Recently updated blogs

Doctors need a medical humanities that does more than just help them see health and disease through a patient’s eyes.

LLMs are good search helpers. Here’s three search tools I use every day. All of these use an AI to synthesize answers but also provide an essential feature: specific web search results for you to verify and further research. I use these for conversational inquiries in addition to more traditional keyword searches. Phind is an excellent free LLM + search engine. The AI writes an answer to your query but …

Matt and Sam answer listener questions for their 100th episode—and hear from friends of the podcast, new and old.

For authors, one of the (these days, increasingly few) positives of social media is connecting with other authors. Especially if no one else in your family/social circle is involved in the arts (raises hand), it’s great to be able to find a community where you can discuss craft, business, the ups and downs of querying, the challenges of self-publishing–both sharing your own experiences and learning from others’. But…what if that …

A truly impressive paper was published this week with a new reconstruction of global temperatures over the last ~500 million years. There is something tremendously satisfying about seeing a project start, and then many years later see the results actually emerge and done better than you could have imagined. Especially one as challenging as accurately tracking half a billion years of Earth’s climate. Think about what is involved – biological …

Photographed with a Fujifilm X100VI – 23 mm focal length – 1/900″ at f/8 – ISO 125 Teton Pass, Wyoming, United States – Newe Sogobia (Eastern Shoshone), Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, Shoshone-Bannock, and Tséstho’e (Cheyenne) land This photograph, titled “Weather inversion over Jackson Hole, as seen from Teton Pass. September, 2024.”, was originally published on All-Encompassing Trip.

Rapido Trains UK have announced a range of generic pre-grouping coaches, with the new 00 Gauge 48’ ‘Evolution’ Bogie Coaches. There is such a variety of coaching prototypes in the pre-grouping era that it has been difficult for the industry to justify making 100% accurate models for all of them. Rapido Trains UK are filling this gap with a selection of generic 48’ bogie coaches, including SECR, LBSC and SDJR, …

In the second season of Ancient Apocalypse, Graham Hancock focuses his search for a lost ancient civilization on the Americas. The presentation is, if anything, even slicker than in the first season. The cinematography looks amazing, the music is inspiring, the editing is masterful. I am sure it will be a stunningly beautiful travelog. Right from the first few seconds of the trailer though, Hancock gets into some conceptual trouble. …

Before the election, Labour promised to make broad changes to the standards regime. Yet two months after the election, progress on many aspects of their plans has been slow, and the new government has already been accused of ‘cronyism’ and other ethical missteps. Peter Riddell argues that urgent action to create new safeguards (including legislation) is required, and that ministers cannot brush aside criticism on the grounds that their intentions …

I recently entered the Shropshire Shufflers’ Severn Bridges 10k in Shrewsbury (after a little bit of a kerfuffle where it wouldn’t accept my affiliated club name) and ran with Gaz to celebrate his birthday. Never expected Gaz to choose a 10k to as a birthday celebration and yet here we are; I like to think of it as my good influence as a long time runner Katie, at lifeofamissfit… Source

Astronaut Kate Rubins points at the "ISS Voting Booth" where she voted from the International Space Station on October 27, 2020 (NASA) The astronauts who are currently stuck in space thanks to Boeing's little mishaps will soon be voting in the upcoming U.S. presidential election between vice president Kamala Harris and convicted felon Donald Trump. They were supposed to come back to Earth after just eight days and given the …

Deserter Pubcast · Beers in Bermo: all the latest news about pubs, drugs, crisps and slacking off (Sept 24) In this episode: *** Source

Neil Madden recently wrote a blog post titled, Digital Signatures and How to Avoid Them. One of the major points he raised is: Another way that signatures cause issues is that they are too powerful for the job they are used for. You just wanted to authenticate that an email came from a legitimate server, but now you are providing irrefutable proof of the provenance of leaked private communications. Oops! …

In the 1800s, before serfdom was abolished in the Russian empire, landowners paid taxes based on how many serfs they had. A census was conducted every few years by government employees traveling across the empire and doing counts; a manual map-reduce of epic proportions. If a person was dead, it would often be years before the government cleared the cache, so to speak, and landowners continued to pay taxes on …

Dear Darling Ones, This is a letter to tell you I’m a mermaid now. It’s not the best timing. Last week, a young woman who loved Stevie Nicks and boygenius lopped off six inches of my hair. I meant to write about taking my walker and stroke-addled body out into a public space that wasn’t a medical facility for the first time in 563 days, but I was very busy …