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…

Subscribe nowNews & NotesTMac and BronCheck out a young Deron WilliamsI’ve always been a Luol Deng guyWin your fantasy league!Love the all-8 squadMy man FinnAI vs Steve FrancisAK47Natalie AlvaradoMore on my man, LuolNBA videogame round-up!Kicks!Say whaaaaat?Best AdsConversegot milk?Would love to talk Carl Sagan with Michael DoleacPepsiNBA 2K6Love the JVC Jazz Festival beach ball..NBAtv!GatoradeGet caught reading!LogitechSamsungMore NBAtvThe JAM(ish)Thanks for reading Basketball Shorts!…

In a scathing press conference, resurrected British economist John Maynard Keynes expressed profound irritation with modern workers, explaining that his famous 1930 prediction of a 15-hour work week failed only because of people’s insistence on buying useless garbage.In his seminal essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” Keynes calculated that industrial efficiency would easily cover basic human needs by the twenty-first century.“I gave you the math for a three-day, maybe even a…

A lesson that structural engineers learn early on is to keep load paths as simple as possible, within the context of the architectural design. Here’s a bad load path: What you’re looking at: the white glazed brick veneer has been removed to expose the steel lintel. The mason was concerned, with good reason, that the unsupported brick above the lintel might shift, so they installed the upper, single 2×4 to carry load from the unsupported veneer to the lintel. And since the lintel end was later…

Family Matters was one of those sitcoms I watched constantly during the '90s but hadn't seen much of since. Recently, I noticed it was streaming again and decided to dive back in with the Winslows and Steve Urkel. What surprised me most was how grounded the show felt in its earliest episodes, before Steve Urkel completely took over the series. I haven't finished rewatching the first season yet, but with Halloween approaching, I decided to jump ahead and revisit the show's Halloween episodes. My…

Another regional internet service provider is getting out of the consumer mailbox hosting business. TDS Telecom has announced that it is winding down inbox hosting, handing off email duties to third-party mailbox provider Everymail.If you manage email list hygiene or deliverability, this is a transition to keep on your radar, because a non-trivial chunk of legacy ISP subscribers are about to be required to pay or abandon their inboxes.TDS Telecom subscribers who wish to retain their existing…

When it comes to sunscreens, I very much prefer to use Asian brands but sometimes I do like to try out some from Western brands especially if I have had a good experience with some of the brand’s products. Like for today’s review. I was given a sunscreen from Avène awhile back. I was a […]

Meat Girl's Complete edition has released. The link to its downloads is now on the games page (the old page + HTML5 build is still archived on Ophanimkei itself though)

“Talk about technology is an addiction,” writes Joanna Russ. She continues: An addiction is a situation of constantly escalating need—in short, an insatiability. Not only that, but the cause of the escalation is the satisfier of the need. Russ, To Write Like a Woman, page 28 Insatiable seems an apt description for the moment. Doomscrolling is a kind of insatiability, an act that can never complete or resolve. Likewise: talk of so-called AI in terms of its “existential” risk. Russ again: First,…

Been a little quiet on here recently. No big reason, no drama, just a few little events, an overly busy work schedule and, you know, dad life stuff. The week after Madrid was manic, not helped by a distinct post-holiday slump that left me less than motivated to do much of anything. Last week included a long wait at A&E with Jack. He’s fine, thankfully. We noticed his elbow was a little inflamed, red and hot, so we went through the usual NHS 24 process and were told to get him up to the kids’…

To Write Like a Woman by Joanna Russ (Indiana University Press, 1995) “[S]o much of what’s presented to us as ‘the real world’ or ‘the way it is’ is so obviously untrue that a great deal of social energy must be mobilized to hide that gross and ghastly fact….Hence my love for science fiction, which analyzes reality by changing it.” In this collection of essays originally published in the 70s and 80s, Joanna Russ turns to what science fiction is, how it works, and how our understanding of the…

Updating Eleanor Roosevelt's quote — valid for millennia but now completely obsolete: Small minds discuss memes Average minds discuss celebrities Great minds discuss events (faithfully echoing their tribal thought leaders)

Every September I find large toadstools growing in my front garden, but this year there are many more than usual. I don’t know what type(s) they are but I’m fairly sure they are associated with the root system of a birch tree which stands on the other side of the path you can see in some of the pictures. I’m not sure why I have so many this year but it might be related to the very dry summer followed more recently by very heavy rain. One of my neighbours seems to think they’re a sign of some…

