Read: Ubik by Philip K. Dick ★★★ 📚 Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee.Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed. I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one…

Earlier this month, I went to France to stay with my best friend, her husband and their baby a week before his christening. Since we live far apart, we don't get to see each other often - so far, since his birth, we've seen each other three times - a week at a time. I stayed with them when he was only three weeks old, then they came to visit me when he was seven months old, and he is now one year old. The good thing about living so far away is that we have to actually stay together when either…

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Park Pond, two young dabchicks with one or two parents. Never saw the parents at the same time. Fishing & feeding the wee ones. About 10 metres along another adult & young one. Was surprised as I’ve not seen many about over the summer. Nesting in the space between Islands out of sight I guess?

Truman has slightly relocated his upstairs vantage point. Instead of sprawling across the top step of the staircase, for the past several days he’s assumed a casual pose while propped up against the door frame. When he sees me get the camera out, he tries to avoid making contact with the lens. Once in a while he’ll look at me with a look of “really?”, but it seems he enjoys striking that casual look. As he closes on his first decade, he’s a really casual guy.

After a couple of introductory posts, it's time to dive into the heart of my recent trip to Lewes and bring you the pub news that I know you’ve all been waiting for. Following my al fresco, AI-approved, pasty and coffee lunch, I set off along Cliffe High Street, crossing the ornate bridge over the river Ouse, with the iconic view of Harvey's Brewery to my left. I then turned directly opposite into the narrow road leading to the John Harvey Tavern, a charming establishment that has mellowed…

Went camping with Adam. He blogged it because blogging rules. His post has some videos we did kinda right when we got there for a memento. Here’s a couple of those same songs in shorter clips smooshed together. View this post on Instagram

Imagine you have spent days preparing for something you care about. You have thought through every detail, made your plans, rehearsed what you need to do, and invested time and effort into making it work. And then, at the last moment, the plan falls apart. The project gets cancelled. The presentation is called off. Someone changes their mind. Circumstances shift. All the preparation that went into it suddenly seems to have been for nothing. This happens more frequently than we think. Yet we can…

The Radish Farm Stop opened a couple blocks from our house and it is great. Glad to see they are doing well. It made me think of SimCity when a new building is placed and the Sims start showing up. 🥳😂

Monday Best of sunsets. Cloudless orange sky behind the red traffic lights. Deep green-blue behind the green ones. Crystal Palace tower, tall in the background with its red lights glowing. Electric light looks so good in the twilight. I litter-picked this morning. Got a bewildering wave and a toot from a passing van – I waved back anyway, and figured out it was FMP about five minutes later. The famous van, bought for camping; never knowingly camped. 15 years in, but there’s still time. She…

Zero wind at the kite festival. Such a pity. All those colorful contraptions – grounded. Bought two kites for the girls. (Probably way overpriced, but who's checking Amazon? I won't dare…) I find the second image very amusing. The guy in the fifth image was the only one who managed to fly his – extremely lightweight – kite, but only for a little while. I enjoyed being out with the family and getting some photography time in and I learned something about gliders – the location is usually their…

This update covers Sunday 09-20-30-26 through Saturday 09-26-26 (icon Glossary, if needed). LIFE 🈁 Autumn has begun. A real change is in the air, and it’s one that I can feel. 📕 L. was accepted for the posting at a new location! She starts there Mon 10-19, with her last day at the poisonous old location on Thu 10-15. The issues discussed last week in OTHER still exist, but she’ll soon be in a better physical and mental space to handle them. She managed to win at a no-win situation, so for the…

It is nteresting to me that on 13 days of this 29 day trip, I ran into people that I knew. Some of this was planned. Our oldest daughter and her husband were going to be camping in the area, so we did plan to get together. I did know that Matto on TRIM and Bobby on LAGNIAPPE would be sailing up in Maine, so we did make an effort to cross paths. Bruce and I had emailed ahead about sailing LOON.But there were the chance meetings - George and Pam on the sloop MOONLIGHT; Ruby, my shipmate on the…

In the lead up to the city election on October 25th, we're distributing the election zines to every ward in the city. We folded approximately 1200 zines on September 19th and a few volunteers left the folding party with stacks of zines to drop off in their neighbourhoods. The map below will track drop-off points, although it might be less about where you can find the zines (since some are getting picked up quickly) and more about showing how far they're reaching! Anyone can get involved by…

An Ode to Links All from a simple idea: here’s a thing that points to another thing, off you go! [ ⇦ IndieNews ] Make the indie web easier↪More on the easier indie web We need more than Wordpress [ 📌ramblinggit ]

And it was okay. It happened a few days ago. I was late to get out of bed. I lay nestled in my blankets. I wished I could just exist, and that that would be okay. Its not that I dislike my new job, actually, I love it (and at the same time know that its not what I want to do for the rest of my life). I just wake up some mornings and want to be on my own time. I listen to the cars outside the window, the birds starting to sing in the backyard, and I want nothing more than to sit and watch the…

