Last week, most, if not all, of the week I had some sort of a bug in me. At first I thought it was pollen, but I just felt off in general. Really stuffy head and weak with low energy. For my lifts, I did them, but I did the bare minimum effort, and actually squats felt the worst. Finally I am feeling better, starting over the weekend. Go figure; I feel better when Molly’s vacation is over. We weren’t able to do anything anyway for ourselves, so I guess it didn’t really matter. This morning I…

Fabulism and Style A week of tales; a week of words. Reading the masterpiece titled “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman , I realized that my words were enough after all. There is elegance in simplicity, an enchantment of sorts, and thus I revisit the source of my words, my voice; though I still intend on using those blooming in my head even when I am unsure of their meaning — what is the purpose of the thesaurus after all, but to provide clarity on words acquired through the mere habit of…

Lovely warm sunny day again. A lot of stuff to burn including 4 pigs. Cleaned both jets. Did Howarth’s car. Taking it in for a new one. Cleaned the gutter over the steps. Did the office.

NYC Schools has put a pretty intense pause on the use of AI for grades up to 8th, what do our education experts think? Apple Spotify YouTube

A co-op for musicians? You have my attention.Zoë Keating linked to Subvert.fm (because she’s running for a seat on its board), and as a long-time appreciator of Zoë’s fight for independence as an artist, I was immediately intrigued. Then I found this on their About page: We are building a cooperative-owned music marketplace today, with the larger ambition of becoming a Mondragón of Music: a constellation of community-owned ventures that form the foundation of an alternative economy owned by…

I’m trying to get these weeknotes back on track: aiming for a Monday release at the latest. Happy Monday :) The biggest thing I got up to this week was reviewing all of Andrea’s wonderful work adding internal code reloading to Hanami—goodbye Guard! The Dry System piece is now merged, and the core Hanami capability is ready to go after a few small tweaks. All that’s left is for me to get comfy with the new middleware for the reloading web server. This deals with a range of concurrency concerns,…

AI has taken over this blog. I have moved to a schedule of seven posts per week, and I still cannot keep up. We still refuse to abandon the rest of the world. Who knows when I will get to post some of my huge backlog on education or dating or other such topics. But the monthly is a sacred tradition. We continue. Bad News A good reminder that most news is bad news, and chosen because the bad news in question is rare, which is good news, but the pattern overall of choosing this to be news is bad…

I love Michael Palin! Like many GenX nerds, Monty Python is deeply embedded in my

He's just groggy and hasn't had his space coffee yetAlien AliensAlien 3Alien: ResurrectionPrometheusCovenant Prometheus(2012, dir. Ridley Scott)Nitpicking has effectively obliterated online critique, but Prometheus earns an exception.Engineers somehow have less drip than Jedi, who are already notoriously drip-less. Interstellar civilization and the best you can come up with is shapeless, colorless cotton robes.If the Engineer in the cryptic opening is trying to seed Earth with life, there have…

I’ll admit it. I’ve read ahead. And you know what? I’m still loving this book. [Ed. Spoiler: I will keep on loving it.] I still think there have been missteps, largely regarding who the appropriate audience for this book was, but I’m still loving how absolutely bananas this thing is. Our narrator welcomes us into this chapter, asking us if we can smell, feel, and taste T-DOD, and I’m going to not put that in here because I feel a little sexually harassed by the “ooooh” in that part, so we’ll…

There is one, and only one, universal point of zen musically, where your mind is totally clear and you’re starting from a blank slate. This is when you’re somewhere where there’s an acoustic guitar, and somebody points to you and says, “Hey, you’re a musician. Play something.” Your mind clears. You forget everything you’ve ever known. And it’s as if you’ve never played a song before. How many times has this happened to you? This is all to say that all musical problems come down to not knowing…

The story of last week, which will certainly return, is the threat to the survival of humanity (and maybe all life on Earth) from artificial intelligence. I don’t know how real that threat is and find it hard to think about, but I am worried that even if humanity survives, AI will be a means of endless tyranny, with all hopes of human freedom extinguished. Much of political philosophy over the past three centuries or so has consisted in elaborating a picture of what it means for a society to be…

One of my favorite ways to enlarge small print or detailed objects is to use video magnifiers or magnifier apps designed for low vision, which offer adjustable magnification levels and more options than a traditional magnifying glass. I use ad-free video magnifier apps for Android multiple times per day (or multiple times per hour) to assist with tasks like reading labels and signs, enlarging exponents/subscripts in equations, browsing menus, checking instructions, or independently accessing…

King Totila of the Ostrogoths, although the enemy and a barbarian, was still recognized by Procopius as an impressive figure:The armour in which he was clad was abundantly plated with gold and the ample adornments which hung from his cheek plates as well as his helmet and spear were not only purple, but in other respects befitting a king … And he himself, sitting upon a very large horse, began to dance under arms skillfully between the two armies. And as he rode he hurled his javelin into the…

No matter what you call them, Beholders are vile servants of the coastal wizards. But worry not. They have monstrous cousins that can be used to populate (monsterate?) your dungeons. Less common and less popular, perhaps, but not less worthy.MumblersAlso called: Omniphagists, Gabblegob, Chew-OrbsArt by Felipe FariaThis spherical monster levitates through gaseous sacs in its body. Its central cavity is a gnawing mouth of yellow teeth which leads into an extradimensional space (similar to a bag…

