Recently updated blogs

I'm reading a book titled "The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleyman co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence firms Deepmind and Inflection AI. I predict it will replace Fred Wilt's "How They Train". Fascinating read about what AI , Bio-Technology, robotics, and DNA research are up to and capable of doing and will do in the near future. The advances are so huge and mind boggling. A couple of paragraphs on pages …

This is a really interesting article about how some people managed to talk like adults about a piece of art they didn't like. Whether or not you like their solution: it appears they came to a solution that made a variety of people who disagreed but who all cared happy.Basically, they solved this thorny public art problem by not allowing drive-by comments.Without fail, people arrived at these events primed to …

The war in Sudan shows how during conflict, the internet is as critical as food or medicine. Satellite over the African continent. Credit ESA/Mlabspace via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Sudan is battling not only bullets but also the suffocating absence of communication infrastructure, an often-overlooked lifeline that is as critical as food or medicine. As the country grapples with a severe food-security crisis, grassroots initiatives, such as mutual …

Anne Sexton is familiar with the dark night of the soul felt in the body.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Could artificial intelligence help students cheat their way through exams and qualifications? New research (June 2024) reveals that AI submissions can outperform human students in university exams, raising urgent questions for education and assessment integrity. AI scores higher … At a leading UK university, researchers (Scarfe et al., 2024) recently tested whether AI could infiltrate […]

Working on getting access to a static site, found a way to move it outside PHP and into Apache

I'm the slightest bit annoyed seeing a social post touting 'Point of View' and none of the footage is actually POV. So I'll take this opportunity to air my grievance along with a solution: Every time I see such a thing I should close social media and do something more constructive. Like post in my journal! Unrelated, I tried this pair of snapshots in monochrome and it wasn't great. So …

A reader question: Hey Muffy,Any thoughts on J Press Shaggy Dog sweaters? I usually buy one every year, but they’re now $265 a pop. Are there better options?

I don’t know if we need a fediverse version of TikTok, I really wish these short video posting platforms would go away. Loops - ActivityPub based sharing of short video clips

With @​property now being Baseline Newly Available, I thought it’d be a good time benchmark the impact – if any – it has on the performance of your CSS. When starting to use a new CSS feature it’s important to understand its impact on the performance of your websites, whether positive or negative. With @property now in Baseline this post explores its performance impact, and things you can do to …

I’ve just launched a new video series, Comics Show and Tell with Nat Gertler. This will look at interesting and obscure aspects of comics (broadly considered), from my quirky point of view. The first two episodes (only one of which is released so far) deal with forgotten early African American superheroes, but there will be episodes coming up focusing on Peanuts-y items… really, I’ll have to fight to make sure …

Kate Kaplan hits on something over at Nielsen Norman Group’s blog that’s been bugging me: The challenge with this icon is sparkle ambiguity: Participants in our recent research study generally agreed that it represented something a little special. But, what was that something? And why was it special? That was less obvious. We encountered widely and wildly varied interpretations. Man, I hate those sparkles. Correction: I loathe it as an …

Where I spent most of the day last Saturday: the Brattle prior to showtime.Last weekend, I did something I've never done before. No, I didn't clean the fridge. Rather, I played music for a silent movie that's just under seven hours long.The film: Abel Gance's 'La Roue' (1923), which the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. screened as part of its programming to celebrate Silent Movie Day, which this year fell …

Today's links Prime's enshittified advertising: Don't touch that dial. No, seriously, DON'T. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Prime's enshittified advertising (permalink) Prime's gonna add more ads. …

I get asked this question a lot; so often, I will write a general response. This doesn’t replace the personalized advice that I have given and will continue to give, but it will add to it. For whom is this article intended? I’m thinking of someone who already owns an interchangeable lens full frame (FF, […]