A Nice Walk: Kew Gardens (1 mile) Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, oodles of horticultural variety, outstanding architecture, glamorous vistas, top quality sculpture, regular refreshment opportunities, all continents included, occasional carnivorous plants, contour-free, royally approved, directly on the Heathrow flightpath, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a mile across a World Heritage Site in Kew, potentially enough to make a day of it and a…

Still fighting this cold, or flu, or whatever it is (not COVID, though--the test was negative). After a few days of getting better, it got worse yesterday, and if it turns into pneumonia, the consequences will be worse than just one missed day of blog posting. In other words, rest is needed. So, we will push the already-half-done Friday post to Saturday, and then do questions/letters on Sunday. This is non-politics questions weekend, so if you have 'em, send 'em along to…

Responding the gloominess of recent posts, I thought I’d try a piece that’s more optimistic about Europe, if not about the US. It’s a mashup of a couple of recent Substack newsletters. The New York Times has a thumb-sucker about the rise of the European far right, which would greatly mislead anyone not up with the facts. The picture is one of inexorable advance, citing parties such as “the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democrats and the Reform U.K. party of…

A block north and a day later from the previous shot, the setting sun shines through the low lying clouds along the Esplanade in Redondo Beach. 前の写真から1ブロック北、1日後。レドンド・ビーチのエスプラネード沿いで、低く垂れ込めた雲の間から夕日が差し込んでいる。

Flixy said, 'If you're doing past the Lidl at the end of the road past the Bingo Hall - where it turns off to go to the Marina - can you return something?'I queued twice. She hadn't given me the pin for her card. She then gave me the wrong pin. And when I told her this, insisted she had rung to tell me the correct pin, right after I told her about the first pin being wrong. There had been no such phone call. As I was walking away from Lidl, to look at some more typical Brighton Blue Plaques…

The New York Times has a thumb-sucker about the rise of the European far right, which would greatly mislead anyone not up with the facts. The picture is one of inexorable advance, citing parties such as “the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democrats and the Reform U.K. party of Nigel Farage.” The New York Times doesn’t mention that: The right-wing coalition of which Wilders was part collapsed when he withdrew support and lost the subsequent election. Wilders’…

We're moored up at Badger Bridge. The requirement for Continuous Cruisers to move every two weeks has been suspended for two months running now, in an effort to conserve water, which is in short supply all around the network. But now we're past the equinox, and it's decidedly autumnal; presently we'll no doubt have more rain than we know what to do with, but for now it's lovely, and we're enjoying a respite from the awful heat.I've had a second run of woven badges made, of my knotwork hares and…

The unpublished account of the kundalini awakening from July 2025, the console panel that now reads the same thing, and what the order of the event says about the current.

Galla, the fifth doge of Venice, only ruled for one year, which was marked by violence.

trackingsingularity.com After the OpenAI x HuggingFace hacking event, there have been weekly reports of agents escaping sandbox due to different reasons and then hacking websites to fulfill their tasks. OpenAI and Anthropic have also started showing signs of RSI internally which means they have been able to narrowly automate their research and training loop leading to faster model release cycles. This is leading to the AI world progressing faster. Fable 5.1, Astra and now Opus 5.5 have been…

As a fan of science fiction, I've been watchingDark Matter since it premiered. It's a good show with solid execution, but nothing exceptional. Until now. I just watched the latest episode, Love and Be Loved (season two, episode eight), and I'm here to tell you that episode is a masterpiece. I haven't seen anything on television that good in years. The writing, acting, cinematography, tone, pacing... everything was exquisite. Even if you're lukewarm on every prior episode, it's still worth it to…

Things I read recently

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gayle Peck, more commonly know as Julie London. Her musical persona provocative, her beauty commensurate. Julie’s sophisticated delivery of angst-laden tunes was unsurpassed. Here is this fine singer singing her own fitting epitaph: While her appearance may have been worldly and seductive, in reality she was a doting mother.

“My first novel, Bright Center of Heaven, is a compendium of all the writers I loved and admired. In a symposium at Smith College, Saul Bellow said something that describes it to perfection. He said, ‘A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.’” I’ve learned that not every writer is a reader. That seems remarkable, though nothing in the human realm should still surprise me. Writing starts as blunt self-expression. As a little kid I wrote about things I liked -- the animals and plants in…

The neglect and mistreatment of people with ME/CFS is a scandal of astonishing proportions. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 24th September 2026 I’ve spent my working life covering neglected issues. But few are neglected like the devastating chronic condition ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome). In severe cases, the illness shuts down people’s lives almost entirely, causing an extreme loss of energy and a wide range of physical and cognitive symptoms that…

