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Heute Vormittag habe ich meine Mutter dabei erwischt, wie sie die alte blaue Wolldecke im Wohnzimmer zusammenlegen wollte. Fünfzehn Minuten lang glättete sie jede Kante, strich den Stoff glatt, faltete ihn zur Hälfte, schüttelte den Kopf und fing wieder von vorn an. Immer wieder dieselbe, kreisende Bewegung.Es ist nicht der dramatische Verfall, der an den Nerven nagt. Es ist diese zähe, monotone Gleichförmigkeit, in der die Tage ineinanderlaufen. Man merkt, wie das eigene...
Whenever you watch a video on YouTube now, you will likely get an advert for a scammy product. In the past few weeks I've seen: A Tai Chi training program that promises to get you ripped like someone on steroids a superhero in 20 days. (Tai chi? Really?) Glasses that can adapt to any prescription (not how glasses work) and are also sunglasses sometimes A small USB stick that offers free Internet with no limits. An air con unit the size of a book that can cool any room -...
While they still haven’t moved into the “writing new music in the 21st century” phase of their career, Alison’s Halo have at least taken the intermediary step of recording and releasing new music written by someone else in the 21st century. Actually, check that. “Stuck”, which was written by Panchiko, whom they toured with last […] The post Alison’s Halo – “Stuck” appeared first on Space Echo.
one of the many gems of the Getty Center Museum Once again, we took advantage of all the ‘free’ culture that Los Angeles has to offer. The Getty Museum, located at two separate venues, is world-famous, and the estimated 1.8 million visitors annually make it one of the most visited museums in the United States. Admission is free but requires ticketed timed entry. We originally thought we could visit both venues in one day and then at least one more museum the next day. What...
I’ve always loved the opening scene of the original Mission Impossible. It was set in Prague, and it was the perfect mix of action and intrigue.As luck would have it, I found myself in Prague a couple years ago, and I spent an entire day tracking down all the shooting locations I could find. (I thought this was novel and original, but it turns out a lot of people have done it.)I put my pics, and the corresponding frame from the movie, into this Google Doc.
I picked up Red Storm Rising yesterday, and quickly got completely engrossed in it. I have read it, but I was in high school, close to 40 years ago. It was published in 1986.The first section of the book (I’m 150 pages in) is an absolute masterclass of intelligence gathering. Bob Toland and others in the U.S. intelligence community put together a series of clues that indicate the Soviets are about to launch an attack on West Germany. The awareness comes about slowly and...
I’ve headed into the big list of drafts in the back end of my website because I’m in the mood for writing blog posts and sharing photos at the moment. This one, in particular, has been over a year in the making, so it’s about time I cracked on and finished it. I’d wanted to be more practical and do things without using a computer or a camera for some time. So last year (that’s 2025), I decided to pull my finger out and teach myself how to use woodworking tools. I already...
From Empire of the Winds: The Global Role of Asia’s Great Archipelago, by Philip Bowring (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle pp. 117-119: Srivijayan dominance of Nusantaria was for a long time bolstered by cooperation with fellow Buddhists in central Java, the Sailendra dynasty. Indeed, Srivijaya’s dominance attained its greatest geographic reach following the linking of Sailendra power to Srivijaya’s through a dynastic alliance. The Sailendra’s economic contribution to the...
A bit past totality (well, 96%-ity, since it wasn’t quite a total lunar eclipse). Still an interesting thing to look up and see. Worldcon going well, I’ve had lunch with a Grand Master and am now off to go sign a bunch of books and then be on a couple of panels and then, of course, Dj a dance. A busy day! Hope yours is likewise productive. — JS
My mornings are the time of the day that has changed the most in retirement. I am not woken by an alarm and I spend it slowly drinking coffee while I catch up on the world. I am able to spend the entire morning outside on the patio if I wish, which is now easier to do on a day like today when the temperature is cool even with no clouds in the sky. The cicadas are still singing their summer song while a chipmunk frantically gathers food and stores it in her nest. I am blessed.
We’ve gotten to know William Shakespeare’s Richard III pretty well by now. But who was the real Richard when he was at home? That question has been raising eyebrows and hackles for at least 400 years. Just after his violent death in August of 1485, the former Richard Plantagenet was immortalized by an influential priest and chronicler named John Rous. Much of the portrayal of Richard that we find in Shakespeare’s play can be traced to this source. He is said to have taken...