An investigative article just appeared in BMJ that has important statistical content (link).The problem concerns turning raw data on “adverse events” (side effects) related to the Covid-19 vaccines into statistical “red flags”. How do we know if the number of reported events is large enough to sound the alarm?This problem exists even before the development of Covid-19 vaccines. Those vaccines just made the scale of everything much larger, since so many people got vaccinated.Two statistical…

Author Robin Sloan published a pretty swell blog that articulates my experience with AI over the last year. "This is an update to my post about apps as home-cooked meals, which has found a large audience over the years. That post, published in February 2020, discussed personal software, designed and built in different ways, for different reasons, than industrial apps. What’s changed between 2020 and today? Oh, just the entire process and practice of computer programming. Here, right up front, I…

Printing off development material to paste it into notebooks. This is a piece of COLLIDE, the comic with Jerome Eyquem that is being serialised in chunks on my newsletter. He’s working on part two right now, so I need to sit and think about part three. Sunday’s newsletter: notes on the arrival of the Roterfaden notebook. It’s a glorious day outside. I have to say, I love the Indian summers we get now. I mean, we’re all gonna die, but it’s pretty. OPERATIONS: we do not do #1000mphclub any more,…

What mental muscles can you afford to see waste away?Robin Sloan writes ‘Ask for what you want’ is a key skill for the 21st century. (Think of it as an LLM-focused sequel note to his rightly influential essay from a few years ago, An app can be a home-cooked meal.) Read it, think on it, disagree with parts of it and take on others whole-sale; then come back here and let me focus your attention on just one extended quote: I know how to make apps on my own, yet the feeling of working on software…

There are many reasons why I love David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. One reason on my list is the appearance of David Bowie as Special Agent Phillip Jeffries who suddenly returns to the F.B.I. Office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after going missing for two years. Granted, his screen time in the theatrical release is... The post Twin Peaks Publicity – Spelling Films International – Phillip Jeffries Visits FBI Office appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

Remember our backyard plum tree, the one felled by Hurricane Fiona? The remediation of the tree to vertical didn’t work out—we followed advice from our Siberian handyman that, untethered, it would find its way back; it didn’t.But the tree is undeterred by its near-horizontal state: after a mediocre plum crop two years ago, this year’s harvest is bountiful, and the tree is filled with beautiful, firm, tart plums like this:I picked a few pounds of plums yesterday, and turned them into a plum pie…

A couple years ago I decided to start playing crossword puzzles because I thought it would improve my language. As I get older I sometimes worry that I wont be able to think or come up with words as quickly as I used to. So I made an account on Puzzmo.com and have been playing the daily crossword every day since them. I think the only thing that's happened is that I've gotten better at solving crossword puzzles. Certain words come up a lot for example and I've gotten better at deciphering what…

It’s the economy, stupid.

I was at The Garrison, about to watch a series of lectures I’d nabbed tickets for that same day, with that exciting opportunistic feeling of being at an event alone. I’d feel it again at the Arabic cheese-making workshop and blog-making workshop. I have a decent idea of how both are made but I like to be reminded around people who want to learn in public. When you meet someone, all you need is one thread of commonality to gain momentum, to brave asking for a number or a second meeting. You here…

Originally Published in Games Unplugged – March 2001 The latest release of Cosmic Encounter by Avalon Hill marks roughly the third incarnation of this game (depending on how one counts such things). Originally developed by Eon Games it was subsequently distributed briefly by West End Games and Games Workshop before ending up with Mayfair Games, and then disappearing with that company’s demise a few years back. Despite its somewhat rocky history, the game has established itself as a classic –…

Perfume advertisements are almost always highly sexualized — for both genders. Often creative, even artistic, they range from the evocative to the elegant to occasionally the rather absurd. There is, however, a new commercial airing for a new fragrance — Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu — that strikes me as one of the most disturbing I’ve seen in years. I will explain why later in this essay, but first I will tell the story of the advertisement as though it were a fairy tale.Karina in the…

Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally… (1989) Vitals Billy Crystal as Harry Burns, sarcastic political consultant and recent divorcée New York City, Fall 1988 Film: When Harry Met Sally… Release Date: July 14, 1989 Director: Rob Reiner Costume Designer: Gloria Gresham WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background Rob Reiner’s 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally is often (deservedly) included on lists compiling the greatest fall movies. As tomorrow will be the first day of autumn here, I return to…

When you are naming a pen model after after the eight-legged horse Norse god Odin rode in on, you better get it right. Luckily for us, Hinze Pen Co. always gets it right, and the Sleipnir model is just the latest example of their craftsmanship.When you are dealing with a magical creature as inspiration, how do you bring that forward into a pen design? For starters, how about an eight-sided barrel, matching the number of the mythical beasts legs. If eight sides weren’t enough on its own, they…

A lot of brides like to give their bakers a photo of their dream wedding cake, in the hopes that they might, in fact, get a cake that looks at least vaguely similar.However, as you long-time readers know, this can be a lot like asking Francois the painting ferret** to whip you up a quick Mona Lisa. Some of the colors might be right, but in the end it's probably gonna be covered in fur and little poo nuggets. (The painting, that is, not the cake.) (We hope.)For example:Amanda C. asked for this,…