used to these ideas that we may overlook that they are assumptions. Before the emergence of modern science, people did not necessarily believe these things were true. Existence of regularity and orderThere are patterns and regularity in nature, even though at first glance this may not appear to be so. Nature is not completely random, chaotic, or unpredictable. Not every object or event is different…

Ethan and Joel Coen are masters when it comes to producing/directing movies. They also have good taste when selecting music to include in their soundtracks. This collection brings together a roots music selection of gospel, blues, folk and traditional standards.1 Come, Let Us Go Back To God - The Soul Stirrers (The LadyKillers) 2 Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) 3 I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) 4 Jesus,…

Been spending a good amount of time lately surfing through ambient videos on YouTube of people putting synthesizer patches up using the virtual modular software VCV Rack. This is a short excursion in what almost sounds like wooden flutes funneled through layers of reverb and glitchy delay. The video defaulted to 360 at first, but if you raise the image quality to 1080 you can easily zoom in and benefit from tracing the signal paths.

I was rummaging through my posts the other day and re-read On Reaching Mastery. In 2016, I wrote that the barrier to entry is very low, the barrier to succeed very high when you want to put apps into the iOS App Store. Ten years later, and – oh boy. In 2025, a meager year ago, there was one voice that asked: if the AI coding tools are so great, Where’s the Shovelware? I remember bookmarking this. It was very convincing. I now think they better shouldn’t have posed the challenge! Who on earth…

One idea for my next summer challenge is a River Lugg barbel (not an easy task). Having never fished The Lugg, Dave from the excellent blog From The Banks Of The Wye, very kindly offered to show me round. And doesn't it look good; gravels, deep bends and overhanging trees. After a couple of hours Dave had to head off - but with 2 hours left on the clock I was going to stay and try and land my first Lugg fish. The target was a chub and freelined meat or bread the method. And the first fish to…

In recent weeks, I’ve been hearing more and more chatter signaling disillusionment with agentic programming, as increasing numbers of once-upon-a-time very pro-agent folks walk back to taking much more control over their workflows. The available data suggests this was inevitable. While the horizon for agent autonomy has been roughly doubling every 6-7 months since 2019, according to METR, the horizon for reliable autonomy remains really, really short. Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long…

Two poets seldom linked came together in the New York Times on September 8, 1912. The writer was Joyce Kilmer, known forever as the author of “Trees,” who would die six years later during the second battle of the Marne. His subject was Edwin Arlington Robinson, age forty-one, by then author of four collections of poetry and such poems as “Miniver Cheevy” and “Richard Cory.” Kilmer hailed Robinson as “a classic poet.” “Not as a prophet, not as a teacher,” he writes, “but as a student of mankind…

Tuesday 29th September 2026 I’m beginning September’s round up of miscellany with a mini Book Review…. Another book from Timetable World I write ‘mini’ Book Review as I’m struggling to do justice to this latest book produced by the wonderful people behind the amazing Timetable World website, as although they very kindly sent me a copy a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t got anywhere near to finishing reading it – it’s just so voluminous – an incredible 368 pages, with the vast majority all text.…

Looking south from Crystal Pier this morning. Life and death at the shore. Today in some big surf I made a miscalculation. I was moving to a different spot in the surf lineup–the informal order of surfers in the water–and I accidentally got in the way of a surfer taking off on a wave. We didn’t collide, but I did ruin his experience of the wave. I hate that. That was a strike. One strike. The way it works in my head is that three strikes, and I must leave the water. Strikes can be: feeling…

Flixy is showing off to the very cute PAT man. She pokes her head through the kitchen serving hatch. 'What are you doing, please?'I tell her I'm clearing away some of the overspill recycling.She withdraws. As I'm putting my shoes on, she looms and very loudly, obviously for PAT man to hear, says 'Did I tell you my brilliant plan? You know the sequinned dress I never wear?' How possibly? 'The one I've done some photo shoots in?' Again, how possibly? 'I'm going to take it to Eastbourne on…

“Here is how platforms die. First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” –Cory Doctorow A year before the events of Halo, Master Chief and Sergeant […]

I. True decentered systems have subtle self-generalizing properties. Decentered epistemics chafe against their own substantial skin, falter at underwriting the very substantial ontology that would underwrite it. Take Quakerism. Like Methodists and Baptists, Quakers (aka the Friends) are historically “second-layer” Christian reformers that seek to radicalize the Protestant rupture of a previous century. Yet George Fox’s metadoctrine of the Inner Light and the corresponding practice of…

François Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was the son of a treas­ury of­ficial. In 1704, soon after his mother’s death, Arouet was sent to the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris for 7 years. He wrote poetry and performed in plays in Latin and French and when Arouet left Coll­ège at 17, the lad wanted to become a writer. Having already planned a law career for his son, dad forced Francois to be a lawyer’s assistant for two years, but the lad devoted his en­ergy to writing satirical poetry instead.…

Finally, a bit of time to stick on an Inspector Morse DVD, and get back to working on the model barge. The kitchen units confused me. In theory, they fold up, but I got lost in the instructions, and ended up going off-piste. The various sides were split up, and reassembled in a way that seemed to make sense to me. It didn't help that I disagreed with the idea that the doors should open. On a real barge, just like a camper van, surely there are latches to stop them swinging around when in…

I have been participating with the #3GoodThings hashtag for quite a little while now! I’ve tried to be consistent with it and I’ve been dutiful documenting at least three interesting things that happened that way. Basically, they are a bit of a shorter version of these weeknotes! In case you wanna follow what I’m up to closer to real time. At last, here are some notes and things of interesting that went on from September 22 to 28, 2026. 🐻 I have done a couple Pixel Bears! for many of my…

...I'm not great at it. But I'm trying. Better post tomorrow. 😄 Goodnight! Back to index

This part of the post does not contain spoilers. The thing that keeps me coming back to horror is that good horror brings the audience down to a level of safe vulnerability. And my favorite monsters are an allegory for the systemic predation of society. The Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall is a challenge to that predation. The story follows Helen Vaughn, an awkward young woman who has been summoned back to her family's ancestral home, Harrowstone Hall. But, like any good gothic horror,…

Apple TV has announced another new Peanuts special, a Christmas special coming our way this Christmas season. I’m going to spare myself some effort and just drop down the relevant portions of their press release, so the editorialization you see is all theirs. Apple TV is making the season merry and bright with holiday programming for the whole family, led by the all-new Peanuts special, “Snoopy Presents: 12 Days of Snoopy,” premiering Friday, November 13. In the latest special under the…

The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606 or so) has been the subject of much fuss about its author. Much of T. S. Eliot’s “Cyril Tourneur” essay is about attribution. How he would like the play to be written by Toueneur, who is nearly anonymous himself, just so Eliot can knock it up against The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). Maybe that is why the authorship consensus has shifted to Thomas Middleton, who wrote lots of plays, giving scholars lots to do. I will assume the author is unknown. I do like, and happily…

Peel back that mildewy curtain and let’s get down to business. Freshly soaped and squeaky clean your wet n’ steamy self towels dry and rolls on some Stink-B-Gone deodorant. But just before you pop from the hot steamroom into the goosebumpy hallway, it’s time to stop for a moment and be a finger-painting Picasso. Yes, for a minute let the blurry morning haze and the upcoming stresses of school or work melt down and fade away as you start streaking your fingers up and down the steamy glass.…

I have decided to start donating a small amount of my fun money to open source projects. After some research, the initial set of recipients are Magit Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund XMonad These are important to me, they need more money, and I believe they can use donations well. If you disagree, I’d genuinely like to hear what mistakes I’ve made in the analysis below. I hope it shows that this is important to me. (Continue reading the full article on the web.)

Reversalers is a 2-player microgame from Japan, designed by Ryusei Nakata of Ryusei Games. You randomly set up five treasure cards to be fought over. Treasure cards are worth points. Some have a fixed number of points, while for others the point values depend on other factors, for example the fighter card played by your opponent, or the fighter card remaining in your hand. The

Beautiful.

A day late - but thats okay :3c last week was actually pretty good. I finally finished my desk setup with the pink desk surface finally shipping. Plus, I've got my own bed setup now and my own little space in the unit is coming along nicely :3c. Obviously there's still a few things I'd like to do in my space, like more storage. But for now I'm happy with the setup and what I've got going on !!~ New desk setup for WFH & Gaming :3c[image or embed]— Pfych (@pfy.ch) September 25, 2026 at 12:06 PM…

Daniel Thompson and I started a basketblog over on Substack called the Rocker Step. If you are active on Substack and would like to support our basketball-related work, please subscribe, read, like, comment, share, and restack. Daniel is a Champaign, IL-based hoops writer who contributes to Basketball Society and is a credentialed reporter covering the University of Illinois WBB. We met on Threads, where we are part of the larger basketball writing and/or posting community, and became friends…

And the brutality of flying back begins. An incredible 4 days. Filled with family, friendships, memories, food, stories and laughter. Super emotional but in all the right ways.