Recently updated blogs

Last year, in Scooter Saga Part IV: How to buy a new scooter in Taiwan, I wrote:In Taiwan, you must hold a driver’s license before buying a vehicle. For this reason, many elderly people—who are unlicensed because they didn’t learn to read and write—drive scooters that are registered in their children’s names. “Watch out for grandpa” is a phrase I’ve heard many times, for good reason.Fortunately, I got my license …

Porteus is a modular, light-weight, and fast Linux distribution that runs on new and old computers, but it has some bugs and a moderate learning curve.

Mentalizing is the human ability to comprehend intentional mental states, such as goals, desires, feelings, and wishes, of both oneself and others. In this blog, Amelia Mullet summarises a systematic review exploring the role of mentalizing in adult psychotherapy. The post What is the role of mentalizing in psychological interventions? appeared first on National Elf Service.

There’s a lot of hype around large language models, the foundational technology behind services like ChatGPT. Representatives of OpenAI have stated that, in a few years, these models might have “PhD-level intelligence“. On the other hand, at the time, ChatGPT couldn’t count the number of letter “r”s in the word “strawberry”. The model and the setup around it has improved, and GPT-4o1 apparently now gets the correct 3 “r”s…but I’m …

Pleased to announce a cassette release from GUE: edited improvisations from Laurel Uziell, Jacken Elswyth and myself for banjo, melodica, electronics and other instruments, recorded in London in 2022 and 2023, and expertly mastered by Angel Hair Studio. Many thanks to David of Blue Tapes.Now available on Bandcamp and for pre-order (released October 25th): link here. Also cassette-related: last year Ben Hall’s cassette label Ornette Coleman Fiend Club put out …

Premise There is a lot of leadership advice available on the internet – free and otherwise. I offer a lot of them myself, here on this blog. There are innumerable number of books being written on this topic, so much so that at times, it can become too daunting for someone looking for help. However, as leaders, we need to know which advice or ideas are relevant for us and …

This October there are more than seven dozen calls for submissions. All of these are paying markets, and none charge submission fees. As always, every genre, style, and form is wanted, from short stories to poetry to essays.I post upcoming calls for submissions shortly before the first day of every month. But as I am collecting them, I post them on my page, Calls for Submissions. You can get a …

by Dennis Crouch The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has disclosed a significant error in its patent term adjustment (PTA) calculations, potentially affecting patents issued between March 19, 2024, and July 30, 2024. The USPTO discovered a coding error introduced in a recent software update. This error specifically affected two aspects of the PTA calculation: 1. The "A" delay under 35 U.S.C. 154(b)(1)(A) 2. The amount of overlap …

I receive many (many) unsolicited emails about the possibility of working with me at grad school. Some are clearly bulk emails sent no doubt to a large number of professors. Some are customized to include phrases like “I was really … Continue reading →

Consumer culture, entertainment, marketing, and social media increasingly infiltrate the field of art: fashion brands drop artist collaborations, luxury products claim to have artwork status, and immersive lightshows blend classical art history with spectacular marketing. Influencers populate the social media feeds of established art institutions, while museum goers are on the hunt for an instagrammable experience. As a result, to remain connected via live streaming and viral trends, institutions are …

It’s been a peculiar summer really, and one that I would describe as “bitty”. It's been characterised by a sense of things not quite going to plan, although it’s difficult to pin-point exactly what has brought this feeling on. Frustrating, might be a more appropriate term, because it's been a summer of breakdowns, and system failures. Nothing has been too serious, and these issues have mainly been caused by equipment …

The Retroist Podcast is back with an episode I promised to release during my first year of the podcast, The Goonies. On this episode, my first of the new season, I am happy to finally have covered this classic and beloved film.I start the show off by talking about how the film was inspiring to me in unexpected ways that have had a positive long-term effect on me. Then I …

The annual meetings of the Robert Walser Society and the W.G. Sebald Society (Deutsche Sebald Gesellschaft) will be held jointly in Munich on October 11-13, 2024. The event will offer participants the opportunity to immerse themselves in the work of both authors and to explore points of contact and differences between the two. The conference will include discussions, readings, talks, lectures and a guided tour. Speakers include Thilo Krause, Esther …