I’m done with the classics. I’m done forcing myself to read postmodern word salads just because some pretentious types call it avant-garde. And I’m sure as fuck over all things BookTok. Those tools would have you think Lonesome Dove is the pinnacle of literary art. Spoiler: it isn’t. I’m not saying there’s something inherently wrong with those books. There are some who genuinely enjoy them. And I believe there are seasons in life in which the esteemed classics can be important in a variety of…

There are some fine pubs in the city of Edinburgh and a few hours on an afternoon can't do them justice. But nonetheless, I recently called in to half a dozen of the best ones in the centre on my first visit north of the border for several years. Here's how the afternoon unfurled....I arrived in Edinburgh, aka Auld Reekie, just after midday. I had caught the train here from Berwick, where I was staying for a couple of days, with the journey to the Scottish capital taking around 45 minutes. The…

I Voted 2026: image of a bearded person wearing a black Wrangler T-Shirt with pens sitcking out of the pocket. On the front of the pocket is an “I Voted” sticker. I voted today, as I hope most people did. And, if the results are anything to go by, I suspect this might be the highest turnout in a midterm election for the last couple of decades. And the backlash over the Trump Administrations policies is severe. More severe than I think anyone projected. It’s what many of us were actually…

Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar (2014) Vitals Matthew McConaughey as Joseph “Coop” Cooper, resourceful NASA pilot-turned-farmer and widowed family man Colorado, Spring 2067 Film: Interstellar Release Date: November 5, 2014 Director: Christopher Nolan Costume Designer: Mary Zophres WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background Born 57 years ago today on November 4, 1969, Matthew McConaughey was in the midst of his celebrated “McConaissance” when he starred in Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi epic…

Playing A Turing Game: Am I Human?It began, as the best of my mornings do, with something small and slightly messy. I had been cutting pickled turnips, the pink kind that bleed a little, and they left a trace of red liquid on the cutting board. Nothing more than that. A chore, a stain, a moment I happened to notice.I was also, on that same Monday, playing a game with Google’s AI. We were doing “the Turing thing,” as I put it to myself: it would ask me questions, and it would decide whether I…

Last year, I reviewed Mignon G. Eberhart's From This Dark Stairway (1931), fourth in the Nurse Keath and Lance O'Leary series, which takes place during the night shifts at Melady Memorial Hospital during an extreme, oppressive heat wave – where a doctor is brutally murdered and a patient inexplicably disappears. Eberhart wrote a grand example of the early 1930s American detective novel with From This Dark Stairway which skillfully ends with the revelation of the murderer's name. It goes without…

I’m looking for a new role. Despite having mentioned it in a few blog posts over the past month, and adding a little “Open to Work” notice in my website’s header, I haven’t really talked much about it here. Until now. Since the end of the summer, I’ve known that there was a chance that the company I work at wouldn’t continue as-is from next year. I got that confirmation at the end of September, and since then I’ve been looking for a new job. In retrospect, I could’ve started earlier. Learning…

When I started this blog, I had a specific idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to discuss things openly without censoring my voice, including subjects that don’t usually come up around the dinner table. I wanted to journal my life, experiences, sexuality, and desires as a man in the last third of his existence. And I wanted to speak plainly. It turns out that doing all of that gets complicated once four letters enter the picture: NSFW. It’s a balancing act. A host might allow your content but…

Bazzite 45 is here! universal-blue.discourse.group With the launch of Bazzite 45, we’ve done a great deal to improve how Bazzite is built behind the scenes to make the lives of contributors and maintainers alike easier. On the topic of Linux, and in case you somehow missed this, Bazzite is the other Linux distro I use. It runs on my HTPC and is basically the center of my living room experience. (With KDE, however.)

When it comes to advertising their goods, this bakery knows just how to squeak by: IT'S A TRAP!!Of course, not every label can be so appetizing: Because "Ball Sack" was just a little too formal. And speaking of Balzac... Let's be realistic: It's French. No one will notice. Now here's a place that knows just how to garner the most business with their promotional mailers: Yep, blurring out their contact information was definitely the right move. And finally, this bakery gets the gold star for…

My feet now walk these dusty roads Soon the streets of gold Goodbye to sin and shame forever I am going home All Saints' Day was Sunday, and this one has been on repeat since. John saw "a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb" (Revelation 7:9). We the Kingdom pictures those same saints at the gate, waving us in. I'm trading my sorrows For joy that never ends The saints are at the…

This is the first novel I read from Ursula K. Le Guin, and it did not dissapoint. Published in 1969, it was one of the first works of fiction to meaningfully attempt to tackle society’s gender norms, showing us an alien world where the definition of male or female is not in the equation of how things work. Gethen—also known as Winter—is a world stuck on an Ice Age, with a rather unique civilization. Our main protagonist is Genly Ai—a human embassador from “Terra” who wants Gethen to join a…

Withnail Books of Penrith have just announced pre-orders for the latest in their series of limited edition literary chapbooks, and this time it is a monograph, Lawrence Atreides, The Roots of Dune, a 10,000 words essay by Karen Kennedy Ph.D.This explores the inspiration of T. E. Lawrence in the character of Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's Dune (1965), 'a foreign figure who

It has taken me thirty years, but I finally think I know what I like, and don’t like in science fiction stories; what, for me, creates a sense of wonder. Thirty years ago, I was deep into my science fiction education. I finished the month of October 1996 by reading Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. I then spent the entire month of November immersed in the genre: Chorale and Herovit’s World by Barry N. Malzberg, Way Station by Clifford D. Simak,…

