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It is showtime for the commercial Odysseus Moon lander, ready to attempt later today a touchdown on the lunar terrain. Following lunar orbit insertion on February 21st, Intuitive Machines notes its lander is in excellent shape for Odysseus’ “hardest challenge yet” – an expected 1630 Central Standard Time (5:30 […]

Sometime near 1948 Fiore Cerra took an aerial photograph of Carbondale, Pennsylvania that captured how very different a place it was just 75 years ago or so. I live near Carbondale and the moment I saw Cerra’s aerial I knew I wanted to try to recreate it. Well, in early 2023 I did and I uploaded a quick comparison of the two images to Instagram at the time. Recently, however, …

Sometimes people ask me why I’m now doing science news. It’s so that you can fully appreciate the drama of scientific discovery, in which one result contradicts a previous one and the next one finds a flaw in this other one. I think the entertainment-value of science is greatly underappreciated. And quantum computing is without doubt one of the most dramatic areas at the moment. One the one

If there was a kind of set that was expressed as a function, we could possibly pipeline operations, reducing memory impact. Is that possible, and is it a good idea? So far, maybe not.

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From In For The Long Haul: First Fleet Voyage & Colonial Australia: The Convicts’ Perspective, by Annegret Hall (ESH Publication, 2018), Kindle pp. 186-187: In July, the convicts Henry and Susannah Kable launched the first civil action in the settlement. They sued the Master of the Alexander, Duncan Sinclair, for the loss of personal items in his charge during the voyage. These articles had been purchased in England from donations …

January 18 – February 24, 2024

I’m annoyed at this Internet Explorer advert

Prejudice against conservative Christians is a real thing. But so is the tendency to see prejudice where it isn’t. That is Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s special talent.I explain in a new column at The Hill.

The book manufacturing plant Sheridan Madison, once upon a time Webcrafters, is closing, and 116 people will be losing their jobs between now and the end of July. Printing Impressions bears the tale. The ostensible reason for the closing hardly assorts with the bouncily cheerful assessments (also here) I gave recently of prospects for the year ahead. “CJK Group and Sheridan indicated ‘the decision comes as a result of the …

I didn’t think Apple needed to make a sports app, but now that they have, it’ll be my default. I agree with John Gruber’s post that being fast matters: …the truth is ad tech, combined with poor programming, has made most sports apps slow to load. Most apps, period, really. Just being very fast to load ought not be a hugely differentiating factor in 2024, but it is. Over the …

It's been a low-energy week in some ways, but also a planning and 'feeding the soul' week. Like most people, I've been surfing the sewage of politics, both National and Global. About five years ago I dated a man who explained the major flaw in Darwinism: survival of the fittest inevitably means survival of the psychopaths. It is they who have the time and wherewithal to form masterplans than involve …

I see the dear old Church of England, in the person of the Bishop of Norwich, is calling for the 'rewilding' of churchyards, in the interests of 'biodiversity'. Well, I don't know where the Bishop has been these past few decades, but the kind of measures he recommends – maintaining 'wild' areas in such a way as to encourage a wide range of wildlife – have been practised in a …

Today's links The majority of censorship is self-censorship: …But the majority of self-censorship is intentionally cultivated by an outside power. The Bezzle excerpt (Part V): Keep your hands at 10 and 2. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading The majority of censorship is self-censorship (permalink) I know a lot of polymaths, …

Having now acquired Little John, I get to bring him on missions. As expected, he’s a variant on the Strong Merry 1Tangentially, the game’s random name generator has given me a merry man amusingly named Much Strong. He isn’t even a Strong Merry. He’s an archer. — he’s basically the strongest merry, and has most of the standard Strong Merry abilities plus a couple of additional ones of his own. …