I just heard this teenager girl on the train saying to a friend that next year she won't worry about making sure she's on the same uni as her boyfriend, because she's super young, doesn't know the future, but will always make sure she prioritises herself and her career; having him around is just a nice bonus. I'm proud speechless, like go girl, I do hope you conquer the world 💕✨

In celebration of Dungeon Antiqua being released on the Switch, I was sent it for review. It is a cross between Final Fantasy 1 and a dungeon crawler. In fact, it really is a Final Fantasy Dungeon Crawler. Your goal is find five pieces of ancient armor and then go deeper into the dungeon and… I don’t know because I never got there, but more on that in a bit. You make 5 characters, fighters, thieves, priests, mages and the like. Then you go through procedural generated floors looking for the…

Here is a real-time video of me trying to read any new Fifth Circuit opinion on Internet Law: Odds are that the outcome will be terrible; and even if not, the reasoning will be 100% cringe. * * * Embed/in bed This opinion revisits the question of when embedding constitutes copyright infringement. This should have been an easy case. The Ninth Circuit has repeatedly and decisively concluded that embedding doesn’t constitute direct copyright infringement due to the “Server Test,” i.e., direct…

Read the full post at - Atlanta’s Night Skyline from Fort Walker

Salut tout le monde ! Je prépare une page d'acceuil pour notre serveur. J'aimerais bien inclure quelques pages qui ont des tips pour le fediverse, idéalement francophone. Des pages qui expliquent comment bien utiliser mastodon, comment ça marche sur le fediverse, comment trouver des comptes qui pourrait plaire ou toute autre information que vous auriez aimé avoir au début ! Je suis preneur de toute information, piste, etc ! 😃 Merciiiii ! #fediverse #mastodon #introduction #feditips #fediadmin

At work, I used this prompt (which I found via their site) as a basis to build a nifty intro video for the API work I'd been doing. The clever bit (imo) is telling the agent to build an HTML page and construct a video out of it.

Second gig was last night. It was even more chaotic than I thought it would be, or I assumed it would be. This is the second gig of The Dumbest Show on Earth variety show. It’s a three-show run. And we’d planned a more DJ-centric show, but it was actually more sample-based. So I was struggling all night, but 80% of that added to the kind of fun, razor’s-edge feel of the show. I will definitely go way less DJ and way more SP-404 next time, and probably bring in the Teenage Engineering sampler as…

I like Todd McGowan. He writes and talks about the most jargon-heavy areas of philosophy (German Idealism, Lacan, Marxism) and somehow finds a way to keep it simple and accessible. His simplicity is the biggest indicator of the vastness of his knowledge. Recently, I read his 2024 book “Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn’t Try to Find Ourselves”. This is a short review of the book. Alienation is perceived as a negative thing by most. It means being separated from our essence. It’s what…

“AI risk management” pulls almost 3,000 searches a month, and I get why. Every week there’s a new headline claiming AI is either going to replace your entire workforce or hallucinate your business into a lawsuit. Most of that noise isn’t actionable. Here’s the short list of what’s actually worth your attention, ranked by how likely it is to hurt you. Real Risk #1: Data Exposure, Not Model Behavior The single most common way AI actually hurts a business isn’t the model saying something wrong.…

We've all written this before: a quiet morning, a warm drink, a half-remembered thinker, and a sweeping conclusion about How We Live Now. I've certainly done so, especially when in my own finding myself phase, and delivered all life conclusions with total confidence. And like no research. To save us all time, here it is as a game (its all games, really). Grab some dice and roll on each table, fill in the template, and publish. How to Play Roll on each table below. Drop your results into The…

Vestiges?Self PublisedOSR? 5e.Level 2 Every night, someone climbs down into a burial mound sealed for sixty years and declared “inactive.” He’s counting something on a wall, in chalk. No one knows who, or why — and the answer reaches far beyond one lone surveyor. This 21 page adventure uses four pages to describe six scenes, one having five rooms. Is it AI slop? It is pretentious? You now longer have to choose, now it can be both! It’s also barely comprehensible. This was a request, but the…

Cool and mostly clear, with a wind that keeps the shadows in motion—and the blue jays, too. Each hard gust brings another few acorns rattling down, and the driveway is filling in with walnuts.

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), Almansor, lines 1291-1296 (tr. Hal Draper): I am so tired, And sick, and sicker even than that; for ah, The worst of sicknesses is life itself; And only death can cure it. This is sure The medicine that is bitterest, but the last, And everywhere available, and cheap. Ich bin recht müd' Und krank, und kranker noch als krank, denn ach! Die allerschlimmste Krankheit ist das Leben; Und heilen kann sie nur der Tod. Das ist Die bitterste Arznei, doch auch die letzte, Und…