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Last night we spontaneously decided to go see A Complete Unknown, the new Bob Dylan biopic, and ended up at a cinema-plex in the Montreal suburb of Cote-St-Luc. The parking lot was empty, the shops in the dimly lit mall already shuttered; fake plants, vibrating recliners and plastic carnival horses on springs had been pushed into the center of the atrium to accommodate the brooms and mops of the late …

Book review by George S: Death at the Opera is Gladys Mitchell’s fifth novel featuring Mrs Bradley, her ferocious reptilian detective. It was first published by Grayson in 1934, and appeared as Penguin number 217 in 1939 (price 6d.) Cover of the first edition, 1934 The title might seem misleading, since the setting is not an opera house but a school, and the key event is the murder of an …

This film was completed in the late 60’s, a few short years after the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night. Mick Jagger’s casting here lead the studio to believe they would be getting a similarly light-hearted romp through Bohemian London – but Performance‘s much seedier tone caused the studio to panic and shelve the film for a full two years. Jagger’s role is more of a slight supporting role anyway. …

Braised eggs with noodles is a dish that you won’t necessarily find anywhere else. It’s more of a concept than a dish! You braise scrambled eggs in a sauce with vegetables and aromatics, and the savory mixture gets served over noodles. It’s a low-cost breakfast, lunch, or dinner option that has your protein, veggies, and ... View Post

For some reason, Mythic Odysseys of Theros’s inclusion of “cerberi” as a genus of monstrosities hits me as being particularly goofy, as if Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft had included a listing for “draculas.” The post Cerberus Tactics appeared first on The Monsters Know What They’re Doing.

I tried reading this with an open mind, but then I came across this: This is a very easy fix. If I paste the error back into the LLM it will correct it. Though in this case, as I’m reading the code, it’s quite clear to me that I can just delete the line myself, so I do. Via Lobsters, How I program with LLMs My initial reaction to this …

Songs about bees, or from the perspective of a beeIt's wonderful to be aliveTo be a bee in this beehiveIt's tough as nails, it's smooth as silkIt's milk and honey, without milkI work with flowers, it's my workFrom this, there's no way that I can shirkNo-no-no-no-no, there is no complex philosophyIt's just because I'm a beeUnlike the skunk, I do not smellBut I have a thing and it stings like …

new theory

When I last wrote about AI on this blog three years ago, I spoke of it being a tool with the potential to transform scientific discovery, but the application I described was primarily theoretical. For AI to be a meaningful tool in R&D, I argued, we needed better sources of “truth” – better data sets that AI tools could query and learn from over time – and technology capable of …

When haters deny HTML’s status as a programming language, they’re showing they don’t understand what a language really is. Language is not instructing an interlocutor what to do in a way that leaves no room for other interpretations; it is better and richer than that. Like human language, HTML is conversational. It is remarkably adept at adapting to context. It can take a different shape on any machine, from a …

Normally I don't write book reviews, because I do not have much to add to the thousands of reviews already out there, and would rather spend my time in the next book than typing words about what I just read. Still. Recently I finally was able to break my dry spell of reading and enjoyed a collection of books that have some themes in common yet are very different in …

And we’re off, into 2025. Before we get too far, it’s time to take stock (pardon the pun) of 2024. I’ll follow the 7 point approach I’ve used for the last few years, starting with the wider market context. Q1 How did markets do? December saw falls across most asset classes – arguably reverting to the mean after the November gyrations caused by the Trump election win. The Australian dollar …

A forthcoming paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE), "A Cognitive View of Policing" (htm), reports results from a field experiment showing that teaching police officers to "consider different ways of interpreting situations they encounter" led to "reductions in use of force, [and] discretionary arrests" (abstract). In this post I explain why, having spent... The post [122] Arresting Flexibility: A QJE field experiment on police behavior with about 40 …

We love a classic (tomato-based) chili, but a CREAMY chili? It’s hard to say no to! Mix up your chili rotation with this creamy vegan white bean chili with spicy green chiles, sweet corn, and nutrient-packed spinach or kale. It’s a cozy, subtly spiced, nourishing meal that comes together in just 30 minutes. Let us show you how it’s done! This EASY vegan white bean chili starts with a simple …

Nonfiction The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World, by Shelley Puhak, published 2022. It’s about Brunhild and Fredegund in the late 500s and all the crazy and frequently violent political machinations throughout their rise to power. Quite good. I really liked it, even if the going felt slower at times because of the less familiar names. I hadn’t realized the royal name Louis (Louis XIV etc., …