Recently updated blogs

I saw the Jenny Holzer show at The Guggenheim this week; close friends will know that I have a strange relationship with her work. The exhibition, which closes next week, is sort of a reprise of her groundbreaking show there in 1989. Here’s Roberta Smith’s review in the Times from December of that year (emphasis mine): Ms. Holzer has been given the run of the Guggenheim, or more precisely half …

To chase, or not to chase, that is the question.

I went to a conference in Stockholm and wrote about it on LinkedIn.

Let's call an artificially intelligent system a person (in the ethical, not the legal sense) if it deserves moral consideration similar to that of a human being. (I assume that personhood requires consciousness but does not require biological humanity; we can argue about that another time if you like). If we are ever capable of designing AI persons, we should not design them to be safe and aligned with human …

Inside you are two Lupins… Yes when he got his top surgery he got bespoke bean nipples.

Chris Carter. When I was sitting in my office in my surf trunks, barefoot, playing ball with the dog every twenty minutes, writing the pilot for The X-Files, I never imagined that they would be making X-Files underwear and that 10,000 people a week would be logging onto the Internet to talk about the show… — Chris Carter, 1995 Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files, couldn’t have been more …

I probably came off last week as a bit of an extreme “journal abolitionist”. This week, I wanted to give a couple caveats. First, as a commenter pointed out, the main journals we use in my field are run by nonprofits. Physical Review Letters, the journal where we publish five-page papers about flashy results, is run by the American Physical Society. The Journal of High-Energy Physics, where we publish almost …

Apart from the infamous one about 3D printers (I was right), and the one that featured on the orange site, my most popular post is a fairly technical one about GitHub webhooks. It seems to be especially popular with Russians coming from Yandex, so before I start this post that is also about webhooks, here's a message for my Russian friends: Пожалуйста, постарайтесь остановить бесчеловечную войну вашей страны против народа …

Is this the first game where you're charged with the task of building dungeons, and defending them from invading would-be heroes? I don't know of any that came earlier than it, but I can believe that something along these conceptual lines might exist on some eighties microcomputer somewhere. Either way, Chaos Seed: Fengshui Chronicle (also known as Chaos Seed : Fuusui Kairouki) is a very early entry into the genre, …

August 2024 Norway is one of my favourite countries to visit due to the beautiful countryside, many good walks helped by the right to roam that exists, similar to Scotland and as a result I usually go there once or twice a year. In 2024 I headed to Hammerfest, which is right near the northern tip of both Norway and Europe. Hammerfest is located at 70.6 degrees north on the …

William Seabrook–a hard man to introduce. A cannibal and explorer, a drunkard and a fetishist. A dabbler in occultism, and in surrealism too, though always on the outskirts. Never quite “whole hog”. A kind of liminal figure, I suppose. His most significant claim to fame, at least to the broader world, is his introduction of the term “zombie” to English speakers through his 1929 book, “The Magic Island.” This paved …

My journey to the Swiss Alps 100 race started when I applied to enter UTMB through the lottery system. I didn’t get a place, but had pre-booked a hotel in Courmayeur, Italy just-in-case. When it was clear I wasn’t doing UTMB, I looked for other similiar races, and found the Swiss Alps 100 race. I managed to change my hotel’s booking date, and get a larger room so that the …

Find out more about growing perennial veg and other perennial edibles on this short day course at the homestead. I am looking forward to hosting this event on October 12th […] The post Perennial Edibles Gardening Course appeared first on Stephanie Hafferty.

In 1960 my first year in high school, there were 120 students - a few from Russian, German or Romanian parents and 114 from Polish parents. They all wanted to re-visit Poland by 1970, especially to see Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin.Town hall tower, Visit KrakowKraków’s Market Square/Ry­nek in Poland is the centre of the city’s medieval Old Town, designed in 1257 when the town first won its charter. Laid out …