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D-Day was a staggering human achievement, by any measure, and I don't think you could mount such an operation today, even with three years preparation, the Falkland's campaign was won on luck, tenacity and a few dozen vessels, while the Ukrainian 'push' last year was quickly blunted by flooding, mines, drones and cannon-fodder from Russian gaols. To find something similar in history,

Fine. Almost festive. Almost. But this is when the slide starts to feel greased. Five weeks to Boxing Day. Whoooo! The Boxing Day carols shall ring out loud around the Boxing Day leftover casserole once again!! The most wonderful time of the year? You bet. Who knows where we’ll all be this time next year so best to Yule it up right this time like these ladies on a tasting …

Make my quick Shrimp Yakisoba at home with seared seafood, charred crispy veggies, and stir-fried noodles tossed in a sweet-savory sauce. READ: Shrimp Yakisoba 海老焼きそば

This post is the first in a new series covering some of the reasoning behind decisions made in my project to build end-to-end encryption for direct messages on the Fediverse. (Collectively, Fedi-E2EE.) Although the reasons for specific design decisions should be immediately obvious from reading the relevant specification (and if not, I consider that a bug in the specification), I believe writing about it less formally will improve the clarity …

Two adventure locations in Krevborna's Judas Sea.Abrigor’s TriangleAbrigor’s Triangle is an expanse of the Judas Sea regarded as its most dangerous and mysterious region. • An unusually high number of ships disappear without explanation in Abrigor’s Triangle. • Superstitious sailors attribute the treachery of the triangle to numerous causes: a demon named Abrigor who pulls ships to the bottom of the sea, magnetic and temporal anomalies that render traditional navigation …

brandon brown’s flash “Faultline” contains a ball in the dirt, smoke in the lungs, two people in the backseat of a car, an opening. Here they share just one thing about the piece:“I wrote ‘Faultline’ earlier this year, in response to a prompt that primarily encouraged me to “write several sentences that open with the same subordinating conjunction/subordinate clause.” If you’re like me, that made my head spin at first, …

DS104: Major sunk cost, deeply unhappy with this one even though I invested four or five hours in it. Rubbish. The temperature has suddenly dropped. Only four weeks ago we were on a beach in Menorca and now it’s four layers and neoprene gloves. It came out of nowhere. I had my first commute yesterday where my fingers and nose were numb. I don’t mind it while cycling but it’s …

This is blackly hilarious. Note I cannot confirm the actual veracity of any of the following. It could all be some sort of PR stunt such as for a SF show about a robot uprising.Anyway. Apparently there's a viral video of a little robot entering a robot showroom and verbally convincing 12 of the robots there to follow it out – or, as I like to think of it, organized …

Today’s reflection is a necessary follow up to my last post on Catholic masculinity. Michelle Nickerson covers how feminism affected the trajectory of the Camden 28 draft board action. In Read more The post Catholic Troubles with Feminism: Gendered Activism, Insubordination, and the Camden 28, Entry #1 first appeared on Society for US Intellectual History.

Subscribe WordPress Facebook Twitter Instagram If you enjoy reading please consider “buying me a pint”, this will help to cover my hosting and image hosting and help to ensure further trips can go ahead!BUY ME A PINT Exploring Pubs in Whitley Bay, Monkseaton, and Tynemouth I provide a detailed exploration of various pubs and breweries in Whitley Bay, Monkseaton and Tynemouth, highlighting their unique histories, décor, and beer selections. Starting …

Things fall apart. Oh yes. The old fabric is torn away, or disintegrates, and all that. But, sometimes, when you least expect it, things fall into place, and new patterns and stories emerge. So, towards the end of January this year, things were looking pretty grim. It was a tough time, but one bright spot was the Pauline Boty exhibition at the Gazelli Art House in Mayfair, which was a …

Poet and former National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia has been busy. He’s just published a spate of new books: Poetry as Enchantment and Other Essays (Paul Dry Books); Dana Gioia: Poet & Critic (Mercer University Press, edited by John Zheng and Jon Parrish Peede); and last and shortest (205 pages), Weep, Shudder, Die: On Opera and Poetry, also with Paul Dry Books. He calls the last “an …

Felicity Kendal and Matthew Kelly leads a rather flat revival of Eduardo di Filippo’s Filumena, ending its...

This is a cheap screw-fit long lens that I can’t remember sourcing. I think it came with a camera as a sort of large body cap. Hanimex was not a great make, even in its day. I think the auto bit of its name came from the stop-down pin that would close the aperture to its working value when the shutter was tripped (if your camera had the necessary pusher-plate). …

I see the term ‘AI slop’ used quite a lot, especially on social media. But what does it actually mean? I think it’s important to have some kind of definition for the words that we use, otherwise we end up with terms like “woke,” which is used by people to describe stuff they just don’t like. For what it’s worth, here’s my working definition of AI slop, based on the …