I've struggled to write recently, so I'm writing now just to get things out of my head. The garden is done for the year. We have our final flower delivery this weekend, so there are a few rows still producing, but 2026 is wrapped up. We cleaned out one whole half because it's getting rearranged and rebuilt for perennials. That means rows are changing size, weed control has to move, and I need to re-lay drip line with new spacing. We'll plant seedlings this weekend so they can establish and ride…

Foggy, quiet morning on the Benjamin River. I have no specific plans for the day. Might head to Merchant's Row, might head to the Opecechee anchorage just above Swan Isle. Sail off the morning 7:20 with a light north wind. A couple of tacks through the mooring field to enjoy the boats, then motor sail down the channel as wind falls off.7:45 on the north edge of Eggemoggin Reach. Wind, what little there is, is now out of the south. Cold and damp with fog, I put on the wool sweater. I get a text…

I heard the author, Paul Ardoin, on a podcast pitching this book as a police procedural + Groundhog Day, which is a fair summary. Our main character is Luke Guillory, a detective with the Sacramento police department. He starts off the book as a bit of a loser. He's not a great detective, with a low case closure rate (despite Luke pointing out to everyone he had a great score on his exam). He's bullied by other detectives, mostly because his mother, the former top cop was on the take and is now…

Sending an email to myself with Siri.

There's a fucking mosquito in our bedroom. Two nights ago, I laid quietly in bed, falling asleep. I suddenly heard a buzzing beside my ear. "Ugh, there's a fly in the room!" I called out to Daniel. The next morning, I woke up to a bug bite under my chin. Throughout the day, I discovered more: one on my right arm, my left index finger, and upper thigh. "It's a mosquito!" I told Daniel. "We have to kill it." Later that night, I briefly checked around the bed. I turned off the lights to fall…

Tuesday I went to the auto shop and got new back brake pads and rotors, new windshield wipers and got the oil changed. I had to go back home during it because it took 7 hours to get my car back. This morning Alec and I went to the dentist. He did not want to go at all. He kept asking me, "can we go next week?" But it's good we went because has to get five fillings! I have to get two. Because I kind of forgot about the dentist for a while and time kind of just went by. Alec and I went a few…

– Today’s wikipedia picture of the day. That bird looks classy. Violet-backed starling by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 Every now and then I have to wear suit and ties. When I first started doing so I hated it. The suits didn’t fit me, the shirts made me feel claustrophobic, the shoes hurt my feet, etc. Then as time passed, naturally I bought more traditional/formal clothing out of necessity, and as I bought the clothes I had them adjusted for me. That made a vast improvement for my comfort.

I was delighted to learn that talks about returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece have collapsed, apparently because the Greek government is insisting the return must be permanent, and the British Museum is (fortunately) prevented by law from giving away its treasures. Of course the marbles should stay where they are, if only because they inspired this great sonnet by Keats – On Seeing the Elgin MarblesMy spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined…

Morning at North Texas’ Hagerman National Refuge. The post Hagerman Morning appeared first on 75CentralPhotography.

This summer I spent a week at Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in the southwest of France. And this place held up a mirror in a way that I didn't expect. There are lots of ways in which this retreat changed me as a person, but here I want to discuss one specific thing that happened there. Plum Village made me realize that I have grown cynical. ParadiseIt went roughly like this. I arrive at a beautiful place – an open area amid the farmland with a few buildings sprinkled around, and beside…

I have a weird setup for my laptop. In summary, I have been irrationally scared of running Fedora on bare, dual-GPU metal, so I run it in a virtual machine with Hyper-V on Windows as a hypervisor. The idea was to let Windows manage GPUs and power management stuff like hibernation, and then use Fedora as my main UI to the computer. This has worked surprisingly well, but that’s only because my expectations were low to begin with. The VM can barely access the hardware of the underlying machine: it…

I broke down and decided to buy a pumpkin pie frappe. I know, total white girl mode. LOL. It was actually not that bad. Of course I got it from my local coffee shop and not that corporate star place. I’m not completely sure of them though compared to other flavors but overall they aren’t bad.

Hello from my home in Helsinki! This is NordLetter #124, a weekly newsletter on living and walking in Finland. To follow the series, you can subscribe here. A new NordLetter will land in your inbox every Sunday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read previous editions here. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed. You can reach out to me by replying to this mail. I am also posting on Mastodon. The view from the other side Is different. For sure. I love going to tech events in…