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Sometimes, when we’re just hanging out having fun, I’ll tell Kim, “I need you to add something to my urn.” Like ‘he sure could make a sub!’ or ‘he was a friggin’ genius!’ Sure. I care about my legacy especially at my age. Nope. Ain’t telling. I never suggested she add ‘damn! he was really, really old!’ to my urn. 😎 My upbringing was full of shouting and sometimes violent …

I recently guested on The Incomparable to talk about one of my favorite science fiction movies, "Pitch Black" (2000).Host Antony Johnston with Erika Ensign, Tony Sindelar, and Todd Vaziri. Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Keith David, and a lack of bozos… It can only be 2000’s “Pitch Black,” one of the finer entries in the always-popular “Alien” homage movie genre. We enthuse about elevated filmmaking, great decisions, and low-budget effects.Listen: https://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/741/

New DNA studies have been done the remains of residents of Pompeii who were killed in the disastrous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 Common Era (CE). The findings challenge previous interpretations about the identities of many of the victims. The Washington Post reports that “Plaster casts of Pompeii’s victims preserve moments of human connection as the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the city in ash. There’s a …

By Tess Little. This is an extract from Writing the Murder (Dead Ink Books, 2024) edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst: IT BLEEDS You are invited to open a door. Behind this door, you are told, you will find a room, and within this room you will find a question. Everything you need to answer this question sits within this room. You push open the door. Behind it …

I spent past three weeks working on refactoring and fixing legacy code (the oldest of which was from 2013) that handled positioning Plasma desktop icons, and how this data was saved and loaded. Here's the merge request if you're curious: plasma-desktop: Refactor icon positioner saving and loading The existing code worked sometimes, but there were some oddities like race conditions (icon positioning happens in weird order) and backend code mixed …

We are visiting our family in San Francisco to celebrate our youngest granddaughter’s 5th birthday. Yesterday when she came home from school she recited the morning verse that the children say each day at her kindergarten. (It’s a Waldorf school.) This is our house, so good and so strong. With windows, a bright yellow door and the floor made out of wood. Come in my neighbors, and come in my …

A few weeks back, I was invited to be a critical friend on a futures project by Paul Graham Raven & Keri Facer. The artefact in the centre, the central vehicle to invite people into this world, was a newspaper. Newspapers are, of course, a brilliant container for giving people just enough context of a complex other world. They are (still) a familiar form of media for people who understand …

Trump’s win is a return to the default state of centralised, hierarchical societies – like ours. That’s the problem. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 7th November 2024 We were losing slowly. Now we are losing quickly. Democracy, accountability, human rights, social justice – all were rolling backwards as money swarmed our politics. Above all, our life-support systems – the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, ice and snow – have …

Brum Rush PANDEMONIUM, if press reports can be believed, broke out in the family room at the 1990 Great British Beer Festival. A rabbit leapt from a magician's hat; 20 children, plus organiser Pat Waters, went in increasingly hot pursuit around the family room. It was “one very lively bunny,” Pat later told reporters, no doubt with a rueful shake of the head.

University of Toronto philosopher Gwen Bradford discusses Haus der Kunst, a Nazi era building commission-turned-modern art museum. Continue reading → The post Gwen Bradford on Haus der Kunst appeared first on Aesthetics for Birds.

Most ontology developers know they’re supposed to write competency questions, be it manually, with the CLaRO tool [KeetEtAl19] or assisted by a language model [AlharbiEtAl24, AntiaKeet23, RebboudEtAl24]. Few enjoy the manual authoring task. Moreover: what is a good competency question (CQ) and what not, and why? Are all CQs alike? Is it only those information-seeking questions we ask before developing an ontology or also during the modelling and testing phases? …

Christmas bells are ringing in 2024 with the publication of Jeffrey Paul Thompson’s Miracle on 34th Street: The Making of a Christmas Classic. One of many beloved holiday films stemming from Hollywood’s Golden Age, Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is examined in-depth by former Twentieth Century Fox archivist Thompson. The story of Miracle on 34th Street has been adapted into a book, three television films, several radio dramas and stage …

After reading the news, and having a good cry, I thought about how Internet friends can be some of the best friends ever.

The Old Royal Naval College dominates the riverfront at Greenwich. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the complex was originally a Royal Navy hospital, but from 1873 to 1998 was home to the Royal Navy’s officer training school. The college seen from across the river in Island Gardens, on the Isle of Dogs. The Upper Hall in the college’s Painted Hall, which depicts the then-new Hanoverian dynasty. George I is in …

In which I find myself with a couple of hours to spare in the Herts town of Bishop's Stortford, late on an Autumnal Saturday afternoon.I figured that should be ample time to get around the 2025 Beer Guide entries.Going against convention, my first pub picture is of somewhere that I didn't actually set foot in.But just look at the Nags Head...a stunning art deco design to match Nottingham's finest...As visually …