RIPLEY ALIEN: RESURRECTION (KENNER) Perhaps my favorite movie of all time is Aliens, which is, quite frankly, a bit surprising when you find out that the movie that introduced me to the franchise and got me super invested in it to the point of wanting to see the other movies and own the toys and stuff was…Alien: Resurrection. It’s…well, it’s not a great film. It’s not really even a good film. Honestly, “film” seems like a stretch. I don’t really buy into the distinction between “film” and…

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I woke up this morning and saw my disk usage bumped up slightly. My first thought wasn’t “maybe I built something and it took up space”, my first thought was “it surely fucking isn’t”. I left it at that. I disabled siri, surely it must’ve not installed the bullshit models that are a time and space waster Then I went ahead and selected a ton of text in Safari while I was looking at PFSense, and I noticed an Icon I deemed undesirable on the left side. When I clicked on it though… the Apple…

I must be completely mad. I've spent the better part of September creating what has amounted to a 40-page document detailing builds and things that need getting made to get the home studio in order. Why am I like this? #journal #studio #cairo

A trip to the southernmost tip of Dorset in which I spend two nights on Portland and live to tell the tale.With an early round FA Cup fixture to watch in Dorchester the following day, I made my way down to the Isle of Portland on a Friday lunchtime, where Oxford ex-pat Graham had kindly offered to shift some of his giant record collection out the way to make space for me in his spare room.Cup of tea; admire the views; then devise a plan for a few local pub visits plus a trip over to…

Chrysocetus foudasil The impressive skull you see here belongs to Chrysocetus foudasil a member of the Basilosauridae, an ancient family of fully aquatic early whales known as archaeocetes. Though it still bore vestigial hind limbs, it no longer depended on land—a critical evolutionary step from its semi-aquatic ancestors such as Ambulocetus and Protocetus.Basilosaurids like Chrysocetus,

At Rails World 2026 here in Austin and DHH is getting back to his 2005 roots. “look at all the things I’m not doing!” #railsworld

To Live and Die in L.A. is a movie I find remarkable in its ability to drown you with positive and negative qualities — so many of each, and so evenly matched, that the two perfectly balance out and leave you with a hangover. Consider the ledger: The character work is borderline incomprehensible — though I love Rick Masters altogether, and I love that his arc is left largely unresolved. The direction is beautiful (Friedkin! Müller!) and hamstrung by an atonal, often sitcom-esque pacing. The…

I Don’t Want to Read What You Didn’t Write When you are the one who prompted the AI, the written output is often quite useful. But do not mistake this for effective writing. I am so tired of reading LLM-generated text, especially when it was prompted by someone else. ✍️ Reply by email

I loved jazz as soon as I discovered it, but it was when I heard John Coltrane that I realised it could take me to a different place. That would have been around 1960, and the first thing I heard was his solo on Miles Davis’s “Milestones”, on an EP. Then I used the money from my paper round to buy another EP, this time released under Coltrane’s own name. Issued in the UK on the Esquire label, it paired “Bass Blues” and “You Leave Me Breathless” from his third studio album for Prestige, recorded…

I learned something new on NPR, and it is that “diesel” and “heating oil” are THE SAME THING. Our house is heated with heating oil. That means that when the news talks about diesel prices more than doubling since February, they mean our HEATING OIL prices have more than doubled since February. AND OUR HEATING OIL PRICES WERE PLENTY HIGH IN FEBRUARY Meanwhile our electric bill has been going up and up, even with our usage staying steady (or even decreasing, with fewer people here), and we just…

I’m a few days late on this one, but the content holds up: last week’s Reachability Watch, written by our Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Mark Jaffe, covering September 11–17, is here: https://netfoundry.io/ai/reachability-watch-cve-kev-tracker-2026-09-18/ (On the bright side, I had time to draw a “back of the envelope” comic that covers the big CVE!) The CVE numbers Here are the numbers: 1,248 new network-exploitable CVEs 117 of these CVEs are rated at 8.6 or higher 12 of these CVEs are a…

Worthy Read is an ongoing series here at the blog where I link out to a piece I think is worth your valuable time. Nathan Grayson / Aftermath: What’s clear is that there was one plan before Asha Sharma took over Xbox, and now there is another. Between those opposing poles, it is possible that there was no long-term plan beyond “cut, cut, cut.” During the week of the first round of layoffs in July, remaining employees at heavily impacted studios like Doom progenitor id Software noted that…

There's no denying that weather happens to every city. If it didn't, we'd live in an airless void, which I guess means we wouldn't live, which means no city because no people.But I digress.My point is that every city has weather. Cities have different climates, of course, and thus different weather occurs in them, but the common issue of needing to allow people to continue to operate the city regardless of the weather crops up worldwide.And one of the most consistent issues that cities have to…

