I can't remember the last time a review device landed on my doormat, so when the Garmin Cirqa turned up I will admit to a small burst of excitement. A new gadget to poke at, and one that sits right on top of the two things I spend most of my time writing about, tech and fitness. Before going any further, full disclosure, the Cirqa was sent to me for free by a third party. They have no say over anything I publish, these are my words and my opinions.If you haven't been following the Garmin Cirqa…

Mike B recently did a ballistic test on a historic WWII-era Brodie-style British Mark II steel helmet, and it is fairly surprising. Don’t freak out too much about destroying a collectible, as the helmet is a high-use specimen that had gone to Pakistan and been reimported for sale to reenactors. Plus, the Allies made something like 12 million of these helmets between 1938 and 1944, so they aren’t that rare (you can find them for like $50). Still, it surprised me how resistant it was to pistol…

I was today old when I found out that Harrington & Richardson (H&R) was the U.S. importer for Heckler & Koch from around 1965 to 1973. This included the HK33-derived T223 submitted for U.S. Navy trials for use with the SEALs, the caliber-fluid HK4 pistol, and early MP5s, HK11 MGs, and G3s for mil/LE use. After that, SACO in Arlington, Virginia, did it for a couple of years; then, by 1977, HK took control and established its own U.S.-based subsidiary. I knew HK had been in the states as early as…

The new and more permanent (the old 1951 pact was only in effect as long as NATO existed) three-way military agreement between Greenland, Denmark, and the U.S. has a couple of big takeaways. One is the green light for the U.S. to modernize and expand its activities in Pituffik Space Base (the old Thule AB from 1951-2023, formerly Bluie West-6 Air Field from 1943-1946), as well as “to be allowed to establish an additional Defense Area at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig in accordance with modalities…

Ashvin Harrison: Tree of Optimism I live in the aftermath of cancer, the green reforestation period after the great fire, the brown high-water line drying to dust on the siding after the hundred-year flood, one lane now opened on the mountainside highway, a sheer drop to the sea on one side, cluttered by tons of broken concrete, a few chunks with sections of bright yellow centerline leading out into the blue. I’m not alone. My wife is at the wheel of our life together, wind in her full, lovely…

Who knows that you blog? Question for the audience: Do you tell people you blog? Interesting question. I, for one, don’t for no special reason whatsoever.

bearers doneI was a good boy and after supper last night I glued on the two short bearers. I got one screw in the middle and I'm thinking of adding 2 more. One each close to the ends, R/L,hmm.......These rasps can't be used in either direction. There are arrows on them that point in the direction of use. They don't hog a lot of wood with one push neither. They are coarse and fine but IMO opinion both are 'fine'. These are detailing rasps for refining etc etc.a lot of workMade a hollow with the…

Great horned owl family in a hollow tree (photo from Wikimedia) 24 September 2026 While studying bat roosts in the eastern U.S., Joy O’Keefe found that natural roosting sites provide better protection from temperature extremes than artificial ones. Bat house in forest (photo from USFWS via wiki) When it’s hot outdoors, bat boxes are even hotter inside. When it’s extremely cold, the boxes don’t retain heat. Bat box (photo from Wikimedia) As climate change makes weather more extreme there have…

Ray Gunn trailer. Brad Bird. Retro-futurism. Sam Rockwell. Christmas movie I can get excited about.

in a constant tempora venture, why must that of a spatial venture by so limited? differences between the modes are that we can easily observe a warp in our perception of space. But we cannot control our perception or position in time nearly as affectively. What benefit can we get from observing and applying the constant churn of time to our freedom in space. for what reason could we not traverse a meter in the same way we traverse a second? In a practical situation this venture collides with…

Not everyone can debug code Counterfactual reasoning is a technique where you assume alternative scenarios that could have happened, but did not in fact happen. You assume something is true when it is, in fact, false. A question involving a counterfactual is "What if dinosaurs had not gone extinct?" Reasoning with counterfactuals is considered an advanced cognitive skill, and it comes in quite handy when you are debugging code. To debug effectively, you have to entertain insulting falsehoods.…

Totila's behavior in Rome after the Siege enhanced his reputation. He did not kill very many, and he only destroyed part of the walls, reacting to the letter from Belisarius about preserving the great city and ensuring he would not be seen by posterity as a monster.It looked like Totila wanted to restore Rome the way things were under Theodoric of the Ostrogoths, but he had to leave Rome with a small garrison and head south to Apulia (the "heel" of the Italian peninsula) where John the…

Morning comes with a welcome north wind. All quiet on LOON to the south. Sail off anchor 6:35.I immediately put Bruce's local knowledge to use, four tacks north and then slip through the cut in the bar just below Pond Island. After so many foggy mornings, I delight in the warm sunshine. The north wind is perfect to sail across to Merchants Row.Terns feed on a tide line outside the cut. 7:15 less wind. 8:15 better wind at Green Ledge and can feel the strong ebb tide running.8:35 pass between the…

The Library of Congress announced this week that it is awarding the 2026 John W. Kluge Prize for the Achievement in the Study of Humanity to Martha Nussbaum (University of Chicago). The $500,000 prize “recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society.” It is awarded every other year. The winner delivers a lecture and “may remain in residence at the Library of Congress for a short time thereafter, and will be…