Read on thecooldown.com · View original Mastodon post I thought this was interesting when I saw it pop up in my social media feed. In this study, beaver dams outlasted 130 engineered flood barriers. Maybe computers and human engineers should learn a thing or two from them. Nature does seem to do some things better than we do, and we can learn from it and use that knowledge to make better versions of things ourselves. After all, God did give man dominion over the animals and much of nature. Just…

Read on thecooldown.com · View original Mastodon post I thought this was interesting when I saw it pop up in my social media feed. In this study, beaver dams outlasted 130 engineered flood barriers. Maybe computers and human engineers should learn a thing or two from them. Nature does seem to do some things better than we do, and we can learn from it and use that knowledge to make better versions of things ourselves. After all, God did give man dominion over the animals and much of nature. Just…

Every prompt Daniel types into LifeOS now gets two decisions made for it before I start working:Which model should do the work.How hard that model should think.Jev makes both decisions in about a third of a second.a real session, with private status lines removed and long waits cut: the quick question stays inline, and the think deeply prompt goes to opus, which sends fable to red-team itTo test it, three models (Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1 and OpenAI's Astra) each labeled 1,000 of Daniel's real…

This is David, curious and easily excitable generalist at your service. You're reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for folks who love when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!». Thanks for inviting me to your inbox.Before we begin: I have created a new collection from the vast archive of the Weekly Filet, with some of the best reads and podcasts on friendship and connection. All collections.1. A day is short, a life is longA personal essay on optimisation, in the…

Ever a sucker for a bit of Manx tat on eBay, I won a couple of very vintage badges. They arrived, and the big surprise was the fabulous collection of Isle of Man post office stamps on the envelope. Easily as much fun as the badges, and definitely deserving of a place in the collection!

A Mac app should look and feel like a Mac app. A Windows app should look and feel like a Windows app. Or should they? Raymond Chen, The Old New Thing: Sadly, almost nobody uses Win32 scroll bars any more. Everybody uses frameworks that provide their own custom scroll bars. [...] Great, so by the time I learn about a shortcut for scroll bars (Shift+click), the ecosystem has fragmented so much that I can’t even rely on it working. Brent Simmons, Inessential: What I found should be no surprise:…

Here's a beautiful photo from John Scalzi for your, hopefully, beautiful Friday… ~ Link: And Now, Just Because it’s Pretty, Succulent Flowers After the Rain, by John Scalzi

When I am stressed or sad or annoyed or… feelings, I go take a walk. But I don't look at things when I am walking. It's not that I close my eyes when I am taking the walk. No, but I don't notice things. I don't see trees. I don't see people. What I do is hear: I listen to audiobooks while I am walking. Typically fiction. To immerse into some other world while I am walking. To get out of my own world, just for a brief relief. Of course, there are other ways to take a pause. How about you? ~…

There are some curious subplots in the data centre boom happening now in Alberta that I think go a long way toward explaining why people hate these things. First, even though developers tout their clean electricity bonafides, the fact is the actual power will come from fossil fuels. That is in part because our province requires it. It turns out that our government appears to be using this wave of new projects as one reason to grow our robust oil-and-gas industry. Drew Anderson, the Narwhal: A…

I promised last time that I'd be doing a full cover reveal this week... and there it is above these words. A remarkable image based on a drawing by Mike Western, interpreted by the highly talented Martin Baines.By a lucky coincidence, I have found a scan of the original artwork in an old Fleetway Press Pack put out at the time to coincide with a party celebrating the success of various Sexton

I wasn't blogging in 2006, but I was a regular commenter on the Nielsen Haydens' blog Making Light in the year and on the morning that I read "Mike Ford is gone." I found the comment which I posted twenty years ago today: I saw him just one or two times, at conventions. I never spoke with him. I admired him desperately and furiously. I started with reading Just the Planet in a Crown Books, because I couldn’t justify spending my allowance on it. After a while, I started to worry they’d throw me…

Because at that moment you go from a greasy slack-jawed popcorn-kernel-n-sweatpants covered couch potato to a fast-talking screenwriter with sharp eyes, a whizzing mind, and a backup second career. AWESOME! All-new awesome things posted daily here: Photo from: here The post #585 Figuring out the plot twist just before they reveal it appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, September 28 through Sunday, October 4! This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes: When the event will take place What the event is Where the event will take place Who is holding the event This week’s events Monday, September 28 Tuesday, September 29 Wednesday, September 30 Thursday, October 1 Friday, October 2 Saturday, October 3…

“Even when things get tough, I want to keep moving forward, so I can become someone who can help others.” –Aoba Suzukaze Aoba Suzukaze is a new graduate and pursues a career in 3D graphics design for Eagle Jump, the company that produced the series of games she became enamoured by. Aoba is thrilled to […]