It’s pitch black, you’re a big-old hawk-moth flying through the night in search of nocturnal nectar and a mate, when your in-flight detection systems pick up the sound of an incoming bat. You can duck and dive, but chances are the bat’s echolocation system will pick you out of the dark and it’s bye-bye hawkeye! What to do? Seemingly, the obvious answer is to rub your genitalia against your abdomen. I mean, it sounds like a last chance at some pleasure in your short life before being eaten by…

Detail from Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Dream of Arcadia (Denver Art Museum, accession number 1954.71):

I recently ported my 1996 Pascal/Delphi calculator to Rust. The result is excalc, a cross-platform command-line application and MCP server. Rust makes it easy to compile an application on every platform. Distributing it via crates.io, MSI, Homebrew or WinGet needed more work. Paste this cookbook into your favorite AI prompt to get it done. We trigger a distribution from GitHub Releases: a Git tag identifies the new version, CI publishes the crate from that tag, builds portable archives and an…

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know I’m pretty committed to using a certain size of notebook… so much so that a notebook can be almost perfect, but if it’s a few millimeters away from my preferred size and proportions, it’s going to be a reject. But it wasn’t always this … Continue reading Larger Notebooks from My Collection →

I have to say something about the elections here in the US last night before I dive into October's books. WE DID IT. I'm feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time, and I just want to give everyone a hug. I can't wait to see what happens now. I'm disappointed in my own state of Tennessee, though. While watching other southern states like Texas and Georgia flip to blue, my state remained red. I'm taking comfort in the fact that it was a very close race for a state that has traditionally…

A team of researchers led by Purdue University associate professor of philosophy J.P. Messina has been awarded a nearly $2.91 million in funding for its project, “The Neglected Safeguards of Liberalism.” J.P. Messina, Brian Kogelmann, Jesse Crosson, and Logan Strother The team includes co-principal investigators Jesse Crosson (associate professor of political science), Brian Kogelmann (associate professor of philosophy and political science), and Logan Strother (associate professor of political…

I've been ranting about this for years. The "easy" or the most "optimized" option isn't often the best for humanity. The post Hello? Where is Everybody? appeared first on @Kevuhnn / 📸 / 📚 / 🇨🇦.

Hey there! Before you read this, here’s a SPOILER ALERT! In this review, I will discuss a pretty significant plot point not overtly shown in trailers, but is revealed within the first minute of runtime. If you wish to be surprised, close this tab and come back later. Back in 2023, Godzilla Minus One hit theaters and was nothing short of a miracle. Acting as the 70th Anniversary Celebration of the big angry lizard, the movie eschewed the monster battling tropes which one typically associates…

Everyone knows that they are the only two Presidents elected to non-consecutive terms. Few know that Venezuela was a significant issue for both in their second terms. But after yesterday's results, Trump and Cleveland may end up sharing something else: realigning the electorate against their party.Cleveland's second term was a political disaster. In the 1894 midterm elections, Democrats lost over 100 seats in the House of Representatives and lost control of the Senate. Two years later, the GOP…

After upgrading Icinga DB to 1.6, Icinga Web showed an error that Icinga DB is not running.

Authors Note: This piece was originally published on my Medium account @jdyerwrites. I have since grown tired of that platform and am moving my writing solely back to Bear. At a recent speaking event, I participated on a panel with fellow library directors discussing skills for new leaders. During the question-and-answer portion, an attendee asked, “How do you know when you’re ready to be in a leadership role?” I immediately grabbed the microphone and said, “You don’t.” Years into this…

On a rainy day in London, I headed down to Southwark and devised a rather neat loop from a relatively new Wetherspoon's to take in a few Good Beer Guide entries and some great-looking pubs.My first stop of the day was Wetherspoon's where I was early enough for a plate of breakfast and a pre-noon pint.The Sun Wharf is one of the latest additions to Tim's portfolio, opening last autumn. It's somewhere I've been keen to pay a visit to.The Sun Wharf (50 Tooley Street, London Bridge, London, SE1…

A pilgrim from the Hungary/Austria region in Europe became an archbishop in Portugal and wrote prolifically, including a piece that was borrowed and re-written more than once for centuries afterward.Born c.518, Martin of Dumio made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where he became a monk. From there he joined a ship that traveled to Galicia in northern Portugal.Galicia at the time was populated by a Germanic tribe called the Suevi, who were Christians but followed Arianism (considered heretical),…

I want to write about several games I’ve been trying out for the last month, and once again I get stuck. Writing is just not the right medium for games. First, there’s too much to say about each game, and I feel like I have to rave about each one until my fingers fall off. Second, they are visual — they need to be seen. The answer is the same as it’s always been: videos. But videos take time. Writing a long post takes a couple of hours, which can spread over a day or two. Making a video takes…

I don't know if it's the ADHD. It probably is, but I have this urge to constantly rearrange everything. By everything I mean: my home office, the bag I carry with me wherever I go, and lately, this website. The Home Office With the home office, I've never stopped since I got one in 2018. It's been a constant stream of modifications. My old one ended up full of patched holes in the walls from shelves I put up, moved and eventually removed. A floating desk for guests (I rarely had guests). During…

[1981]Old punks don't die they just go sorta loose scuzzy sunburnt indie r&b power-pop or something.This recording could have only come from Australia. The Australia I grew up in. Where did it go? Chrunchas, Tarax, Healeys, Virgona's chocolate rockets, the VFL, underarms, European immigrants, Abbotts Lager... Quite possibly my favourite Saints tune. All sorts of hooks everywhere. Timeless.Shoulda been number one here for three weeks at least.Number one in our hearts baby!