Sophia kicked off her birthday celebrations with a candle making class and I won't bury the lede, it was delightful.Currently Listening: Harry Styles “Sunflower, Vol. 6”Reply via email
Another weird late-August week. The biggest release is Coyote vs. Acme, in which Wile E. Coyote finally takes legal action against the Acme Corporation for how everything he's used to catch the Road Runner has failed, which was supposedly written off and meant to be destroyed as a tax dodge along with a couple other Warner Brothers films, but survived to be licensed out to Ketchup and is getting
by George Pritchard Amongst the Galactic Journey staff, the Quark series has proved to be a bit of a problem child. I am now the third person to cover it, which seems like a bad sign, but let's see what we get, shall we? Cover by Martin Last On Speculative Fiction, by Samuel R. Delany … Continue reading [August 28, 1971] Hard To Handle (Quark/4) → The post [August 28, 1971] Hard To Handle (<i>Quark/4</i>) appeared first on Galactic Journey.
PLASTIC MAN JLA (HASBRO) Well, we’re here at the end of the week. I mean, I hope we’re all here. It’s been kind of a rough week for, you know, everyone getting through it. You know what we need? Levity! So, for today’s Flashback Friday Figure Addendum, let’s have a look back at a silly stretchy sort of guy, with Plastic Man! If there’s one super power that has a tendency to be underestimated, it’s shape-shifting, particularly of the stretching type. Mister Fantastic,...
Did the miticide treatment work?A simple enough question, but not one that's straightforward to answer.What is meant by work?Does it mean 'kill mites', or does it mean 'prevent the overwinter loss of the colony'?The latter involves the former, but the former does not guarantee the latter.How can something work, but not work?You can kill easily thousands of mites in a heavily infested colony, but the colony will still perish if the mites were killed too late in the season...
Dark matter bugs people. I’ve talked before about why, and why it, and other beyond-the-standard-model proposals like those inspired by MOND, are nonetheless credible with physicists. But beyond the logic in that post, there’s a deeper reason people find dark matter strange. It’s that they don’t know what kind of an explanation dark matter is. Dark matter sounds very lazy. If you can’t explain the movements of stars based on the matter you can see, then proposing invisible...
The Joesky tax pisses me off more than it should. But it only pisses me off more than it should. It should piss me off, and it should piss you off, too. Source: Cornischong at lb.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons I find the original post a bit obnoxious to read. Not a lot, but a bit. Don't throw blah-blah-blahs in all-caps houses, is my thinking. Maybe you like it, though. Maybe you think it's funny. That's fine. It doesn't really matter because that's not...
A few months ago, Coding Jesus reached out to me about collaborating on content for GetCracked, his C++ learning platform. The pitch was simple: he was building an interactive roadmap for intermediate C++ developers and wanted someone to help with building the technical content — quiz questions, curated resources, explanations. That sounded like exactly the kind of work I enjoy, so I said yes. ...
Hey there. Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week: #1. What’s the real reason why most of us use AI? Because our coworkers use it (3min). #2. Here’s a sample AGENT.md file for better code quality (6min). I still use old-style prompts, but stole a few parts of that file. #3. RSS co-creatod was prosecuted for something Meta is doing (2min). #4. “Diversify your income” makes sense. But what about diversifying our joy and identity? For that, try to live...
The intelligence is here and basically free. The bottlenecks now are harnesses, permissions, interfaces, and helping teams catch up.
Wall's or Lyon's Maid? The battle for the newsagent's freezer continues...
I’ve been a life-long black/death metal fan. In many ways I find it to be the most versatile style of music available. Need a little extra motivation to lift some heavy shit at the gym? Mowing the lawn? Something to wake you up on that early morning commute to work? Just need to completely zone out on the couch after a long day? Well, the black/death metal genre has probably got you (or at least me) covered.But as with so many things a person enjoys there are peaks and...
For the last 13+ years, I've been capturing my gameplay in video form. It all started on my 19th birthday when my Dad bought me an Elgato Game Capture HD that was on the shelf inside an Apple Store. I raced home and hooked it up to my PS3 (with a D-Terminal style plug no less) and recorded this hard mode run of the final boss in Guacamelee!. Previous attempts involved aiming a point and shoot camera at a tube TV. This capture card paved the way for my to make better...
I am essentially, deep down, still the same little boy who couldn't get to sleep if I knew my dad was going to take me fishing tomorrow, the same little boy who woke up hours before the alarm was meant to sound and then couldn't get back to sleep because I was too excited about a day out with my old man. This is why I was awake at 02:30 on Sunday morning and sat back with three rods in the water by 4am. This did however give me the opportunity to play with dad's bat...