"Arthur Gibson, philosopher who rose from poverty to become the cleverest man in Britain," The Telegraph (18 Sept. 2026): Professor Arthur Gibson, who has died aged 83, was a polymath widely recognised as one of the last century’s greatest minds and, measured by IQ, the cleverest man in Britain, despite growing up in poverty in Bradford and dropping out of school aged 14. .... It was in this climate that Gibson stubbornly developed intellectual passions: for maths — despite his father stubbing…

A particular pattern in the numbers, a misbehaviour which shows that the scale is more than just a record: Source: Reddit Distribution of results of the Matura (high school exit exam) in Poland in 2013. The minimum score to pass is 30%. Commentary: Unusual distributions of scores on final high-school exams in Poland. But let’s be clear — this is not about Poland. The x-axis pretends to innocence, just a passive measure of how the data fall. This pattern, though, the cratering before the…

Easily in my top five favorite musicals. l still listen to it often. Thank you Duncanfor all of the gifts you’ve given us.

Marco Ament recently wrote something I have thought so many times over the years: If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side” considers unacceptable and unforgivable, should I be able to have dinner at their house, shovel their snow, or even greet them outside? … Maybe we were better off before we knew everyone’s hot takes on everything It also reminds me of this passage from Wendell Berry’s The Need to Be Whole. (I haven’t read the book yet. I’ve come across this…

Source Returning HomeOil on canvas18.25 x 26 in / 46.3 x 66 cmby Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalski (1849-1915)Polish painter and representattive of the Munich School As usual, open in a new tab for a bigger pic.

View of Brunette River, pre-run: Another cloudless late summer day. I headed out later than planned, never stretched beforehand, and got into the middle of a bit of drama between two people I was not actually involved in before I could even head out, so today’s run was a bit off-kilter. I chose to do the river trail in the name of expediency and adopted a more casual pace. In the end, I kind of wished I’d pushed a little more at the start, because I could have come in under the six-minute mark,…

What? Axe-con ’27: The world’s largest digital accessibility event. Where? At your computer. When? February 23-27, 2027 Who? Me! I’m a keynote speaker along with Jennison Asuncion, Co-Founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). There will be 70+ other amazing presenters as well I’m sure that will be announced soon. Why? Because it matters.

In the department of how AI might be involved in bringing about the end of the world: The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations. […] Analysts have long feared that AI could lead to a catastrophic miscalculation if nation states are relying on poor or corrupted data — the kind of miscalculation that…

“Smart Bus routes are really important, and you know what I was talking to the Public Transport Minister just this week about what can we do to maybe have more Smart Bus routes where the buses go more direct, they’re taking more passengers and they are really really economically valuable and good value for our taxpayers .. .. I think for buses they say that for every dollar invested in buses it’s five dollars return to the Victorian community because they’re cheaper to get going, they use…

My last moments with my grandmother. I've already built several pages for the website but hadn't decided on a favicon. Not necessary, but important for the website's completion. I sat down and looked at the photo album page again and it dawned on me: Her favorite flower was a rose. Was that why she chose this particular cover, or was merely a coincidence? Maybe she didn't select it at all and it was given to her by someone else. One can only speculate. 阿嬤 was the glue that kept the family…

For most governments the debt snowball still helps. In the US, the UK, France and Germany, the debt is growing because of the deficits. But what happens when the debt is refinanced at today's interest rates?

Didn’t sleep too well, pretty tired today. This has definitely been a recovery week. What ME/CFS is, and how it’s wrecking me ‌(30:36) Of all the people talking about their chronic fatigue this is probably the closest to my experience, though everyone has it different and there are plenty of things that don’t match. Definitely worth watching if you want a sense of what I’m going through. The biggest issue for me has always been how boring it is. I decided a year ago I wouldn’t let that stop me…

The hike phase is underway. Matt Dines breaks down what to watch next: 2-year yields, commodity rollovers, credit spreads, AI CapEx, and the long-end signal that could eventually mark the start of the next expansion.

Thanks, superiority. Restore Win 10 style :: Set "Old" Explorer Context Menu as Default reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /ve /f :: Remove Explorer "Command Bar" reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID{d93ed569-3b3e-4bff-8355-3c44f6a52bb5}\InprocServer32" /f /ve :: Restart Windows Explorer. (Applies the above settings without needing a reboot) taskkill /f /im explorer.exe start explorer.exe :: Empty Comment (Prevents you from…

Shot: Two simple rules that let LLMs streamline and improve your writing without pasteurizing and jacking it with corn syrup. Rule Number One: You may not use a single word an LLM suggests to you. … Rule Number Two: Avoid encouragement How To Write With An LLM Chaser: Rules for personal software produced with the help of AI agents: You must actually and consistently use any­thing you build for two months before posting about it. Ideally, never post about it. (I know I am breaking this rule, but…

Today I am 16,676 days old, and I’ve been lucky enough to be in a relationship with my beloved special lady friend for 8,338 of those days: exactly half. From here on out, it’ll be true to say that I’ve spent more of my life with her than without, and I cannot express just how blessed that makes me feel. Reply by email

There's a cool new site doing the rounds on the IndieWebosphere called Pixel Area. It's a 100x100 pixel grid where everyone can claim one pixel. I also noticed the grid has different neighborhoods like Cache Hollow, Vector Fields, Mosiac Commons, Echo Heights, and more. I find it pretty cool because as the inital release post says: There are no rankings to climb and no algorithm deciding what you should see. Just a map to explore and places worth discovering. Will you be my neighbor? I'm over…

Lisa and I drove out to Murray Harbour yesterday for one of the final days of the Brian Burke exhibition, Light Before Shadow. I spotted this piece on the first floor through the floor grate on the second.

