I finished watching Pluribus Season 1 📺 without realizing it was the last episode. Started watching during the Main vacation. It’s different from Gilligan’s other shows, but it’s definitely him, with the show set in a parallel universe to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

CEOs, who have a vested financial interest in their companies, are telling us AI is “developing too fast”. Don’t look at the devastating climate impact, bubble pumping, financial fraud, broken promises, or predictions that never come to pass, the real threat is just how great our tech is. Good grief! Can you imagine a chorus of defence contractors doing an interview where they agree their weapons are too powerful? Real estate agents everywhere agree: the housing market is just too undervalued!…

As I introduce Jason and Lucy Williams’ children, I’ll go in birth order with one exception: I’ll be saving Martha for next-to-last. You’ll see why once I get to her. Mary J. Williams was born April 8, 1826 in Salem, Washington County, NY, the oldest of Jason’s and Lucy’s children known to me. Sometime before 1850, she married Newman Bowen Carley, a blacksmith from Whitingham, Windham County, VT. I’m not sure how they met; perhaps through Jason who was also a blacksmith. As I mentioned in my…

Turns out the main programmer heavily used AI in the hub world area and didn’t tell artists and collaborators until it was too late. But they did make a pathetic post saying that Valve and Hideo Kojima should hire them and says positive things about company towns?? Explains the bugs in the main hub though. I’ll rewrite the original blog post to explain this further. It’s incredibly frustrating that the artists involved have to put up with this. Those external exhibits are great! Anyone not…

When I go to the Detroit River Hawk Watch along the Detroit River in southeast Michigan, I expect to see hawks migrating over Lake Erie. High in the sky in kettles or streaming in a line over the lake as they head south. And that’s what I saw this week, as 35,000+ Broad-winged hawks were counted as they migrated south. An incredible sight to watch as thousands of hawks migrate over the water. But, along with about three dozen other hawk watchers scanning the skies for hawks, we had what I…

Just as there is a ticking bomb built into cut/⌘X – if you cut something, and then cut something else again without a paste in between, you overwrite the clipboard without any way to bring it back – there is another one that awaits you when you use undo/⌘Z. Here’s a typical undo chain, illustrated using Photoshop’s classic interface. You can do things, then undo into the past with ⌘Z to your heart’s content, then zipline back to the present via redo’s ⌘⇧Z: But if you go far into the undo…

I've lived quite the fast life. I've done many things, lived in many different parts of the world, experienced great success and failure, lots of joy and lots of pain. Now, I live a very simple and rhythmic life with my wife and dog. I prefer my life this way, it matches with me. But I found that with this type of life, unresolved wounds tend to re-surface in the quiet. So in my attempts to understand and heal from my own unresolved wounds, I went on a long journey of educating myself,…

How do you learn best? The question never occurred to me as a student. I assumed learning happened in a classroom: the teacher spoke and the students took notes. I was just bad at it. Many years later, I learned that different people learn differently. I don’t learn well from lectures. Instead, I learn best from books or being shown how to do things, as in YouTube videos. Learning how you learn best is important for your own development. But it’s also critical when working with other people. If…

An original lobby card for 'Our Hospitality' (1923) starring Buster Keaton.Next up: a new series of silent films with live music in Fairlee, Vt.It's my privilege to serve as accompanist for a monthly series of screenings in Fairlee Town Hall Auditorium.First up is Buster Keaton's family feud comedy 'Our Hospitality' (1923), which I'll accompany on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 2 p.m.Many thanks to everyone at Fairlee Community Arts for the opportunity to do music for this and two other films this…

Somewhere off the coast of Louisiana lies the island of Devil’s Rock. Originally a cemetery island, by the late 19th Century it had become the base of operations for the brilliant Bellemore Brothers, leaders of a trading concern through which they made their fortunes. Xavier Bellemore had his brains for business and a love of exploration which gave them their solid foundation; Cecil was the scientist of the family, developing new inventions and products that opened up new markets; Yardley was…

One of my favourite air-war fiction writers is Derek Robinson, who wrote a book called "War Story" about a WW1 RFC squadron flying FE2b and FE2d aircraft. He's perhaps better known for "A Piece of Cake", which was made into a TV show some years ago.Anyway, his book prompted me to make this 1:144 scale FE2b. I think the only major difference between the FE2b and FE2d, visually at least, is that the FE2d had a much bigger engine, and a different radiator placement. I may (or may not) make a FE2d…

My job hasn't made me happy for a long time now. The people are great and I can do the job in my sleep but I've needed a new challenge for years at this point and this is where my issue lies. I'm at a loss on what to do next, to the point that I've been frozen in fear of moving forward. It sounds silly, especially with how simple the 'experts' make it sound, although simple doesn't always mean easy I guess. I'm aware that it's all down to fear. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of making a…

A gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon in Wellington. Lovely to have the Luffs down for Ellie’s 21st weekend.

Some roadside shots taken on a late afternoon drive.