This is the report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources, new reviews of philosophy books, new podcast episodes, recently published open access philosophy books, and more. This edition covers last week and the week before. (If we missed something, let us know.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy New: Moral Learning by Tamar Kushnir and Shaun Nichols. Afḍal al-Dīn al-Khūnajī by Behnam Zolghadr. Ernst Mach by Pietro Gori and Luca Guzzardi. Revised: Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel by…

The 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie has hit cinemas again as part of a limited re-release to celebrate its 40th anniversary. The film, which famously kills off a number of fan-favourite Transformers characters in a massive, opening battle, only made around $5.5 million during its original release against a $6 million production budget and was deemed a failure by Hasbro. However, the film has remained a cult favourite amongst fans thanks to its straightforward, action-oriented…

One of the great things about modern HTML is that it tries to standardise stuff that developers are already doing. If there are a myriad ways of, for example, loading video onto a page - then browsers and other interested parties should work out how to make a standard <video> element. An interesting new proposal has been brought forth by Microsoft. There are a dozen ways to show a preview of an <img> element before the src= attribute has loaded. So why not standardise on previewsrc=? There's an…

After decades of working with databases I didn't know that NOT VALID was a thing: ALTER TABLE line_item ADD CONSTRAINT line_item_variant_price_id_fkey FOREIGN KEY (variant_price_id) REFERENCES variant_prices(id) NOT VALID This is for cases when you want to add a foreign key to an existing column except that column contains data that would violate a foreign key constraint (e.g., an invalid deleted ID). I used to rely on nulling this out, but when working with Claude today, it proposed this…

While on my recent trip to Sydney, I made a visit to a popular cafe called Single O. Although they’re originally an Australian cafe, they have since expanded to Japan and actually have more stores in Tokyo (five) than they do in Australia (three). I wasn’t too much of a coffee snob while growing up in Sydney, so funnily enough I didn’t learn about Single O until after I moved to Tokyo. But I figured rather than visiting one of the spots in Tokyo, I should give the OG store in Surry Hills a go…

An individual who, with no resources or special standing or institutional support, simply goes online, does his research, and starts writing, diligently digging into important subjects that, for some inexplicable reason, the mainstream press has chosen to downplay or ignore entirely, at least until that lone voice starts to have an impact.One of the most exciting and daunting aspects of blogging has always been the lack of rules. There are no constraints on length or on stylistic conventions.…

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. “ - Sun tzu

There’s a lot going in right now for me, but it’s mostly good (if a bit hectic) and when I have so much going on, it’s nice to dump some of it into a blog post. Thing the First I have been chatting with my classes about attendance. This isn’t a new thing for me. My approach this semester has been to talk about how classes are communities and like in communities when a handful of people don’t show up, the entire community is diminished. My students are skeptical. In some ways, they have every…

Diese kleine Abhandlung enthält trotz aller Vorsicht Darstellungen von Privileg eines weißen cis Mannes aus Mitteleuropa. Ich will damit niemanden beleidigen oder brüskieren. Solltest du diesbezüglich Gedanken haben—oder auch zu jedem anderen Aspekt dieses Textes—melde dich gern bei mir. Ich bin 1988 in Leipzig geboren und damit in einem Land, das es nicht mehr gibt. Nun stelle ich mich nicht vor als Stephan, geboren in der DDR. Mit knapp zwei Jahren von Geburt bis Mauerfall und einem weiteren…

Huxley’s Brave New World warned of a dystopia where comfort and distraction erase depth, struggle, and meaning, echoing our world today.

On this day (24 September) in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploys the legendary 101st Airborne Division (based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky) to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, after the Arkansas National Guard (under orders of the Governor, Orval Faubus) had blocked the “Little Rock Nine” from desegregating the school. [The Little Rock Nine are Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Ernest Green (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Carlotta Walls…

The simplest way to improve our performance is by improving our attitude.

My parents and grandparents often talked about the businesses that came and went in Jackson, Michigan. Our downtown used to be vibrant, full of drug stores and theatres. Now, it’s mainly gift shops and taverns. Around town, beloved restaurants have closed. Family businesses shuttered. Here in my lifetime, I’ve seen the same. Over time, a […]

One day, I’m posting here about how to address AI risks, the next, Daily Nous suffers from a “critical error” and goes down for over a week. Coincidence? Or evidence that the AI’s thought I was onto something? Yes I know it was the former… probably. What happened? Daily Nous and its server were hacked. This isn’t the first time the site has had problems. A month earlier, the site was subject to what looks like some kind of attack. And at several times over recent years, various types of malware…

One day, I’m posting here about how to address AI risks, the next, Daily Nous suffers from a “critical error” and goes down for over a week. Coincidence? Or evidence that the AI’s thought I was onto something? Yes I know it was the former… probably. What happened? Daily Nous and its server were hacked. This isn’t the first time the site has had problems. A month earlier, the site was subject to what looks like some kind of attack. And at several times over recent years, various types of malware…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Jody Chan’s poetry collection Madness Belongs to the People is poignant and inventive in its use of language as both weapon against oppression and tool for understanding. Gabrielle Bates…