I like to run my Linux as an operating system, so I usually resort to toolbox for packages and development. However flatpak-builder is distributed as a flatpak itself, so here's how you can go about building flatpaks yourself for when GNOME Nighlies are not enough. On GNOME OS, developer tools like git and toolbox aren't part of the base image. You get them by enabling the developer system extension: sudo updatectl enable devel --now This gives you the toolchain needed to clone repos and build…

Nice post from Watts Martin today: Org Mode, Marked, and Workflows. I’ve been doing more writing in Org Mode lately, partially just as an experiment, and partially because—as I’ve noted more than once—the strength of Org Mode isn’t the markup part, it’s the mode part: properties and tags and dates and other bits and bobs entirely outside Markdown’s purview. It’s so true. Org mode should be called God mode because that’s what it is for plain text inside Emacs. But that’s the catch: inside Emacs.…

I keep hearing "the model is learning the physics" from machine learning people talking about AI weather models. What they usually mean is a specific kind of model: the generative, transformer-based emulators trained end-to-end on reanalysis data, no dynamical core, no equations, just a network fit to the data. GraphCast, Pangu, GenCast, and the generative-data-assimilation models coming out of places like NVIDIA (Manshausen et al.'s model is one example, not the point) all fall in that bucket.…

The Creetown Gemrock Museum holds a special place in local folklore. For many visitors to Wigtownshire, it is a rite of passage. For me, I finally decided it was time to make that passage myself, and I wasn't disappointed. On a Sunday afternoon, there are certainly worse ways to spend your time in Creetown. I'd often heard stories about this place, its unique style and idiosyncrasies. So I decided to do some 'digging' and 'mine' the museum. I am sorry my jokes appear to have hit rock bottom.…

Thoughts on the phases of a learning journey. For a few years now, I’ve been on a learning quest related to Systemic Modelling, a.k.a. SysMod. It’s an approach to working in groups or teams: more sparking of the group’s combined intelligence, fewer conflicts or misunderstandings. I wrote about it here a while back. In this post, what I wanted to reflect on is not so much what I’ve been learning, but more the process of learning, for a field like that with many interweaving ingredient-skills.…

Music memories is the theme of the Bear Blog Carnival this month, being held by James at with words, wonder. Because I'm listening to music at every possible moment most of my memories are soundtracked. I've got 'Best of' playlists of my most evocative songs for certain times and places, as well as activities like my favourite walking songs. When I hear The Strokes it takes me back to reading Anne Rice on the bus to college. I still have a really visceral memory of the music and the stories and…

Over the course of the last couple of weeks I’ve watched “The Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead 2”, “Army of Darkness”, and “Evil Dead Rise”. I had watch “Ash vs. Evil Dead” many years ago and really enjoyed the show, so I finally wanted to get to know the original. The first three are considered classics. Movies two and three are definitely entertaining but the first adjective I’d use to describe them is “weird”. Especially with movies one and two I got the impression, though, that everyone was on drugs…

“Artificial” things can get a bad rap next to their counterparts, but they have their place. For example, artificial light (i.e. not from the sun)? Super useful, especially at night. And when it comes to skiing, I’ll take artificial snow if I have to. Beats no snow. Artificial isn’t necessarily inferior in all cases, everywhere, all the time. But it is optimized for different values. For example: Artificial grass (i.e. turf) is great for certain contexts, but I don’t want a golf course of…

Over the course of the last couple of weeks I’ve watched “The Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead 2”, “Army of Darkness”, and “Evil Dead Rise”. I had watch “Ash vs. Evil Dead” many years ago and really enjoyed the show, so I finally wanted to get to know the original. The first three are considered classics. Movies two and three are definitely entertaining but the first adjective I’d use to describe them is “weird”. Especially with movies one and two I got the impression, though, that everyone was on drugs…

When I put out the call to help me understand journaling, a good number of you shared tips, tricks, and advice. A couple left comments on the post, while a fair number of you dropped a reply by email.And I truly appreciate everything all of you shared.Yet it was this recommendation from Antonio that resonated the most:There’s a video on YouTube by Peter Mckinnon called How to start journaling when you don't know what to write which is also pretty great and different from the advice I gave you,…

I’m seeing lots of policymakers putting stock into “kill switches” for AI run amok. The problem is, even if we could kill responsible uses of AI by American companies, we won’t be able to control for international criminal tech savvy rings using swarms of AI agents to attack our bank accounts. Ultimately we will have to separate our financial system from AI agents altogether. That’s one reason that, when I see articles like this one, I worry we are moving in exactly the wrong direction:…

I’m hosting Silent Reading Club at 1RG on the autumn equinox (Tuesday 22nd September at 6pm). Bring whatever you’re reading, find a comfy spot, and enjoy a few hours of quiet company with friends old and new. If you’re looking for something to read: Into the dark by Kathleen Jamie, a winter spent hunting for actual darkness; quiet, beautiful prose. In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, shadow as something to value rather than banish. Total Eclipse by Annie Dillard, light leaving the…