Hungarian artist István Orosz has directed fifteen short animated films to date, and co-directed three more, yet he’s known more for his drawings than his films, especially those works which follow MC Escher by combining a careful graphic technique with an exploration of optical illusion. Orosz’s artistic interests naturally extend to his animations which have never been easy to see online despite so many of them being relatively recent productions. A Kert (The Garden, 1993) is a recent arrival…

It's been more than a week since I last posted. That's a fairly big gap for me in recent years. I guess I've been kind of busy. We went up to Saratoga Springs on Friday for my niece's wedding and to celebrate Mom's 93rd birthday. Caitie had flown into NYC and she took the train up on Saturday for the wedding and planned to stay until Monday morning, which was Mom's "official" birthday. (The one we usually celebrate. It turns out she has two birth certificates, and they have different…

Vote For the Inevitable

We resume the game with the party heading to Castle Niyonin to investigate why its king has called for an inopportune joust. Along the way they buy a cart, fight a moose, and make a good first impression. Episode 4, "Foul Garden: Trouble in the Onion Castle!" Session 20Cast Aurelia, she/her, Ex-Inventor Turned Spy Hemlocke, any, Loyal Servant Looking for Answers Mio, she/her, Headstrong Pugilist with a Heart of Gold Rhiannon the Blue, she/her, Academic Ghost Bride Looking for Answers Seren,…

I was getting burned out, more and more distant from photography itself, despite working on photography-related things all week long. When we decided to do a show of my nuclear weapons images at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, in Albuquerque, the original conception was to display maybe 40 images. It ended up being 96. During the planning of the show, my intention was to have a lab print the images (something I rarely do) just because it was so much work. But after talking…

The 59th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing takes place in Atlanta next June, part of the Federated Computing Research Conference. I don't usually do announcement posts but we need to talk about the Call for Papers (deadline November 2) whereIn light of rapid advances in generative AI and their impact on research and scientific communication, STOC 2027 is experimenting with several new policies intended to encourage high-quality submissions and promote clear and effective communication of…

Hacker News (aka HN) is a link aggregator where “hackers”1 gather to discuss technology, politics, and anything which “good hackers would find interesting”. HN is a means by which its host, prominent startup incubator Y Combinator, projects soft power, promotes startups it funds, and feeds people with ideas into its incubation program. Hacker News is one of the most popular forums for discussing technology online today – perhaps the biggest.HN also has a pronounced political bias, which is…

Well I never expected to be referring to Piers Morgan as an authority on anything. But here’s an interesting discussion. The link comes from Ted Gioia’s Honest Broker Substack. If you don’t see a video here, please click on the title of this post in order to view it in your browser. The show starts with Mr Morgan and Tom Conti interviewing Tilly Norwood, our first AI-generated movie star who apparently burst onto the scene in July 2025. The video’s lead-in shows Tilly getting a bit confused,…

This is a work of fiction. Written entirely by me, a human. 23 June Sunday The Sunday afternoon crowd at the café, families mostly, had started to dwindle. Hani and Evan came in with backpacks and binocular and telephoto camera cases and looked for a place to stow them as they walked up to the counter. Marissa the barista, smiling, quickly eyed Evan and Hani up and down. “Well, hello! Greetings to my favourite couple! What will it be today?” Evan replied: “I think I’ll try a soy lavender…

I really need Litterbox to work for every short-form social media service.

When you care about your work, it can feel like the stakes are high. In times of stress, it’s useful to keep in mind that work is just one part of your life. This sign at the entrance of a construction site illustrates the principle well: Nothing you do on this site today will be as important as going home safely to your family & loved ones. In the marketing profession, there’s the phrase, “We’re not saving lives here.” It’s useful as a reminder to keep moving forward, and not so useful as an…

I was supposed to pick up a package for Anna while she was away, and I’m not even kidding when I say the kiosk was somehow even more chaotic in real life. There was barely any space to move, customers had to step over packages, and the staff couldn’t seem to find anything. In the end, I had to help them look for Anna’s package myself, but not before they tried to convince me that maybe it wasn’t there at all.

And I am aware this is not an airport.As of today, this site has been on the web for exactly eight years. I’ve decided to let this anniversary also be the date of its final new post. Yeah, I know: “This isn’t an airport, so you don’t have to announce your departure.” I do get that. In fact, that very bit of snark has been hanging around my brain for weeks now, intruding into my consciousness whenever I’ve considered making this move. It’s especially valid when I think about how few people…