As foreshadowed, I pored over the tables of contents of the Robert E. Howard collections Pigeons from Hell, Wolfshead, and The Dark Man and Others to try to get straight which stories I had read and which I had not. Here, in no particular order, find the list of stories that were printed in these three volumes which I have read and blogged about."Pigeons from Hell""The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" "People of the Dark""Children of the Night""The Dead Remember""The Man on the Ground""The Thing on the…

::chuckle:: /˜ [ day in progress... ]

Act III: Compiègne and Paris (1766) [Parts I and II are available here, here, and here] Adam Smith’s next first-hand experience with medical quackery occurs during the last part of his travels in France. By way of background, Smith had accompanied Henry Scott, the 3d Duke of Buccleuch (pictured below), who was born in 1746, along with Hew Campbell Scott, the duke’s younger brother (by one year), on their “grand tour” of Europe in the mid-1760s. Smith was travelling in his capacity as their…

JOHN T. SLADEK – Mechasm. Ace SF Special 71435, paperback, July 1969. Cover art: Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon. Pocket, paperback, July 1980. Published originally in the UK as The Reproductive System (Gollancz, hardcover, May 1968). A satirical review of Life in the US in the guise of a standard SF story, and the humor is much too obvious to be mistaken about it. This, plus an uncanny use of coincidence, as characters and their relatives appear and reappear continually, helps to keep enjoyment from…

Today’s recording starts with some Iain and Hacker silliness. Then it’s Dinosapien – The Masquerade. Aikens takes delivery of his dinosaur net trap. But he hears some moving around. He thinks it’s the kids in the camp, but it’s actually the two Diggers, and he gets jump scared. Lauren hears the noise and gets Danny and Nelson to go inside. She sees Aikens’ crate and sees it was grizzly bear traps. Aikens returns to it, and his chain net is gone, taken by the Diggers. Danny took a picture of the…

I originally added this to my watchlist because someone on Bluesky intimated that it had Lovecraftian vibes—I think that's a stretch and I really don't see it at all. There are parallels you can draw if you're really looking for them (to The Dreams in the Witch-House, perhaps, or Pickman's Model, or even The Music of Erich Zann) but they're very tenuous and have more to do with commonalities of general horror tropes. Maybe the Lovecraft parallel is the vaguely racist line of dialogue about the…

I found another independent blogging service in the same general vein as Micro.blog, Scribbles.page, Pike.page and Pagecord.com. It is called Inkwell.social. Inkwell is inspired by the old LiveJournal. I never used LiveJournal myself, but I certainly heard of it. After looking around Inkwell, it feels very much in the spirit of the IndieWeb to me. It is open source, supports ActivityPub, lets you use your own domain, and gives you ways to export your writing. It also has a Founding Member…

THis is just mind boggling, from ‘One Light-Day Away: Time incomprehensible.” Voyager is moving at close to 60,000 kilometers per hour, which is genuinely extraordinary by any human engineering standard. At that speed it still took nearly half a century to cover a single light-day. The nearest star is about four light-years away. Do the math: at Voyager’s pace, reaching Alpha Centauri would take something on the order of 70,000 years! We built the first stone monuments about 6,000 years ago.…

A member of Tokyo’s UNKNOWN ME collective, H. Takahashi released the album “Body Trip” in 2016, with California’s Constellation Tatsu. The cassette contained 12 tracks of gentle chimes, drones and peacefully percolating programming. Theremin-like textures and drops of robotic rain falling in hypnotic, gamelan gong patterns. Mediative, healing minimalist electronica, that relied on the repetition of simple melodic refrains. Machines mimicking ripples and splashes. Organic natural sounds. Bubbles…

Periodic Table of HTML Elements shows all 115 HTML elements laid out as a periodic table. Josh Duck created the original periodic table of HTML elements that I included in my Atomic Design book. Thankfully, Alena Batitskaia recreated it updated to the latest spec!

I put together a video from yesterday’s hike. I met more of the desert natives than I usually do on my hikes. It was probably a tad early in the season for a lower altitude hike, but I survived just fine.

I’ve grown to adore this little strip of flowers that bursts with color as summer draws to a close. I feel like they’re annuals — lots of zinnias, a favorite — so either someone is consistent with planting, or I’m mistaken. Either way I thank the kind soul that ensures they exist. Currently Listening: Joe's Truck Stop ft. The Resonant Rogues “Wishin' on a Star”Reply via email

Earlier this week Daniel Roe wrote a blog post called "Don't be nice." It's a short read so you should just take a glance at it, but the TL;DR is that someone joined the Nuxt community server with an avatar of a man wearing a Nazi uniform, and the offender was swiftly removed. The point of the post was that there are times when you shouldn't be nice when it comes to standing on your values of how people should be treated. As the closing line says, "Nice? It's better to be good." In the replies,…

as i write this, i'm watching pumagreg cleaning himself for the first time in a week, having just removed his cone. what a feeling that must be for him, regaining the ability to act on his animal brained instinct of cleaning his ass. i wish some of the men in my gym had that instinct for wiping the equipment they use down when they're done. i'm getting over a sinus infection that followed days of bad september allergies. at the very least, i can say that i'm aggresively hydrated [smacks belly]…